Long Time no See!

Oh yes, it's been a while since I've posted. Sorry. Time is flying. Like every other Peace Corps Volunteer who's maintained a blog, I now too will say that the months are passing by and I am NEARING THE END OF MY SERVICE.

Just typing that makes me smile. When I'm done. I will have been a real-life Peace Corps Volunteer.

And now that I'm pretty well adjusted to Benin, I can say that not too much has happened. Neither exciting nor interesting events have occurred.

Really, I was just waiting for something "blog worthy." I can only blog about the heat, the rain, flowers, and food so many times before it becomes boring. Like a reporter, I was looking for something new and fresh. Something that would take my readers by surprise. Something that would make you say "just when he thought he'd experienced everything..."

Well ladies and gentelment. For your viewing pleasure, I submit this photo.

A few notes: the creature is actually bigger than it appears in the picture. It was AT LEAST a solid 6 inches :: Um... maybe more like 4- but it was 4 inches SQUARE! :: That was Glenna, a friend of mine visiting from the South who got to behold the sight of this creature. We disagree on size but not on presence. ::It was totally there; it was enormous!:: Glenna again.

Glenna is a fellow teacher and is currently on vacation. She decided to come up to Nati to peacefully pass her vacation with me. Tuesday night, we decided to make egg rolls (from scratch and they were delicious) and duck sauce (also really delicious). Making the duck sauce required honey which was in my house. I left the back of the workstation, descended the steps and happened to glance up and BAM. There this thing was. Just sitting there on the front wall of my house. It was so big, it looked like it could talk. I (quite literally in my temporary insanity) expected it to say "Hello there, Clayton." In a smooth, Sean Connery-esque voice.

I tell you, it was the first time I truly felt absolute fear and revoltion in my heart at something created by nature. In that moment, I experienced an overwhelming since of personal offense. Nature had created that bug and it had found it's way to the wall of my house to personally piss me off. I felt that I must've done something horrible and karma was saying "Hey Clay! Stop being such an asshole!" I had all sorts of mean thoughts about how assholish nature can be. Here, in front of me, was a 6 inch (4 inches according to Glenna) creature on my wall.

All I could do was stand there in pure horrified shock, turn around, walk into the house and inform everyone that we would not be making duck sauce because I couldn't get into my house.

Of course everyone flocked to see what the commotion was about and I felt validated when 6 other people were as horrified as I was. The immediate plan was to destroy the creature but in the end, I said we shouldn't because it wasn't harming me physically even though it had harmed my sense of security in the world. We left it alone and when I came back outside a few hours later it was gone. No, that did not make me feel better. When something that hideous disappears it creates more fear and panic because the awful truth is that I would rather sit and stare at it to know where it was and what it was doing than to not have any clue AT ALL.

P.S. MW, please excuse the language. What the fuck is it?

Found Nemo...

And decided to eat him.

I have now killed with my own two hands, and prepared something that flies--the chicken (yes I'm using the world flies very, very liberally)--and something that swims--the fish. Now all that is left is something that walks or....hops >). Where are you Peter Cottontail?

Pictures!

Touristy things.

Just a few photos. I went to visit tatasombas with another volunteer in a village relatively close to Natitingou. Tatasombas are a style of housing built by local people. The houses are made of mud, 2 stories with a roof that is used for storing food, shelter and other things that I don't remember or am not sure of. We took zems to and fro and although I was cursing the heavens the entire ride back, it was pretty neat to see the tatas and I got a few good shots of local people in the village of Bakoumbe.

Gay ol' Paris.

On the way back to Benin, I stopped in Paris for a week with another volunteer who was traveling and coming back the same time I was.

Before becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer, I had never traveled abroad so this time in Paris, I did all the tourist-y things: Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Arc de Triomphe.

Just a few pictures.

...But you can't take America out of the boy...

In December, I traveled for 24 solid hours to go home for a visit (sitting in an airport for 5 hours does in fact count as travel). It was pretty fun, great to see family.

It is so true that every person handles their re-introduction to the States differently. Some volunteers said they felt weird when they went home--I felt normal. I didn't feel like an outsider, estranged, apart, separate or anything of the sort.

However, I did feel aware.

I knew the moment I got on the plane in Paris to Fly into Philadelphia that I was on a plane full of Americans. I heard two distinct things I hadn't heard in 18 months: rude conversation and loud and rowdy children.

Everything in Africa runs at a slower pace, even the conversations. In Benin the first part of any conversation you have is usually a greeting followed by a question and answer period during which you ask about someone's day, their children, their spouse, their work, their health, their animals, if the force is with them, how long it takes Jupiter to rotate around the sun, how many moons Mercury has, and the square of 28,25o,509. As you might guess, conversations last a bit longer here and while the Beninese aren't always beacons of politeness or socially acceptable behavior, they will at least ask about every aspect of your life including whether or not you want to marry their baby girl (if you're male) and if you can loan them money, before they let you buy a soda from them. Having been in Benin for nearly 19 months now, I've become so accustomed to this conversational dance that I value it as an integral part to any social interaction. There's something satisfying about asking someone about the health of their children and how work is going for them.

