Lots and lots of pictures and videos!

Ghana, part 2

So, I left off right before we went to see the brass casters on Monday. Since we weren't meeting up with them until 11:30, we headed into Kumasi on Monday morning to check out the city for an hour or two. Getting into the city was much easier than we thought it would be: just hop on any old mini bus that is driving by. It is almost like a bus system in the US, without the hinderance of time tables. We got off at one of the city's major markets. Kumasi is basically a bigger, nicer version of Cotonou. The multi-story architecture is older than that in Cotonou, and the city has plenty of tree-lined streets. There are also sprawling highway overpasses and city parks to sit in. We decided that something about the slightly run-down feel of this charming city reminded us of a city in North Africa, although we don't know why we think this since neither of us has ever been to North Africa :)
After walking around for a while, we decided to try Ghana's version of cafeteria food (in Benin it's fried eggs, coffee/hot chocolate, spaghetti, and baguettes). Once again, since Ghana was a British colony, there are no baguettes there, so our omelette sandwich came on a choice of white or WHEAT soft bread. Not only do they fry the egg, but they toast both sides of the sandwich in the frying pan, too. They also make their hot chocolate with sugar and evaporated milk instead of sweetened condensed milk, so it was extra delicious. To finish our time in Kumasi, we went into a food market. They had any vegetable you can imagine, and whole street vendors dedicated to only spices. Both veggies and spices are sorely lacking in Benin. Benin's solution to lack of spice is simply to keep adding tons of blindingly hot peppers. On our way to meet the artisans, my camera ran out of batteries, so what did we do? Stop in to a gas station store and pick some up, naturally, along with some soda and snacks. Happens in Benin all the time...
The artisans, lead by George Kofi, live in a village on the outer limit of Kumasi. Quick history on this: Kumasi was the seat of the once powerful Ashanti kingdom. Since the chiefs needed crafts for themselves and to trade with other kingdoms, there are several villages around Kumasi, each dedicated to making a different craft. Krofrom, the village where we spent our day, is the brass casting village. (There is also a wood working village, a weaving village, etc.) Brass was used by the Ashanti mainly to cast scales to weigh gold dust (the kingdom's currency) and boxes to store the dust in. Brass beads were also used for decoration. In Krofrom, there are about five or six brass casting workshops, each with a few head artisans and lots of apprentices.
George has a large outdoor workshop. It is mainly him that sculpts the desired objects in wax, and the apprentices who perform the rest of the steps. Here is a brief summary of how the process works: objects, be them utilitarian or decorative, are sculpted in heated beeswax. The wax is then dipped in a mixture of clay and charcoal, and left in the sun to dry. This step is repeated several times, until the object is encased in a solid disk of hardened clay. More clay and palm fibers are then packed on. The vase-shaped container is then placed in a VERY hot fire (a fan is constantly blowing on the flames to keep them extra hot) where the wax melts out of the clay, leaving it's negative inside the hardened mold. While the mold is still hot, melted brass (usually metal scraps and knick knacks all melted together) is poured into it. After about 30 minutes, the brass has become completely hardened and the clay mold is broken, revealing the brass object inside. The object is then filed, and finally polished using rotten lemons (seriously. It works!) and a brush made out of old corn cobs and palm branches. And voila, you're left with beautiful brass objects! The day we visited the artists cast a porccupine, a symbol of power and royalty in the Ashanti kingdom, and they gave it to me! It's very cool. They also were making beads and some badges for a group of knights (?) in Nigeria. They had done a lot of extra work for us (they even let us make a few wax molds!), and so they asked for some money from us, which we were happy to give, since the process was so fascinating to see and they had been very hospitable to us. They ended up having to ask for more money, which unfortunately John Mark and I LITERALLY didn't have on us (we were under the impression that we were just going to watch them do a normal day's work), so I hope we didn't leave with any hard feelings. I think it was fine, though. We ended up buying quite a few brass objects from them (napkin rings, bottle openers, candle sticks), so at least we were able to support them that way. At the very end of our visit, the Ghanaian professor we had coordinated with came to meet up with us, and we had a nice dinner with him.
