I love you all! Now give me your money :)

As promised, here I am in Cotonou working on Camp GLOW yet again. It has been officially decided that we will be doing a PCPP to fund the project, which means that YOU can donate! We are in the process of finalizing the project proposal and budget, and by the time it gets through the bureau here in Cotonou and then the one in Washington DC, we're hoping to have the project on the website by Christmas. Once the project is online, I will definitely post a blog with detailed instructions on how to donate. All donations are tax deductible, and there is no minimum donation! Even $5 helps :)
This week went pretty well. As I said before, it is starting to get HOT. (As in, so hot that I can't take mid-day naps in my house with the fan pointed directly at my face going full speed anymore. So I have to nap outside under the mango tree, and as you can imagine, a sleeping yovo is something to be eagerly gawked at here. Are we really that fascinating, even while we are sleeping??) Harmattan, the wind that blows down from the dusty Sahara for about a month, literally arrived overnight on Wednesday night. This would be happy news in the north of Benin where Harmattan=very chilly weather, especially in the mornings, along with the dust. But us lucky volunteers down south only get the dust, no cold :( It was incredible how dusty I got in my taxi ride down here. The sun is always under a constant haze now, and a layer of dust covers everything in the house, no matter how many times you dust and sweep.
Remember how I was saying how happy I was with my first round of quizzes? Yeah, well, scratch that. My younger students did fairly well, but my older kids, to whom I gave a quiz on verb revision, for the most part failed miserably. Here is what is frustrating about that: 1. These were all verb tenses they had learned over the past two years. There was no new material on the quiz. 2. They were flying through the material on class, and I could tell that they really understood it. 3. Some students just blatently ignored the directions. For instance, in the section labeled "Simple Present" and for which the directions were "conjugate the verbs in simple present", they would conjugate all of the verbs in simple past. Literally, the class average for this quiz was 6 out of 20. Of course the students weren't happy and started begging me for a make-up quiz, and I have yet to decide if I will offer them one or not. It is obvious to me that most students simply didn't study. Some students did really well on the quiz, and I made the quiz MUCH easier than the exercises we had been doing in class, so I know I didn't just give them an unreasonable task. Luckily, we are now starting in on the new curriculum in that class, entitled "Health", and I get to teach fun words like the verb "to vomit", and "chronic diarrhea"!
This week the other English teachers came to observe me teach a class. To be quite honest, the experiece wasn't nearly as good as I thought it was going to be. First of all, I had to squeeze a two-hour lesson into one hour, so I didn't get to enforce the material as much as I would have liked. Then, when we gave feedback at the end, in true Beninese style, they tore me a new one. No positive comments (even though I had made it a point to plan a really good lesson, complete with visual aides, acting/role play, group work, and used NO French whatsoever) The feedback they gave me was absurdly nit-picky (though they made it sounds like I had committed a grave error by, say, not underlining the date) and tended to be along the lines of "Why aren't you using the teacher's manual? There are lots of exercises you should use in there!" nevermind that the government text books are FILLED with errors and somewhat vague exercises. I took it all with a grain of salt and did my best to consider the few helpful comments I received. I think that we will be observing some of the other English teachers in the coming weeks, so I will be interested to see how that goes. I think that at our next AP meeting, I will give a presentation on how to give feedback: the person who taught will go first, positive feedback first, constructive criticism only, etc.
At that meeting we also elected the two department heads. It was myself and another teacher up for one of the positions, and they decided to let the two of us talk it out. I could tell how desperately the other teacher wanted it, probably both for the title and the small amount of extra money they receive, so we worked out a system in which he will have the title but mostly I will be in charge of selecting/editing/typing exam papers and running the weekly meetings.
I began tutoring a student (not one of mine) in English this week. His English was very good and I think he has only good intentions asking for my help. He did ask "What can you give me?" and "Can I charge my cell phone at your house?", but I think he is truly just trying to get better at English- his goal is to go to university in America. I hate the fact that I'm even suspicious about things like this, but you kind of have to be in this country.
In other news, my health is still in a good state (knock on wood!), although apparently my toenail is falling off (no idea why, that's just what the doctor said) and I have a fungus on my arm. Exciting! I got a letter in my mailbox with "medically confidential" stamped all over it, and for a fleeting, joyful moment I thought maybe I would get shipped to South Africa for some sort of evaluation (this is warped, I know. But it's South Africa!) Unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, it was just saying that all of my midservice lab tests had come back clear. My cats are fine, although it is now Baby's turn to be in heat, and she literally has a totally different personality than she used to. Luckily from watching Belle go through the same thing and the return to normal, I know it will pass. I think they are both pregnant now!
This coming week I will head to Dogbo to celebrate my friend Kristin's birthday, and then Thanksgiving on Thursday. Some of the new Guinea volunteers will be joining us, so that is nice. Then Kristin and I will head up to Parakou for TEFL Thanksigiving/Ghana trip planning. I will be back in Cotonou on Monday the 30th and will post a blog then. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Just kidding!

