We are fast approaching the 'last three months at post' phase of our service here. We are definitely leaving sometime in August. We hope that we'll have time to do our desired overland trip to Senegal before flying back to America. Knowing that we don't have a lot of time left has given me very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am more than excited to get back home and to the physical and emotional comforts there. On the other hand though, I've started feeling stressed about the projects that I have going on and wanting to get everything done. I know I've complained about having too little work before so you might think that is a strange thing to say. It's not that I suddenly have loads of work, but rather that all the little projects I've wanted to do that don't require much time but that still require planning now must be done before I leave. For example, I want to paint a world map on a wall at Eric's school and at the high school in Houedogli. This requires suffering through school bureaucracy before even putting pencil to wall, so I better get on that!
And then there's my Amour et Vie (HIV/AIDS plus malaria and diarrhea prevention) project, which is going really well. My team is becoming more autonomous so that I'm not nervous to leave them to do the work on their own in August. I really hope that my team continues after I'm gone, because the work we are doing is really vital. This was highlighted for me when the other day we did a mosquito net demonstration. At the beginning of the demonstration we mentioned that we were going to be selling discounted mosquito nets so that the women would be able to put in practice what we were teaching them. The women then said that actually they already all have nets! But they said they didn't know how to use them, didn't know even how many people could fit under one to sleep which told me that they hadn't even experimented with using it. In sum, somebody has sold them the net and the women knew it was good to buy one, but nobody ever taught them how to use it! I'm guessing the same is true for the oral rehydration salts and water purification tablets that we teach women to use. These are available in the pharmacy, and have directions in French. How many rural village women who would be buying these products can read? Or even have a one-liter bottle that they can use to measure out the exact quantity demanded for the rehydration salts? Not many. People here learn well by observation, and thus what we are doing in the villages, demonstrating how to use a product using tools that are available there (a certain sized bowl instead of a plastic water bottle), is crucial to improving rural community health.
The other big work-related news is that my grant project for the girls' library was funded! The execution of the project should not take long- it involves a day of buying books, and a few weeks for a carpenter to build bookshelves. I'm really excited to get started on this and for the girls to have new schoolbooks before their exams and before the end of the year. Thank you so much to everyone who donated to the project. I will post pictures as the improvements progress.
As for Eric, he has only about three weeks of school left, then exams (unless the school year is extended for some reason). I know he's ready to be done. He's still working on the grammar of Aja and summer will afford him a lot more time to work on that. And he's had enough school bureaucracy and having to be a toady to school administrators.
Work-related stress aside, it's also hard nearing the end of service because many of our friends will be leaving before us. Normally the date at which volunteers can official begin to leave is August 21. However, many people have applied for early close of service (which has to be approved by PC Washington) and many have already had their requested approved. For me personally it's difficult to have things end in stages. So when our friends begin to leave I know I'm going to have a hard time. But the reward at the end is sweet, to be sure!

I'll end with some more cultural observations, some silly, some serious.

• Lately I've been getting a lot of excuses for things that amount to “Africans are like that.” For example, the other day I had a meeting for my environmental club and a group of kids showed up about 30 minutes late. Keep in mind they are used to having to be on time for school, so I was surprised that they were so late. When I called them on it, their response was that “it's because we are African.” This excuse is distasteful to me for two reasons. First, how can anyone generalize about an entire continent of people like that? Second, people seem to think that timeliness is a really good thing- many have expressed admiration that I'm always on time- yet they seem to hold themselves to a lower standard, as if they can't change something they themselves view as a bad habit because they are “African”. That seems rather offensive to me and I know that if anyone else said this about them, it would be viewed, rightly, as racist/ethnocentrist.

• On a different note, many people here are fascinated by my hair. They always ask me what products I use to make it so straight and smooth, and whether I relax it. They are always dismayed at my answer, that I was just born with this hair. The girl peer educator for my Amour et Vie team told me my hair looked really good wet because it was so shiny!

• People's way of complimenting someone is often very different here than what we are used to and often seems offensive to us. For example, I've mentioned that telling me I'm fat or have gained weight is a way of giving a compliment. Another way of complimenting someone is by asking them for money or telling them that they are rich. So when people ask us for money and we perhaps mention to a Beninese friend how annoying we find this, the friend often says that the person was complimenting us by recognizing that we are wealthy and are therefore important people. Likewise, when people say things like “oh you Americans are so rich” or “you have les bonnes choses la-bas” (you have 'the good stuff over there) they are trying to make us feel good and important. Finally, related to the first topic, sometimes people say things like “oh we Africans are bad, you white people are good”. This occurred when I was in a village buying a piece of bamboo to make my garden fence. I had been waiting for the bamboo to be delivered for a few weeks and was getting really frustrated. Finally my neighbor took me to a village to get it ourselves and during the process he kept saying that “oh we Africans are bad, we don't do anything on time... you whites aren't like that”. As if that made me feel good to be told such a generalization! How does one respond to a “compliment” like that?

Just some observations about Benin for you.... Hope they were interesting

Here are some more photos we've taken recently.

