Arrival

So it took a full day to go from Cotonou, Paris, ATL, to SRQ. It was tiring but it was fine. I did not know that you had to re-check bags once you came back into the US. Had a tasty Taco Bell taco once I landed and my grandma had a bunch o people over for my homecoming, which was nice. Since this was a Benin blog this will prob be the last post. Peace out.

Final countdown

In the Office finishing up final reports, medical, returning equipment, and transferring my million CFA to the new PCVL. The office is closed today due to Ramadan so next week I start up again. Sent my itinerary to people and look forward to seeing everyone when I get back...and eating a new Taco Bell 'volcano' configuration.

Update

Been looking for small knick-knacks to bring back to people commemorating my 2 years in Benin. Unfortunately Benin really doesn't have much outside of Voodoo that is exclusively Beninese. I have been traveling a lot in the Alibori the last few days and I have the taxi tans/burns to prove it. Saw a semi trailer split in half due to it MAERSK container weight. Also saw Benin in the news http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/world/africa/19benin.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=benin&st=cse&scp=2 I saw this crowd in Cotonou when I was down there a couple weeks ago. There is one of those investment offices across the street from where I pick up the bus line. People asked me a long time ago if my money was there...the company was telling people they were from America. I told people it was a scam...anywhere that promises 50-100% returns OR MORE is just silly. But apparently lots of people wanted to get in on it. I like how the article seems to link the many poor people in this country with the few rich, rich functionaries who actually invested funds in this scheme. I'm lucky to be getting out of here now, in case there are any uprisings in the upcoming election.

Winding down

It has been almost a month since my last post...sorry about that. Been busy traveling and wishing the 1st groups of PSL 21 safe travels back home. We started sending people back last week. My boy E and I did a lot of neat (and pricey) things for his last week in Cotonou, including massages and golfing. 7 mille for an hour massage was awesome and I will be back. Golfing was interesting @ the Marina Hotel. It was the most grass I have seen for 2 years....greens were packed oil sand....4 holes were on the beach. I've played better. Tomorrow I head back up to post to finish off my last month. Only 1 more up/down trip until I never have to ride that road again! I want to order some furniture for the incoming PCVL so his new house seems more livable. Met some of the new trainees and they all seem excited to get going...they are still soo clean (clothes/hair). After watching the first departures I'm eager to head back and start all over again.

Back down south

I am in Cotonou again for a little while to help train the incoming class of PCVLs. After that there is a National VAC meeting here....and after that the new stage come into Benin. Everyone is excited to welcome the newcomers...and a few of us are excited to be on our way. I think 2 Alibori PCVs are out the 1st week of Aug. I come back down at the end of the month for medical. I think I really need to start on my resume and start spamming those employers. Maybe next week. I hope to get a round of golf in with Elliot before he heads out. I lost a temp guard the other day to illness (as in he is dead), and another guard is getting married so I think they will want me to attend the festivities (funerals are reasons to party here). Recently Kandi hosted a girls camp...girls were brought in from all over the Alibori. They really enjoyed themselves with all the singing and activities and informational sessions. They liked the soccer training the best...especially the header drills.

Still running deaf and blind in the Alibori

Still no internet in the WS. I am lucky enough to be typing on a computer linked by USB key...but it is leaving later today. Spent the fourth (our 2nd anniversary in-country) in Djougou. Many PCVs come out to battle a group of German volunteers in Soccer and Football (american). We tied in soccer...and the ensuing p-ks, which was impressive since we Americans are not known for our soccer affinity nor prowness. Only a little over 2 months to go over here. Trying to wrap things up. Thanks to Kims mom (I think it was Kim's mom) for the info on the warthog tusk....I have one and want to bring it home but I still have not found anything restricting me from bringing it. Warthogs aren't endangered or anything, so I think it will be fine. June was a busy month and July is shaping up to be more of the same...lots of traveling. Ready to get back to the US to be poor and jobless (here in Africa I am only one of those 2 things)

out of contact

My part of the Alibori has been without internet connection for over a month...it makes work only slightly more difficult. Just approved the construction on the new WS house for the incoming PCVL. Sched. my Oral Assessment for the State Dept in the middle of Oct. Does anyone know if a warthog tusk is ivory? Watched the US Vs. Algeria world cup match today. A beninoise was making noise at the ajoining table. I told him the Beninese squirrels weren't playing and he said he was rooting for the 'African' team. I didn't think I had to explain to him that the US team had more players of 'his' african descent compared to the arabic algerian team.