The next morning, he invited us to meet with the dean of international programs at KNUST, the technical university we had coordinated with when I was a student at Michigan. We reviewed photos of the exhibit on the brass casters that I helped to develop and install at Michigan, and discussed plans to show the exhibit at KNUST. It was so odd and so comfortable walking around this very typical college campus: students walking to class listeing to their ipod, students working in the library or coffee shop on their laptops, dorms and lecture halls. Once again, there really is nothing like this in Benin. There is only one major University here, and it has not evolved to KNUST's point yet. We had a quick breakfast with him, and then we were on our way to Cape Coast.
The drive to Cape Coast was pretty awful (Ghana has some of the worst roads I've seen as of yet), but getting to the town was beautiful. Cape Coast is on a bit of a bluff overlooking the ocean, so you can see why the British chose it as their colonial capital. We were able to get a room at a cute boutique hotel right on the ocean, where our room was just a little hut on the beach. They had a nice restaurant where we ate that night. The only aggrivating thing about this place was the intensity and pushiness of the people there, since they are so used to clueless white tourists. I can't tell you how many times we were approached and asked for money, and how outrageous the prices we were given were. Most of the people there have embraced this laid back, rasta culture, which is cool until everyone does it and it just gets really cliche.
In the morning we toured Cape Coast Castle, the slave and trading fort there. It has been well-preserved, and our brief tour of the slave dungeons and cells was very chilling. President Obama visited the castle last year, and there was a plaque commemorating his visit. In the afternoon, we took and air conditioned mini bus to Kokrobite, a small village on the ocean that happens to have a few nice resorts. Our hotel was called Big Milly's Backyard, and we once again stayed in a little hut with a private outdoor shower and toilet. The resort was filled with white people, and it was interesting to see the ways in which John Mark and I felt similar and yet different from them. For instance, we refused to pay for the rather expensive hotel breakfasts, so we ventured into the town and got street food for breakfast, obviously surprising the locals a bit. On the other hand, we enjoyed sipping cocktails on the beach and eating nice dinners as much as anyone else there. We spent all day Thursday swimming in the ocean (warm waters, just like Benin, though the riptide wasn't quite as strong as here in Benin, so that was nice), and reading under this second-story gazeebo they had overlooking the ocean.
One thing that struck us both was the borderline escort industry that went on there: plenty of young, handsome, and buff African men approaching any single-looking woman and offering to take her "to the beach" at night. More surprising than their offers was how many women seemed responsive to this.
Anyway, we had a long day of travel back to Benin yesterday. We first had to go into Accra, then find a car to the Togo border. We decided to opt for air conditioning, which turned out to be a bad choice since "air conditioning" meant a tiny stream of mildly cool air barely making the van any cooler. At least in non-AC vehicles, the windows are all open so there is constantly a breeze in your face. The ride went well until the last 40km, where the road turned so bad that 40km took us an hour and a half. Crossing the Ghana-Togo border was almsot comical: we went through exit customs on the Ghana side in a nice, air conditioned building filled with polite customs officers and fancy equipment. We literally walked over the border and into a tin shack, where the Togolese officers made us wait 20 minutes while they filled out someone else's forms when all we needed was a quick stamp in our passports. We saw someone bribing a custom's officer, and then as we emerged from customs, we were immediately being shouted at, "Yovo! Donne-moi de l'argent!" ("White person! Give me money!") When we ignored them or said something back, we were informed not to forget that "we're in Africa now", whatever that means. The beach where we waited for our taxi was absolutely filthy and the people were extremely pushy and rude. From my brief exposure to Togo, I have not been impressed and can see why people say Benin is quite a bit further along development-wise. We had to wait almost two hours for our taxi to fill up, so we didn't arrive to Cotonou until 8:30, well after dark. We made it back fine though, and the trip was amazing!
Now it really feels like I'm on the home stretch. People in my year start leaving Benin in less than 4 months! (Reminder: I won't know my return date until the end of May, though it's looking good that it will be sometime in August.) School is wrapping up and Camp GLOW is kicking into high gear, so I'm going to be quite busy for the next two or three months. I'll head back to Lobogo today or tomorrow, and will hopefully be there until the 22nd or 23rd, when we have our next GLOW meeting. On my next post I will put up pictures from Ghana!