Apparently I couldn't stay away from the big city for more than a week! No, I'm down in Cotonou because I wanted to find out if PLAN would fund Camp GLOW this year, and when I FINALLY got a hold of them today, they said that they will not have an answer for us until January. So, I am 99% certain that we will be funding the camp using a PCPP (Peace Corps Partnership Program), which allows friends and families at home to donate. I will absolutely keep you updated on that and will let you know when you are able to go online and donate, probably starting sometime around Christmas.
School is moving right along. I gave my first quizzes this week, and so far I am quite happy with the results. My sixieme students seem to be doing better than they were last year, and I am moving along much more quickly in the curriculum, which tells me that I am a better teacher the second time around. I am frustrated, however, with my quatrieme (older) students. We spent the first two full weeks of class reviewing verb tenses, and they seemed to be doing really well with that. When I gave them a quiz, which was basically a simplified/watered-down version of what we had been doing in class, many of them were angry about how hard the quiz was. I won't pass any judgements yet since I have not started grading the papers, but it was frustrating hearing them say that, because that tells me that they didn't study.
We did not vote for head of the department this week since many people were absent for the meeting, but supposedly we are doing so next week. During our meeting next week, all of the English teachers are going to observe me teaching a class! I am a bit nervous but mostly excited to show them some new ideas, and that you really don't have to use French in the classroom.
One sad/scary thing happened this week. As I was arriving home from school one day, I noticed that Angele was wearing pants. (An odd way to start a story, I know, but when her husband is around, he does not allow her to wear pants, only skirts.) She greeted me loudly and I could tell that she was in a rather bold mood. As I was walking into my house moments later, I heard a commotion behind me, and saw that Angele and Victoire (the second wife of my proprietor) we having an all out fist fight. We're talking a real fight, not some girly spat. Even with two huge men trying to restrain them, they still managed to get at each other and give each other cuts and bruises. I still do not know what the fight was about, but I assume any small thing would have set them off- as you might imagine, the two wives don't really get along. When all was said and done, Victoire hired a photographer to take pictures of the mess and the damage, obviously with the intention of showing their husband when he returns home on the weekend. I can only hope that he is merciful towards Angele; he has always favored his secnd (and much younger) wife. Honestly, I am afraid that he might kick her out of the house. The whole village is gossiping about it now, and one man even told me I should intervene because they would listen to a stragner/white person, and I respectfully declined. I have no business interfering in a situation like this.
Let's see, other news from Lobogo... Belle is most definitely pregnant, her nipples are about half an inch long now. One night in my latrine, a cockroach boldly crawled right across my foot. I pulled a tick bigger than a ladybug out of Baby's neck. (The critter stories never stop, do they?) It's getting hotter than hell here; I don't know how I will survive another hot season. Three of my best friends from home called me this week, which was a pleasant surprise!
Tomorrow I will head back to post, but will probably have to come back to Cotonou in a week to work on the Camp GLOW PCPP. Have a nice week!