Here we are playing Boggle at English club:

We have this game using letter tiles called Bananagrams, which the kids like to use to make what they think are English words. Here is their rendition of "thank you", which I thought was cute:

I think "vell wele"here means "very well", and Shina refers to me, of course!

At a meeting with my Amour et Vie team:

In our usual taxi going back to Klouekanme:

I don't have too much to write today but just wanted to check in and say hello. I can't say I've been doing too much lately. My Amour et Vie (HIV/AIDS plus malaria and diarrhea prevention) project took a small hiatus for March and we have just started up again doing malaria talks and mosquito net demonstrations. It's amazing to me how few people use mosquito nets here. Not only can they greatly help reduce malaria infection, since nighttime is when the most infections occur, but they can prevent other mosquito-borne diseases and help keep neighbors safe because the nets are impregnated with a mosquito-killing pesticide. And they are not terribly expensive, at least compared with other investments intended for long-term use like a motorcycle or a cell phone. In my experience there is not a lot of focus on preventative health measures here- mosquito nets, malaria prophylaxis, proper nutrition to stave off or reduce the severity of disease, water purification, hand washing, and the like. Convincing people to take these measures is difficult and it's frustrating because from my point of view I see that if only people did embrace these measures, there would be enormous improvements to community health and reduction in infant mortality. I hope that my Amour et Vie project will make some positive difference, however small.
The rainy season is beginning here. So far we have had a few days of rain punctuating the otherwise scorching-hot month of March (although my heart goes out to northerners who are living in much hotter conditions than we are down south!). My garden is in shambles and has been ravaged by chickens. I have ordered a very tall piece of bamboo to be brought by cart from a town about 7 kilometers away so that I can replace my teak fence posts that have been eaten from the inside out by termites. You would think that teak, a hardwood, would stand up well to the elements, insect and otherwise, but no, so I'm trying bamboo.
And along with the rainy season comes mango season! Besides the problems with the mango tree in the yard (refer back to last April's blog entry), I am excited. It's actually nice to eat seasonally here because when things come in season they are a real treat and break from the monotony of onions-tomatoes-okra available every day of the year. It's also custard apple and chermoya season, which I bet most of you haven't heard of but they are delicious (and rare even here). And we bought a pile of miracle berries for 2 cents the other day- I don't know what their scientific name is but read in National Geographic that they sometimes sell for $2 a berry in the US! Maybe Benin can earn some money exporting these berries, which when you eat them make everything taste a thousand times sweeter.
By the end of this weekend I will have had my first environmental club meeting of my PC service. Believe me, I have tried to get it going earlier, but have been thwarted by bureaucracy, slow-to-respond teachers who were supposed to help me, and other obstacles. If all goes well, I hope to have a week long environmental summer camp at the end of the school year. At this point I am trying to be optimistic that this will happen.

I was thinking that I might add onto each entry a few cultural factoids, things that I might not otherwise have reason to mention in an entry. I figure they will interest you, since even after almost two years we are still struggling to understand much of the local culture!

1) Names- in Benin most people have a Christian/Muslim name used at school and a local-language name. Often the traditional names are given according to the day of the week you are born. So for example Koffi (like Koffi Annan) is for boys born on Friday and Assiba is for girls born on Sunday, like me. (By the way, “Sheena” here is spelled “China” which I find humorous as people often write this on bus tickets, and some unidentified neighbor child wrote China on our screen door in marker!)
2) A lot of people have very funny ideas of what America is like, despite never having been there or even reading much about it. Many think that institutionalized slavery still exists in America, or that Americans as a people hate Africans and black people. When Eric's parents met one of Eric's classes, one of their questions was whether “Obama is the negro slave of the white man” (his own words). I don't really know why this image persists. Keep in mind that most people here don't realize that “American's” and other western countries are not 100% white.
3) Some people think that giving eggs and meat to children turns them into thieves, so they don't give any animal protein to their children. No doubt this contributes greatly to malnutrition.
4) Despite the fact that gas prices have gone down a lot, I cannot argue the price of a moto taxi any lower than it has been for the past year when prices were quite high. Interesting, since the moto drivers' excuses for raising the prices to their current levels were that gas prices went up! 5) This Beninese style of economics is mysterious to me.
Women can bare their chests but normally can't show anything above the knee, nor their lower backs and navel/midriff area if they can help it. Very different from what we consider to be indecent dressing in the west!

Just some random thoughts on life in Benin there for you. I'll end the entry with a few photos. We haven't been taking as many lately but we'll try to take many more before our service ends. Enjoy!
Here's what the girls' library looks like currently. The two guys in the matching outfits are part of my Amour et Vie team and the other guy is my main work partner in Benin





Here I built a pole with a hook attached for the kids to pull mangoes from the tree, instead of throwing rocks that end up hitting our house

Me eating the first mango of the season

Little girl at one of my lessons. I enjoyed the white doll with African-style hair being carried around like a real baby

Here we are burning a paper machee globe that I made and painted, and that subsequently had a chunk eaten from it by a very hungry and desperate mouse

Eric preparing to cut our fresh heart of palm with the machete