Ghana, part 1

OMG, Ghana. For as much as I dislike those silly online acronyms, I feel that that is just about the only thing I can say to accurately describe my trip thus far. Here goes:
We left the Peace Corps bureau early Thursday morning, only to get to the taxi station and wait two solid hours for the car to leave. I can't complain, though: the taxi never had more than four passengers, so our ride was comfortable. The Benin/Togo border was relatively painless, though you have to get out of the car and walk across the border, and customs officers are often in hard-to-spot places. The short drive through Togo is beautiful since it hugs the beach the whole way, though Lome, their capital, is a pretty dismal industrial city that remided me a bit of Gary Indiana, yuck. There are also TONS of police checkpoints, way more than in Benin, where the taxi driver has to bribe the policemen. At one particular checkpoint, the police complained that they were thirsty and needed to buy a sachet of water (which costs 25 francs), to which the response of my driver was to coo how sorry he was and give them 500 FRANCS. How ridiculous!
Arrival at the Togo/Ghana border was a crazy whirlwind. You are literally dropped off ON the beach, amidst thousands of people trying to get you to ride in their car, let them be your luggage porter, change money, etc. After getting a bad deal on some currency exchange, we finally found what we thought was a man taking us to a car that was going to Accra, the Ghanaian capital. Turns out he was only a porter, and he had to stand around and wait for us while we went though a fairly thorogh customs process. Walking into the office was shocking: men and women in nice uniforms, sitting behind sleek computers, SPEAKING ENGLISH. (As opposed to the Benin/Togo border, where there were no computers, only a few men sitting in a dusty shack with a pad of paper.) And not the crappy, Nigerian English I am used to... flowery, grammatically correct British English. The women who dealt with John Mark and I were ironically having a discussion about how to say certain things in French, for when non-Ghanaians cross the border.
When we emerged from customs, we were immediately accosted by about 20 men, each trying to take our bags from us/our porter and physically dragging us towards thier cars. We're used to pushy people in Benin, but we've never experienced that level of physical force before. Finally, a Ghanaian police officer saw our predicament came to shoo away the men and directed us to an air conditioned bus that was soon departing for Accra. Before getting on the bus, we reluctantly tipped the porter, but he became enraged at the "small" amount (apparently he doesn't know that we live in Benin and that we know full well that we gave him a MORE than generous tip for the maybe twenty minutes of service he rendered us). Once again, the police officer had to shoo the man away.
The bus ride was beautiful, though very long and slow. Driving through Ghana was pretty incredible; we IMMEDIATELY started noticing the difference from Benin and Togo. First of all, there are no illegal gasoline stands in Ghana, but rather a real, legitimate gas station in almost every village. The roads were all paved and smooth, there were national lottery booths all around, and people were selling things like sliced watermelon and mushrooms everywhere you looked. It was evident when we started approaching Accra: we started seeing tall, modern-looking buildings, highway overpasses and cloverleaf interchanges, a mall/movie theater.
Driving to the bus station in the heart of the city was unbelievable. I kid you not, Accra looks like it could be any medium-large American city, complete with city parks, street signs, public trashcans... you name it. Upon getting off the bus, we realized we were absolutely terrified to ask non- French speakers for directions! How funny. We got into a taxi (nicer than most American taxis); there is no such thing as a zemidjan in Ghana. Indeed, I have seen a grand total of maybe five motos since I have been in Ghana, and all of their drivers have been wearing helmets. And 95% of the cars on the road are nice and less than ten years old! (Whereas your typical Beninese car is from roughly 1970 and is falling apart.) On our way to the hotel, we passed a beautiful public sculpture park, and no less than three artful fountains bubbling on the lawns of buiildings such as the National Theater of Ghana.
Our hostel was nice, on par with any hostel in Europe. We decided to shower and then head out to Monsoon, hailed as the nicest restaurant in Accra. It was a chic place and could have belonged in any city in America. We ordered cocktails, then sushi from the full sushi bar, and finally high-end Japanese dishes. It was DELICIOUS and super expensive for Peace Corps standards, though our total for the meal was $63.