Halloween and 1st GLOW meeting

Happy weekend! The weekends are beginning to feel precious now that school is back in session- my weeks are crazy! Between teaching 4-6 hours a day, going to the market, lesson planning, and cooking/cleaning, my days are shot. Time is flying, and I am definitely ok with that.
Last weekend, we had our VAC meeting and Halloween party. We had some creative costumes: 2 zemidjan drivers, a Beninese mama, a Beninese mechanic. Kristin's neighbors got a huge kick out of those! The two French volunteers in Dogbo came to the party as Peace Corps volunteers (dirty, tattered t-shirts), so that was pretty funny, too. On a side note, it was lovely to be able to speak real French with them for a night. One of the girls turned out to be from my favorite little town in the Dordogne river valley! We made chili and corn chips for dinner, and made cinnamon rolls in the morning. The picture is of homemade donuts Michelle and I made the night before in Lokossa!
School went well this week. I am really impressed with my quatrieme students- they correctly remembered simple present, present continuous, present perfect, and simple past verb tenses! We have been reviewing all week since it has been my experience that they promptly forget all the English they have learned in a year the moment school is out for summer. (Students here don't take English as seriously as they take math and science.) One of my quatrieme classes only has three girls out of fifty students, so sad. This is one of the reasons that we have decided that the main focus of Camp GLOW this year will be giving girls techniques to stay in school. I am giving my first quizzes this week.
We had our first staff meeting this week, and I am pleased to report that they are much less painful this year with our new director- he doesn't like to hear himself talk as much as our old one did :) Our English department meetings have been going really well so far this year: we ONLY speak English, 8-10 people show up (as opposed to last year's 2-3), and we actually talk about grammar points and lesson strategies. This coming week, I will put myself up for election as head of the department... wish me luck! It will be interesting to see whether or not they will want a woman/outsider in charge.
This week my homologue came over and checked out my electricity counter and fan, to see if we could figure out why I pay about 4 times more than most volunteers for my electicity bill each month. He says that there is no problem with my counter or my fan, and that the problem is I just use my fan too much, and am being charged too much per kilowatt hour. (The part about the fan is bogus, I use my fan as much if not less than other volunteers... I bought a new, smaller fan here in Cotonou yesterday, in hopes that it will use less electricity.) He says that it is too late now to start asking to see the electricity bill so... I will just have to suck it up for the rest of my time here... which is now only nine months!
I am in Cotonou now because yesterday was our first meeting for Camp GLOW. About thirty volunteers showed up, which is wonderful. The only problem which could arise is not being able to allow all of those volunteers to actually stay at the camp for the week... I think we can only take about twenty. We'll see! I'm still waiting to hear if PLAN has decided to fund the camp or not this year.
I have also met the five new volunteers who transferred here from Guinea when their program recently closed due to civil unrest there. I can't imagine how hard it would be at this point in my service to pick up and leave your village/belongings/pets. Anyway, they all seem really nice. The new volunteers coming to my region is from Kalamazoo!
I will head back to post today, and hopefully stay there until the day before Thanksgiving. I have been traveling so much lately, and I am looking forward to a couple of weekends of doing nothing and lazing around Lobogo. The week of Thanksgiving I will take off for almost a week, during which I will have two Thanksgiving dinners and plan my February trip to Ghana! And speaking of trips, our Mali trip is coming up in less than 7 weeks! I am starting to itch for another vacation :) I hope you are all surviving the dropping temperatures. I am bitter because the volunteers in northern Benin are starting to gt Harmattan now, when they have to wear sweatshirts and socks to bed. Send some of the coldness my way- hot/dry season is just beginning :(

Maria's visit

Here another week has blown by. Immediately after posting my blog last week, I began what turned out to be the taxi ride fom hell. Not only were we graced with an engine that straight up died right after leaving Cotonou, we then got not one but TWO flat tires. Hence, the journey that was supposed to take 1 hour took 3, and I missed most of my meeting. Afterwards, Michelle and Catherine and I checked out the hotels in Possotome. Possotome is only 13km from my village, but standing in these hotels, you would think they were a world apart. They are absolutely beautiful and I hope Benin can start increasing its tourism there! We then headed back to Lobogo for the night and made pizza for dinner and cinnamon rolls for breakfast (both totally homemade)! Check out the pictures!
I finally started my quatrieme classes this week. On Wednesday, Maria came to observe me teach and check out my house. I think it went really well! She could tell I felt more comfortable in the classroom this year and says I have really improved. Of course, my school administration had to make a big deal out of her visit and take us out for drinks (even though Maria only drinks water). My old school director actually happened to be visiting that day, so he came with us, and unfortunately stole the show from the new director a bit.
The rest of the week was fine. I am trying to figure out if I may have committed a cultural faux pas: my next door neighbor (another teacher at the school) who was happy to drive me to school last year is now acting like I am a huge burden and is being quite rude to me, and I can't figure out why. I told him that I would be more than happy to take a zem if he would like, but he said no. I baked him cookies last night, so we'll see how he acts next week!After my first full day of teaching, I remembered how exhausting that is! I have been sleeping like a baby every night, which is definitely a welcome thing after not having slept very soundly since Kate died. My cats are still crazy (and pregnant) and stay out almost every night.
I'm now in Lokossa working on Camp GLOW stuff with Michelle. I think we are killing a chicken for dinner tonight! Tomorrow we head to Dogbo for a VAC meeting and Halloween party! I am being boring and reusing my 80s party costume, but lots of people are dressing as zemidjan drivers, market women, etc. It should be fun! I will update again next weekend when I am in Cotonou for the first Camp GLOW meeting. Happy halloween!