Belated update

Hey everyone. The Alibori has been with out internet (24h/24h) since May 21st...lame. I just got my invite to go to the State Dept oral assessment...but I have to wait until the end of the month to schedule the interview date (when/where). If i don't have to do it in D.C., that would be great. I will have to get some clothes tho...basically 2 years in the African bush mandates that you get an entirely new wardrobe:) Getting excited to see everyone again, and finishing up my service strong!

COS date decided

Finally know my COS date. I am heading out of here on Sept 16th. COS conference was nice. Got the chance to speak with a couple embassy people who helped to flesh out the selection process. Heading back up north tomorrow, so no more warm showers. Rainy season came early this year and is full swing up north. Decided to let PC buy my ticket home instead of getting cash-in-lieu...hopefully did not miss an opportunity to get some extra cash.

Wow, I have been here sooo long

So the last month I have been very preoccupied with the fact that I have been here a very long time. Been looking at alternative sites for the workstation incase we need to move. A large storm blew of a contactor in the electrical closet yesterday that I had replaced 12 hours earlier! Other than that I have been taking it easy this month ahead of COS conference (when we decide your COS date).

Update

I have been pretty busy since my last post. I went back up to post and fixed the workstation computer again. I then started the process to relocate (we might have to move the workstation because the landlord wants to double the rent and his asking price is unreasonable)...this means I talked to everyone I could think of to find out if there were available properties of the size I would be looking for. There are no real estate agents in the Alibori. I talked to NGO directors, school professors, mayor's office officials, my guards, the nuns at the local catholic mission, the post office guys....you get the idea. I finally tracked a couple leads on 4 houses from the guy at UNDP's environmental volunteerism project and the guard at the bus station. The friend of the bus station guard actually looks like my best bet and I will start to see sites on Monday. My last post mentioned I was heading up...I spent 3 days at post, paid guards and started the house hunt...then I went back down to Cotonou for a national VAC meeting...am currently en route to head back up to post and get an eye on these possible workstation sites and get specs/prices. I am half and half on moving workstation sites. On one hand it would be a cool thing to write on a resume that I saved PC 25% on rent costs by finding a new site and relocating....but the move would come at the very tail end of my service....I really did not want to be THAT busy at the end. Weather has been really strange the last few weeks. It actually rained in the Alibori! It was 74 degrees the morning I left (Monday the 26th)! For chaleur weather that is insane, but I really hope it continues. I read some of the reports of the oil spill in the Gulf...I hope that stuff stays away from our pristine white-sand beaches! Grandma, tell Obama this is why FLA is against off-shore drilling!

Going back up

So I got the green light to head back up to post, which is exciting. I will be coming back down at the end of the month to participate in the national VAC. I log a LOT of hours on those buses. Speaking of which, I heard of another Intercity bus catching fire and burning up near where my accident happened...looking forward to that cursed S-curve. Helped interview the next generation of PCVLs yesterday so I know who is replacing me, the other UF grad here in Benin (congrats to Jeff).