We continued living it up the next day. After an odd English-style breakfast at the hostel (Ghana was formerly a British colony, so instead of the baguettes we are used to in Benin, you have red beans and wonder bread for breakfast) we headed to the mall.
This mall was as nice as any I have come across in America, and loaded with stores like the Apple store, Coach, and tons of high-end boutiques. There was also a movie theater showing current American films, and a food court. It was really good seeing so many Ghanaian people at the mall; in Benin, it is more or less only the expats who patronize high-end (though much less high-end than here in Ghana) stores. The people there were such a hodgepodge of ethnicities, it was really nice to see. We ate lunch at the food court (pizza and ice cream, naturally) and in the afternoon saw Clash of the Titans in a theater that would rival any of the nicest in America. We also walked through a market that day where ot ONE person gave a damn that we were white and left us alone, only talking to us if we approached their stall and had a question.
That night we chose a spotsbar for dinner. It had maybe five flat-screen TVs, broadcasting sporting events from all over the world, and we ordered a pitcher of beer and nachos! As we were finishing up our meal, the young couple that I stayed with the weekend of Kate's memorial walked into the bar!! It was SUCH a weird coincidence. They were in Ghana for a short vacation. They sat down with us and ordered us some more drinks, than paid for the whole tab at the end of the night! It was so nice of them, and really fun talking with them for a few hours. How can this wonderland of civilization be less than 150 miles away from Benin??
The first reminder that we were still in West Africa came that night when we complained to the front desk at our hostel that our air conditioning was barely working. The women simply shrugged and said "It's the fault of the white man who installed it." Yes, she really said that.
On Saturday we left our hostel in the morning and had our first experience on a tro-tro, the mini buses that Ghanaians use instead of bush taxis. And no, they don't pack them full of people, but rather only seat people where a full seat actually exists. For the first 20 minutes of the ride a preacher stood up and gave a sermon (though in local language), and then lead the whole bus in prayer. Of course, John Mark and I didn't relize this until we noticed we were the only ones talking and that everyone else had their heads bowed in prayer. Oops! The ride was beautiful. Not only was the road smooth and orderly, but the landscape turned mountainy and thickly forested. We once again noticed the lack of motos on the road, and also that taxis and tro-tros here don't stack billions of things on top of their cars.
We arrived in Kumasi mid-aternoon, where the PCVL (PC volunteer leader) met us and took us to the Peace Corps workstation here. It is really nice, and HUGE compared to the ones we have in Benin. We spent the rest of the night just hanging out and chatting with the Ghana volunteers, who are all really nice. Ironically enough, the one I've been talking to the most went to OSU! It has been funny talking to the Ghana volunteers, both because it is interesting to compare our two countries, and because John Mark and I realized just how many French/Beninese-isms we throw into our conversations!
Yesterday, Easter, was REALLY laid-back. We ate a typical Ghanaian breakfast of red beans and then watched the Godfather, which took up most of our day haha. We couldn't go into town to see any of the sights since it was Easter and everything was closed. For dinner we went to one of the few hotels we found that was open, only to be told that they had almost NOTHING that they listed on their menu, including basic things like soft drinks. Mind you, this was a nice, upscale hotel. We were finally informed that they had all of their pizzas available, so we ordered that and a salad. Our pizzas finally came about 45 minutes later, with no salad. We asked for the salad, the waitress apologized for forgetting, and presumably went to get it. In the mean time, we discovered that our extremely expensive pizzas had no cheese on them, and were so undercooked that most of the dough was still raw. When the waitress walked by again about 10 minutes later, she had STILL forgotten the salad, and when we complained about the cheese, she just said "Yeah, wer're out of cheese." We argued that we shouldn't have to pay so much money for a pizza with no cheese, but she just looked at us, bewildered. She also wrote the wrong amount on the bill, then proceeded to give us incorrect change (incorrect by a LOT). Turns out that our waitress was also doing all of the cooking. Once again, a reminder that we're STILL in Africa. It will be an Easter dinner I will never foget, that's for sure!