Gettin' back into the groove

Hey everyone! Sorry it has been a while since my last post... I haven't had much internet access, and I have been busy starting school and doing Camp GLOW stuff. Even though school has started, it still isn't in full swing. I STILL haven't been able to have class with two of my four classes because they don't have a classroom and therefore just don't show up. Our censeur also has not been around, so things have been hectic with working out schedules. School started in typical Beninese fashion: people not showing up for a few weeks, people getting kicked out for not having paid fees or- yes, this really happens- having too fancy of a hair weave. I knew what to expect this year, though, so I was much more patient with the process. Now that school has started, I am 80% relieved and 20% nostalgiac for summer! It is really good to have a set schedule once again, and I love how fast the time flies, but I forgot how exhausting teaching is! Being one your feet for five hours straight and then coming home to cook, clean, and lesson plan really takes up your day! I definitely feel much more comfortable as a teacher this year. I have my systems down for discipline, board organization, etc., and I think it makes a difference when the kids can feel that I am in control of the classroom. I am having a lot of fun teaching the basics like "to be" and "good morning" and counting to ten! We also had our first English department meeting this past week, and I am hopeful that those will be more useful this year. I am going to try and be head of the department this year, meaning I will run the meetings, meaning we will start on time and actually get stuff done :) My boss Maria is coming to observe me teach this coming Wednesday. I am really not at all nervous and think the session will go well. Last weekend, I celebrated my birthday with a few friends in Lokossa. Friday night we went out for beer and salad (yes, that is a really nice birthday dinner here!) and the next day we had a joint party for Miranna and I (see picture) at a yam pilee restaurant. Catherine has figured out how to make peanut butter filled cupcakes (amazing what you can do with a little creativity here in Benin!) so she brought those along. On my actual birthday I had to teach in the morning. That afternoon, Fifa and Mari and I baked a cake, and I ate dinner at my neighbors' house that night. They made pate and legume sauce for me (kind of like collard greens) with cheese and eggplant I had brought back from Lokossa. After dinner we ate the cake- Angele did NOT stick her fist in it this year! My neighbors then bought us all beers (even the wives and the hired help!) and we all danced for a while. They wanted me to teach them how to dance like a white person, which was pretty mortifying. They said they had seen white people dance in music videos and they wanted me to show them. I contented myself with watching them dance- Africans just have this inherent talant for amazing dancing. I have never seen anyeone else move thier body the way these people can. In the past week or two, my cats have essentially become outdoor cats. I was trying to keep them inside at night, but they would howl at the door for hours on end until I caved and let them out. I decided that the noise they make on the tin roof is more tolerable than the howling at the door and knocking things off shelves at 3am. Now that I have started letting them out overnight, I am pretty sure that Belle is pregnant, and has fleas. Nothing I can do about it, I guess. I am actually kind of excited to see little kittens born! When I go out of town over night now, I just put their food and water outside and lock them out of the house. Baby especially doesn't like it, but they will have to learn someday. Today I am heading to Come for a meeting about the regional English competition, and afterwards Michelle and Catherine and I are gonna have a nice dinner on the lake and then spend the night at my post. We are going to work on planning our Mali Christmas trip and our trip to Morocco on the way home next summer! Speaking of trips, John Mark and I are also in the process of planning our trip to Ghana in the spring! I am addicted to traveling :) I am in Cotonou now because I had a meeting with the organization I am hoping will fund Camp GLOW yesterday. Unfortunately they will not be able to give us a final answer for another three weeks or so. I will keep you posted on whether or not we will be looking for donations from home. So, all is well here. Time is REALLY flying and I am keeping planty busy with school and Camp GLOW. I know that people have been having trouble getting through to me by telephone- just keep trying over and over and over! That is usually what it takes. I miss all of you and am especially sad at this time of year ot be missing the beautiful Fall colors. I hear the weather has been quite cold over there (while it is starting to heat up dramatically here in Benin... check out the picture of the melting candles in my house)- have a cup of hot cider for me!
And enjoy the video: I fed one of the local monkeys!