Flights

So apparently there is a large volcano in Iceland or somewhere that is closing out all the airports in Europe. We PCVs in Benin would normally pay no attention to this except that Paris is our one gateway out of here, back to America. There are a lot of people in the Office right now (I am still here and will prob be here for a couple days) that are coming to/from America for differing reasons. My wrist was examined and the docs put me on a large dosage of anti-inflammatory drugs. They said nothing was structurally wrong but they sent the CT scan to Washington to have it double checked. I asked for a copy (I have a copy of my MRI done to my knee) but the doc got very defensive and would not let me have one. I think he believed I was asking because I wanted a second opinion and did not trust his assessment. In reality I just thought it would be cool to have a copy of the scan. As I stated earlier, I have been in Cotonou all month...I need to get back and do work (the workstation seems to be falling apart, according to the phone calls I have been receiving). A number of other PCVs were sent to S. Africa for medical reasons. Their descriptions make it sound like a nice place.

Still in the south

I am still in Cotonou until the docs can give me the results of the CT scan. We are just waiting on the local hospital to send the results over to PC and then another doc will look me over. I finished the Personal Narratives for the State Dept and I should find out by June if they want me to come for the 2nd round of interviews.

check-up

The workstation (and the surrounding town) has been without power and electricity for over 2 weeks now (H2O has also been off/on)...this is why I am late on my update. I passed the FSOT. Now I will fill out some personal narratives and if all goes well I will be invited to Washington D.C. in October to finish the application process. Project Play really went well. 5 teams showed up and 8 coaches from all over the department. The skill level of the kids was surprisingly high. This weekend I am near the internet most of the time so I'll be responding to emails. It is still dusty and cooler in the Alibori...the dust made me a bit sick. I also helped paint a health center mural about a balanced diet.

Crazy Chaleur Weather

A couple days ago the weather here in the Alibori really started acting strange. Temps reached upper the 90's...which is normal, the temps should have kept rising until we reached mid 100's. Then the wind picked up for two days and kicked up a lot of dust. Finally two days ago it actually RAINED for about 4-5 mins. Yesterday and today we had about 150m of visability...the dust was so thick in the air that you could taste it breathing. I caught one of the large lizards running aroung the workstation only to find out they have unproportionaly large teeth for such a small animal. He caught me in the thumb and left two long teeth marks.

Computer online

I finally got the workstation computer operational again! It was been a couple weeks since we have had reliable internet up here in the north. The summer heat (chaleur) is coming and now the mercury never dips below 90 degrees. Even the water coming for the faucet is hot! It will keep climbing into the 100's until April/May. I plan to make strategic vacations to the south over the next couple months to minimize my exposure and heat rash. Currently chugging along on assisting Project Play to put on a soccer formation for C.E.G. students in a couple weeks (projectplayafrica.org). I received permission to us the stadium, got funding for a nearby team to travel for the match, and also helped organize a girl’s team to join in the activities. The end of service is fast approaching. Applications for upp0er level positions for PCVs have gone out and everyone is planning their next steps. The FSOT was interesting. My essay question asked for what I believed should be the U.S. policy position on illegal immigrants...I was luckier than those who got the question about the special appropriations committee! I am still harried right now by many admin issues but I will try and get a couple Mali photos up by the end of the week. Health update: My left hand is still bothering me. The docs decided to get me a CT scan but all doctors in Benin are on strike (and have been for 3 months)...we don't know when I will finally get the CT scan...maybe next week. This just means more trips to Cotonou, which I have been anxious to avoid. I have noticed that I have a higher sensitivity to the insane driving we all encounter here as PCVs.

FSOT and b-day wishes

Happy late-birthday to everyone who had February birthdays and my mother (her birthday was yesterday). I took the Foreign Service Officer Test a couple days ago and feel that I did pretty well on it. After returning to post I found out the the power regulator and fridge and computer and security lights were blown from a power surge...that is why I have been out of contact for a while. I will try and get photos of the Mali trip up as soon as a new computer gets up to the workstation.

hey everyone

Had a good trip to Mali. Am back in Benin and had to hit the ground running. When I got back to the WS I found that the power regulator had defaulted and a number of electrical devices in the WS were blown (including the refrigerator, a number of security lights, and the computer). Because of this my internet access will be very limited for the next month or more.