Today we're seeing the brass casters that I worked with, which I'm REALLY excited about. We're also going to check out Kumasi a bit, which is supposed to be a nicer version of Cotonou. Tomorrow we head to Cape Coast to see the slave castle there, than it's on to the beach for a few days before heading back to Benin. Overall, I'm having a GREAT time and don't want this vacation to end! More to come :)

Peace Corps Prom

Leaving for Ghana tomorrow! Since I have a bit of time, I thought I'd do a quick blog on our GAD (gender and development) fundraising weekend, with pictures of course! There is a married couple with Beninese flag themed outfits, the four of us in the Mono region spelling it out our pile of helmets, and yes, that is a hamburger that was made in a waffle iron... oh Benin.
The shuttle ride up in the Peace Corps SUV wasn't nearly as awesome as I had hoped: I was in the back row where the air conditioning didn't hit and we were packed in like sardines, with no leg room. By the time we reached Parakou (after 7 hours) my butt was totally numb. We checked into our hotel, where we were told we had made reservations for the wrong night (we hadn't), and that they didn't have a second bed for us, only a matress for the floor. I guess if we were in America/were not Peace Corps volunteers we would have been enraged by this, but a matress is a matress, right? :)
Dinner Friday night was good. It was in a casual, club-like atmosphere. We had a short talent show and date auction, then people started dancing. The date auction is neat, people auction off things like "an all-American" weekend where you eat pizza and play football, or go hiking through a sacred monkey forest, or a full body massage, etc. So, 100% of the profits go to GAD! Unfortunately, I think I ate some not-so-sanitary street meat earlier in the day, so I left pretty early to go chill in our (air conditioned, thank god) hotel room.
On Saturday I was tired and still not feeling so hot, so I decided to take advantage of our air conditing and just hang out for most of the day. Getting ready with a bunch of girls was really fun- so nice getting cleaned up and pretty for once here! The night was really nice, everyone looked gorgeous and the silent auction was full of goodies, though I didn't bid since I wanted to save my money for Ghana! We had a nice pool-side dinner by candlelight, though instead of beef bourgognone on a bed of homemade noodles like they had promised we got beef stew on a bed of white rice :( People danced the rest of the night away, and there was the requisite throwing of everyone into the pool. All in all two good nights of fundraising, raising about $7000 for GAD small projects here in Benin!
Sunday was a pretty miserable day of travel. It started off with the man who worked at the hotel (and barely spoke a WORD of French) telling us that we needed to pay WAY more than I was told on the phone, and when I refused, he asked me if I would just give it to him as a "present". Then, we had paid for a nice air conditioned bus, and instead got an old bus with no AC, no shades to block out the sun, and no cargo hold, so we had to bring ALL of our baggage on the bus, making it super crowded and hot and uncomfortable. (Of course, no price reduction was offered because of these inconveniences...)When we arrived in Bohicon, the zems absolutely refused to give us the right price so we had to stand around in the baking midday sun waiting for some decent zems. When we finally took off, my zem was stopped by some village crazy where he promptly started yelling at me that I was going to marry him, spitting the soy cheese he was eating all over me, and of course my driver just thought it was funny. We once again had mean zems in Azove, topped off with a mean taxi and another long zem ride back to my village, all on a BAKING hot day. Then, as the icing on that cake of a day, there was no power in my village for the next 48 hours. That meant that none of the water pumps worked (let alone a fan), and since it is the end of the dry season, most of the wells were dry... meaning there was NO WATER in Lobogo. None. I'm serious. Even the Beninese people were starting to freak out. I mean, that is so dangerous! Nevermind all of the incredibly smelly people, we couldn't even drink water on a day where the temperature was easily over 105.
Another great Benin story: today there was a taxi that refused to stop at a police checkpoint (where they usually have to pay a bribe), and so the police shot at the car, making the car burst into flames, and many of the people in the car died. I have been in TONS of taxis that haven't stopped at checkpoints, so that's pretty scary. It's sad because it's not the fault of any of the passengers. I'm telling you, I love Benin, but I will be ready to COS when the time comes (only 4 months! Requested a date of early August today).