So you can imagine my shock when, as I was sitting on the airplane getting comfortable, the flight attendant came up to me and asked if I needed anything before promptly walking away. Why didn't he want to know about my stomach, my eyes, my left big toe, and my courage?

I was even more offended when, while checking on other passengers, he simply said "hello, do you need anything?" Why didn't he ask about their kids, their spouse, their health, and their work?

And so, I immediately and even a bit righteously concluded that Americans are rude. The point of all those national jokes about rugged unrefined Americans suddenly became clear to me. We don't spend 20 minutes asking someone about how their digesting their food, their patience level, or the hair follicle on their left thigh right above the knee. And we are declassé because of it.

About the loud and rowdy children.

It's true that the workstation is next to an orphanage and often times the children howl at all hours of the night sometimes for hours on end. Wailing, wailing wailing. But you know what Beninese children don't do: they don't run around screaming in joy at top of their voices on airplanes. I've ridden in taxis for 9 people, stuffed with 15, and 3 small children who don't utter a peep the entire ride. Nevermind that at 3 and 4 they're still breast-feeding (usually why they aren't talking), they're quiet. I maintain that there is a difference between the howling of twelve African children and the shrill screams of 2 year old American children. Eventually, it dawned on me that American parents bargain way too much with their kids. I haven't heard "darling, don't you want to sit down now? Please sit down." in 18 months and when I did, I thought "that bargaining is why our American children grow up and believe so strongly in their autonomy as humans. People don't like big goverment because it's like the concerned, attentive, non-bargaining parent they never had. Big government says "do _____ now" to people who grew up with "do you want to do _____now?" Don't you see U.S. government: you have to start asking people if they want to do things. Do this, and you too will be as successful as the pleading airplane parents whose kids ran up and down the aisle THE ENTIRE 8 HOURS OF FLIGHT FROM FRANCE TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Well, I noticed a lot of things when I went back to America. For instance the number of people in drive-thrus and their.....size....or just how much of a gem Target is (I love you), the awesomeness of real milk not that French stuff that can sit in heat for months on end and not spoil, good chocolate, fast internet and...TV!! But, what I most noticed was that I was still American and loved consuming :)

Post Pastimes

Alright, sorry I didn't post anything in the month of November. I got really busy with things.

Here's what I've been up to:

PCV Pest Control

Recently, I've noticed an offensive amount of termites in the kitchen of the workstation at night time. Last night, Veronica (my new postmate) and I decided to investigate. What did we find you ask? That termites had made a home behind an outlet, in the wall, in the kitchen.

Well that

couldn't stand. Bug spray in hand, we attacked the outlet...doused it really, in aerosol bug spray. Pretty sure that all I have to do is point at bugs and the residue bug spray on my index finger would kill anything in it's path.

What happened next is definitely somebody's worst nightmare. Termites began (quite literally) to pour out of the outlet. I realized that the bug spray must attack their nervous system because it looked like they were going crazy, convulsing and curling up into little termite-balls. A small part of me felt bad until I remembered that one time at post when a termite bit me. Yes, bit me.

Their death was very kamikaze-esque. They'd come out of outlet and dive into the sink, practically jump off of the outlet.

For those of you who know me, you won't be surprised that I decided to fumigate other parts of the kitchen now that I had the guts to face and kill insects. I was on a roll, why stop?

For some time, I had noticed that bugs were going in and out of drawers where we keep powered milk, sugar, flower (in containers of course) so Veronic and I decided to investigate. This part was actually gross because roaches are my weakness. We cleaned out a drawer and sprayed bug spray at nothing in particular--just to see what would happen. There were more bugs than we thought.

We decided to take the whole drawer outside, dump everything and stomp on whatever crawled away. Seemed like a good idea until the big roaches came out.

Can someone please tell me why a cockroach needs to be 2-3 inches long? I mean, that serves no biological purpose. Spiders eat insects, snakes eat insects and small animals, ants even eat insects; they all serve a purpose. What purpose does a 3 inch cockroach serve? Hm? The only plausible reason for the existence of a roach that size is for the sole purpose to be disgusting. I love nature, I really do, but like most other things I love in this world there are parts of it that seriously, seriously irritate me.

In any case, the guard heard us shrieking, yes I shrieked, and came over to help us kill the roaches.

We had ourselves a roach stomping fest.

No worries though. Just all part of the job. I'm going to be so brave when I get home. Those puney American cockroaches won't mean anything to me. Score!

To answer your questions (which I like by the way. More, more!!) : I am pretty much always that creative although I'm not sure it took creativity so much as the ability to use a ruler, pen and markers to color to create the monopoly board.

In regards to my weight, I'm a solid 70 kilos. That's where the scale goes everytime. I think this is roughly 154 lbs and I've seemed to level out here. Parasites, I assume they're gone. All the plumbing runs smoothly, wink wink.

And finally, yes I can use satellite internet here at the workstation. It was recently installed and it's amazing. All we need know is a hot water heater. Of course if we get that we go from Peace Corps to Posh Corps ;)

Monopoly in Benin

Robert and I were playing Monopoly virtually every day before I came to Benin. It's only natural that he should bring the pieces to play here. I made this board from cardboard and markers.

I haven't lost any of my skill. I'm still the champion of Monopoly ;)