Foreign Service Guy

Two reps from the State Dept. visited some of us in Cotonou last week and we were able to pick their brains (for a short time) about the FSOT (Foreign Service Exam). It is being offered in Benin for the first time and I think I will take it. Apparently it does not count against you later in the selection process if you don't pass it the first time you take it OR if you do pass but you fail to follow up for later rounds of assessment (oral interviews in Washington). PC won't pay for the round trip but I think I'd like to take it just to see what it looks like. Being in Benin for 2 years really drops your current events IQ to basement levels. Also, I prob will have to go to grad school before seriously pursuing a state dept job since over 80% of the people who do end up selected have post grad degrees...it is the new college degree. Getting the amazing opportunity to breakfast with the Ambassador and Assistant Secritary of State before going off to Mali for vacation. Can't go north of Mopti due to Islamic beheadings so Timbuktu is out...lame. I wanted to see the dunes of the Sahara. Anti-HIV meds are also still lame.

injury update

The x-rays turned up negative on my wrist. The docs did not think the arm needed to be put under the machine. I think both were just pretty badly bruised. My seatmate also seems to have gotten away with just a few cuts and bruises. We are both on the anti-HIV medications, which don't exactly make you feel super. I don't need anything and I'll prob be here in the main office till next Tues/Weds to see a Washington official about a career path with the Foreign Service. Thanks for the love everyone, and I 'll see you guys when I see you.

"Ooooo, here we go..." SLAM

Myself and 2 other PCVs were on our way down to Cotonou yesterday to participate in a VAC (volunteer advisory committee) meeting. Since the other two were VAC reps and I'm a PCVL it was basically mandatory. We had left Parakou in the morning and had just past Dassa around 10 AM when the bus came around a S-curve to find 4-5 vehicles stopped in it road. The driver pumped the breaks a little, then entered the oncoming lane to see if he could just pass the stopped vehicles. What he saw was a semi truck coming right at us. The driver re-entered our lane and began pumping the breaks very quickly. It did not look like we ere going to stop in time to avoid a collision with the cars in front of us...this is when I started the quote that I used to the title of this posting. Right before we hit the line of cars the driver chose to test his luck in the on-coming lane again. The semi and bus met each other going around 30 MPH (each). I was sitting next to another PCV and we ducked. The impact was loud and glass ad rice was thrown everywhere (the window beside my seatmate had shattered and the semi was carrying a load of rice on it's flatbed. Once we stopped I got up off the floor (the impact had thrown my body through my seat belt) and observed a lot of chaos. Most off the seats on the bus had ripped out of the floor. After asking the PCV next to me if she was all right (she was but she was stuck under the collapsed seats) I started unbuckling people who where stacked on top of each other still in their seats. The third PCV, travelling with a friend who happened to be a RPCV, was in the back and asking if we were OK closer to the front. I said we were and she and the RPCV escaped out the window. There were a lot of serious head injuries around me. Normally what many Beninese passengers do when they heard a disturbance on the bus they poke their heads up in a facsimile of a meerkat...I think I referenced this in a n earlier blog post. This tome it was not a smart move for many passengers. My seat partner and myself were fairly well off (I suffered a seriously bruised right forearm and screwed up left wrist, my seatmate was not wearing her seat belt ...it was stuck in the seat when we left Parakou so we decided to leave it...and had hit her side hard, she also suffered abrasions to her ankles were the collapsing seats had trapped her feet) many people surrounding up were in very bad shape. Basically everyone in front of our row, the 5th, were done. You could hear a Japanese volunteer screaming in one of the front rows. She was trapped in the pile of seats and bodies. It took a while, and an axe, to free her. She could not walk and prob had something wrong with her knee but she was much luckier than those around her. After helping some people unpile themselves I decided we need to get out of the wreck in case another truck hits us or there is a fire (another bus had caught fire last year) so I made my way out our shattered window. The overturned semi next to us provided a nice ramp of rice sacks which made getting out of the wreck easier.