Now I'm in Cotonou and we leave early in the morning for GHANA! Ghana, the promised land of West Africa, complete with bowling, sushi, air conditioned taxis... amazing! I will take lots of pictures that should be on my next blog! Have a happy Easter everyone!

I'm back!

Sorry it's been a while since my last post. The only time I was at a computer since my last post was when I was down in Cotonou for Kate's memorial, and I wasn't much in the mood to spend time on the computer.
That weekend was really nice. Volunteers were housed with expat Americans that live in Cotonou, mostly people who work at the embassy. Myself and two other volunteers were housed with a young couple (and their adorable black lab!) in their beautiful house. Not only did we have a whole house full of airconditioning to ourselves, but we also had internet, satellite TV (read: the Travel channel, CNN, E!, etc.), and free reign over their whole kitchen and pantry, which included any kind of American food you can possibly imagine. They also had a housekeeper contantly making us quiches and other yummy things. So, it was a nice place to go back to and unwind after a few long, emotionally draining days.
The actual service for Kate was quite nice. Several volunteers read excerpts from her blog, and some read a short bio about her. Maria spoke a bit about the memorial that they were holding in Kate's village, and the US ambassador read a message from himself and the current Director of the Peace Corps. A RPCV from Kate's year played some music and our country director read some poems, and the service was capped off by a really nice slideshow. Afterwards, we all wrote in a book to Kate/her parents. Lots of tears were shed, but we laughed a lot too, and overall it was a really good and cathartic experience for all of us. The one picture is of the sort of altar we set up, and the other speaks for itself: things we'd like to say to Kate. (Other pictures are of some of my favorite concession girls, what a roadside boutique looks like, a sign denoting land ownership, how laundry is done here... jealous?, and my colleague in front of his new house.)
Life at post has been going really well. I have actually gotten to spend a decent amount of time at post lately, which has been a nice change of pace for me. School is absolutely flying now that it is second semester- we've already had semester midterms! Speaking of second semester and those midterms, I have been pretty angry with the other English teachers lately. When it came time to submit our proposals for the midterms, we all had to disciss where we were in the curriculum. (Preface to this story: for whatever reason, every class of the same level has to take the same exam, regardless of their teacher.) Now, all of first semester, I was significantly ahead of the other English teachers since I actually showed up to class every day and used time efficiently. Well, Beninese teachers get this syndrome where they panic when second semester hits and decide that it would be best to start covering material RIDICULOUSLY fast, literally cramming four lessons into one, without a care whether the kids are getting the material or not. So, magically, the other teachers are now a decent chunk ahead of me in the curriculum, and were "shocked" that I had "fallen behind". In fact, I was so far behind that I had to write a seperate exam for my students, which the other teachers were NOT happy about. I, on the other hand, was extatic because it meant that I could give my kids a well-written exam based on material that we have thoroughly covered in class. So far I have graded my quatrieme exams, and the kids did wonderfully! While this made me really happy and proud of my kids, the other teachers who saw some of my grades got huffy anf I could tell they thought that meant that my exam was just too easy. I don't care what anyone else says, I am really proud of my kids! They make me so happy this year; it's going to be hard leaving them! (Speaking of my favorite students, I proctored an exam for my favorite class from last year, and they all started cheering when I walked in! They also behaved perfectly during the exam, which was really nice.)
I also typed most of the English exams for this round of testing, and seeing the exams that some of the other teachers submitted was really disheartening. I won't go into details, but the texts were filled with grammatical errors, the questions on the text often barely even related to the texts, and some of the grammar points were so inticate that even I would fail. It's amazing to me that students who can barely greet me in English are asked to write en essay on combatting corruption in modern governments, all in English. When I pointed some of these errors out to my colleagues, they told me that those kind of errors are unavoidable since they don't get proper time to prepare the exams... apparently 2 weeks is not long enough. Hmm. I also noticed that a few nit-picky grammar rules are being taught incorrectly, but when I try to correct them, I am told that "I must not have been taught" that particular rule. No matter I'm a native speaker, right? All that being said, though, there are of course some really bright students and dedicated teachers who don't fall into those categories.