Parasite-free!

I can't believe it. And here I was so sure I have had a parasite for a few months... I am down in Cotonou for my mid-service medical exam. It went smoothly, other than getting a lecture about how it is clearly my fault that I am getting the parasites... even though you can get them from a fly simply landing on your food. As I have said a million times, I am one of the few volunteers that still boils my water, bleaches my vegetables, etc. Apparently, though, I have the highest iron count in my blood of any girl in Peace Corps Benin right now :)
Once again, hanging around Cotonou has proven to be exceptionally boring. This time around, I didn't splurge on food and ate omlette sandwiches all week. I have gotten to a point in my service where those actually sound delicious...
I am heading back to my village in just a few minutes. Hopefully I will begin teaching on Monday! This year I am teaching sixieme (beginning English, one of the levels I taught last year), and quatrieme (one level higher than I taugh last year). I will be teaching Monday-Thursday, 8-12, with one afternoon class at some point during the week. I am really looking forward to getting back to a more normal schedule and spending more time at post (yet having things to do there). My DVD player that I brought back really helps in the entertainment department. I have also been sleeping a little bit better, which I am grateful for. Hopefully school will help me sleep even more soundly. I will be in my village until next weekend, when I will head to Lokossa for a birthday celebration with some of my friends :)
Enjoy the Fall colors for me!

DBC Workshop

We just finished the Designing Behavior Change workshop yesterday. It was four full days of learning the technicalities of how to select an appropriate behavior you would like to see change, how to define your priority group and who influences them, how to figure out what stage of change they are currently in, what is keeping them from changing their behavior, how to pick appropriate activities to omplement the change, and how to measure your results. It was a pretty intense couple of days, but I'm really glad I participated. We each brought our homologue, but unfortunately mine had to leave halfway through the workshop. Working with Beninese is both really rewarding and sometimes frustrating. The portion of the workshop run by an American was appreciated more by the volunteers, and the part run by a West African (she was from Burkina Faso) was appreciated more by the Beninese. I think the homologues really enjoyed the workshop- it was many of their first times to Cotonou! They got to stay in a nice hotel, get fed good food, and, of course, they got the requisite certificate at the end of the week :) They looove their certificates! (Seriously, I would bet you that 75% of them already have it framed and hanging in their house) Several people brought female homologues to the workshop which was exciting. Beninese women are definitely reserved in groups like that and it was fun encouraging them to open up throughout the week.
I mentioned that my homologue had to leave halfway through the week. The director and censeur (like a vice principal) were both moved to other schools, so Blaise (my homologue) is the only member of the administration who didn't change schools. He had to be there to show them the ropes and get the school ready for the start of the new year. (Technically, school started yesterday, which means they will spend the next 2-3 weeks setting up peoples' schedules and cleaning up the school, and FINALLY start teaching by mid-October.) I don't think the administration change should effect me too much, I will just have to let them know what my duties as a Peace Corps Volunteer are there.
Throughout the week there were tons of people at the bureau, which meant spending too much money on nice dinners: I had a cheeseburger (brought my own cheese to the restaurant and saved myself almost $5!), Indian food, AND Italian... there goes my budget for a while! Luckily, we got per diem for the workshop. It was really good spending time with TEFL volunteers, almost everyone from my year was down here. I think I will see them all again for Thanksgiving- we had such an amazing one last year that we are going to do it again this year!
I am heading back to my post today, but will have to come back on Monday for my mid-service medical exam. I got a new phone (my old one was shutting itself down a lot) so call me! :)