Unfortunately the woman in front of me ended up outside the window during the crash and was now half buried, upside down, in the rice sacks. We had to leave here there until we could get everyone out of the bus since digging her body out would have taken away our rice sack ramp. I called PC officials to inform them of the crash and our condition and them helped the other PCV (in serious blank faced, short answers shock) out of the bus. We met up with the other PCV and RPCV who had escaped the back and gathered under a tree away from the bus and semi.

Outside the bus you could see the damage to the fronts of the truck and bus...they had also plowed into a building beside the road. After getting everyone situated and contacting the PC people with updated status (like I said, we were very lucky. The PCV and RPCV in the back had flow over a number of collapsing seats and got out of there with a few cuts and bruises...the people around them were strewn all over the ground with broken limbs and bloodied faces) and asking for a PC car to come get us I returned to the crash to try and help the villagers remove injured persons. I climbed the rice sacks and helped a guy remove a seat row by the window and then called to a guy standing eyes wide muttering in local language in the bus with a huge gash in his head. Helping him out the next guy they brought to the window was a overweight gentleman with a broke leg. I tried to help the villagers carrying him, but my wrist and arm injuries were causing me to do more harm than good. I decided to get out of the way of the abled bodied rescuers and check up on the PCVs again. We were all stressed out and displaying our personal ways of dealing with that stress. By this time law troops were on the scene directing traffic around the wreck and villagers were stopping cars to place the injured into so they could be transported to the closest hospital in Dassa. After the survivors were taken out of the bus I decided it was time to get our bags from underneath the bus. Everything was a mess down there but I was able to find our stuff after a couple trips. My passport and PC ID were in my to-do notebook in my helmet in the bus.

I re-entered and tried to find my stuff through all the carnage...which is the right word on account of the glass/blood/rice/seats/possessions strewn around the cabin. I found my helmet, visor, pen, various papers (including vacations forms for my planned trip to Mali) but not my notebooks or IDs. I decided that staying in the bus to continue searching was not worth it so I climbed out and gave my name to the head police officer in case anyone found them. All we could do then was wait for the PC car. The Japanese volunteer had been removed and one of the PCVs was taking care of her, helping her wash her cuts and acting ans an intermediary. The girl knew two PCVs in her town. A large group of PCVs emerged from a stopped bus (the law officials were stopping everyone at this time so that the injured could get rushed into cars) when they saw the accident. They had just left a large group training session in the south. We told them that everything was OK and suggested that they take middle/back seats in the bus for the future and always wear your seat belt. They left and we had to wait a few hours for the PC car to arrive. Once at the office we met with one of our doctors who assessed our conditions and drew blood for tests. I might have to get a couple things x-rayed and am taking the anti-HIV medications since I had come into contact with a lot of different people's blood helping them out of the bus. Like I said before, we were all very lucky. At the time of the accident there were 7 deaths and they could not find the body of the apprentice to the semi truck driver. In addition, 25 people were taken to the hospital for serious injuries. This means that only about 12 people walked away with minor injuries and four of those people were the R/PCVs...and most of those people were in the back. My seatmate and I were VERY lucky since not many people in front of our row made it out. I will blog again when I find out more about my wrist and arm.

update

Hello everyone. I have been busy with a lot of admin type work for the workstation. My new house is still on standby...and has been for a number of months. Most likely I will not see it finished. PSL 21 termination of service of service is getting closer and closer... 7-8 months now. There is a quarry near the workstation, so I myself went with another volunteer to check it out. It was pretty neat and we took some photos for the upcoming 'Men f the Alibori' calender. We will be selling it at our GAD (Girls and Development) auction to raise $ for GAD small projects. My cousin Kelli sent over a Wii with a couple games...it was very well received in the Alibori. It is still very difficult to find enviro work here, or work I want to be a part of. My town (despite being a commune head) is a place people try to escape on a regular basis...it's like the midwest USA...so there are not many ongoing programs or operational ONGs.