Speaking of those dedicated teachers, I did two neat things with one of my colleagues in the last few weeks. First, we went to his class at a different school and just had an open question and answer session, in English. It was fun answering questions like "Why would you LEAVE America to come live in Benin??" The kids asked some really insightful questions and their English was surprisingly advanced. I also participated in the broadcast of a weekly radio show where they translate a popular and meaningful English song into French, and listeners from all around the region can call in with questions and dedications. It was fun hearing some of my students call in! The songs we dealt with were "War" by Bob Marley and "We are the World".
Other than that, nothing major has gone on. I'm pretty sure both of my cats are pregnant again. Power cuts have still been a problem, but not nearly as bad as before. It has still been very hot, but raining a bit, which has cooled it down a little. I have been really busy with school and also Camp GLOW. I have finally received the money for the camp, so we're now in the process of making down payments and ordering things like the camp tshirts. Once again, thank you SO MUCH for all who donated! We also had a youth camp idea sharing session the weekend of Kate's memorial, where all volunteers who are planning camps came together to brainstorm and share ideas and best practices.
What else... oh! one to make your skin crawl: I visited my colleague's new house, which is quite nice but kind of in the middle of nowhere, so it has lots of bugs. He told me that recently, he was wrapping a towel around himself after a shower and hadn't shaken the towel first, and was promptly stung by a scorpion... on his penis! OUCH! He was able to get some injections though, so he was ok. On a total subject change, there is American woman living in a nearby village for a few months, so it's weird running into her periodically at my market- she's only the second white person I have ever seen in my village!
Anyway, tomorrow I'm heading up north for our huge volunteer fundraising weekend, aka "Peace Corps Prom". We all get dressed up and have a charity dinner and silent auction, all to raise money for gender-related projects here in Benin. We also have a date auction. It should be a really fun time! I will get back to post on Sunday, only to turn around and leave again on Wednesday, since one week from today I'm leaving for Ghana!! It's looking like this vacation is actually going to happen (knock on wood) :) We're also going to be able to meet up with those brasscasters I've mentioned for, and hopefully go to church (in English!) on Easter. We're also going to eat real sushi in Accra, go to a slave castle, and spend a few days at a beach resort. Should be amazing! So, my next post will probably be about my awesome trip! Happy Spring and see you 4-5 months...!

Health update

After heaading back to Lobogo on Saturday, I saw absolutely no improvement in my condition. I'll spare you of the nasty details, but I more or less lived in my latrine over the weekend. I felt so-so other than these semi-frequent stomach cramps, during which I literally curled up in a ball and waited for it to pass. The heat, once again, really didn't help. I slept inside the first night, only getting fitful sleep due to the oven-like nature of my house; this is in spite of a fan running full-blast less than a foot away from my face. The next night they cut the power at 9pm, so all of my neighbors and I decided to sleep outside. Normally it is cool enough outside overnight to sleep quite comfortably, maybe even with a pagne thrown over your shoulders. Well, it has been so hot lately that not only could I barely sleep, but neither could all of my Beninese neighbors! We all were awake for a majority of the night, dripping sweat, fanning ourselves, and lamenting this outrageous heat wave. You KNOW it's bad when it's 3am and even a Beninese person is sweating.
I came back down to the med unit on Monday. After an exam and some more tests (still found no parasites), the doctor prescribed me some heavy-duty antibiotics that seem to be kicking in, thank goodness. I've been able to eat a little more, so that's good. I'm seeing the doctor again tomorrow and if all goes well I should be heading back to post. I'm not thrilled about leaving the air conditioning and toilet fortified bureau, but it's always good to go home. I should be there for about a week before heading down for Kate's memorial.
And great news that I forgot to mention in my last blog- Camp GLOW has been completely funded! So, if you've been looking for it on the website, it is no longer up. We're now waiting on the money and a list of donors from headquareters in DC. Thank you so, so much for all of you who donated and got the word out there. We've now booked the venue and the caterer, and are now working on guest speakers and other aspects of the camp. But the most important things are done! Later this week, we are sending official invitations to the US ambassador and some Beninese government officials to the opening and/or closing ceremonies of the camp, so I'm excited about that. I will keep you informed!