Some answers to questions...

Kelli's class has sent me some questions about the schools here in Benin. The education system is based on the French system. It is divided into Primary school (6 years) , Secondary school (4 years) , and 2nd cycle (which is like high school, 3 years). Primary school was recently made free to all children so most kids start going to school at 5 y.o., just like when the kids in the US go to kindergarten. Unfortunately, secondary school costs money and many students do not make it into secondary school and far fewer graduate from it. Very few girls go to secondary school. This is a problem in a lot of third world nations because families usually have a lot of kids and they cannot afford to continue to send their children to school to attain a higher education. The children (girls in particular) are used to do work in family fields or around the house.
One thing that is nice(I would find if I was still a student) is the grade scale:
The Grading scale: From 0 ( zero) to 20 with 20 being the highest grade.
Passing Grade: 10
Fairly Good Grade: 12
Good Grade: 14- 15
Very Good Grade:16- 17
Excellent:18 to 20
A 60 percent equals a fairly good grade!! I wish the folks at UF followed the french system more closely.
Another difference between our schools and Beninese schools are the class sizes and the age range of children found in these classes. 60+ students in a classroom is not uncommon. Ages of students in secondary school typically range from 11 to 22 y.o. Critical thinking and other skills are ignored as the student learn by copying everything their professor puts on the black board verbatim. In fact, the students are soo meticulous, that if you start writing things all over the blackboard or erasing sections and re-writing them or drawing connections between 2 earlier items on the board ...instead of writing in ordered rows, like writing on a computer or a typewriter... the students get very confused and upset that they cannot copy what the teacher is doing EXACTLY.

At home the girls participate or take the lead in most of the household chores. Boys mostly play with siblings/friends or do school work. For fun boardgames are popular and soccer is of course their favorite sport here. I don't believe I've met a Beninese who knows what American football is, yet. And as for music...Akon and rap is very popular here (especially Nigerian rap). So is Celine Dion and Peter Gabriel and other late 80's / early 90's music personalities.

That's all I have for now, but keep those questions coming!

Continue to improve...

I just finished my medications and tomorrow I will have a bunch of blood work done to make sure everything went well. I felt better in the past 2 days than the entire past 2 weeks. I felt bad that I left my computer at post when I can here and lost a great opportunity to upload bunches of pix. But I saw my buddy Jesse, the volunteer who I went for tech visit near Come, and he had a couple from that visit. The following pix were taken on Lake Aheme on Aug. 1st, the Beninese day of Independence.

This is me and a fellow EA member of my PST (pre-service training) named Tim. Tim is getting his masters in agro-forestry or something like that as he works in PC. I think he lived in Tanzania or someplace like that growing up and he got his undergrad at some Ivy school. Tim, Tom (the blond in the back), and I all went to Jesse's post for a couple days for tech visit (in an earlier blog posting)

Here is our host Jesse with his friend and french tutor who took us out on the lake. And below is a picture of Tom doing what Tom does best...chat with locals.

The next time I end up in Cotonou for an extended period of time I'll be able to upload all MY pix, maybe around mid-December at IST (In-Service Training). And finally, I found this in Jesse's pictures, so at least I know they do exist...

I heart cbssports.com...

Because CBS just made another pact with the SEC they web cast live certain SEC games on Saturdays. Guess what Im watching right now?!? (in 10 second increments of play and then 8 sec for buffering) So its not great but at least it is some FOOTBALL!! And UF is walloping the Vols, so I've got that going for me. I continue to feel good, so the medications I'm taking seem to be working. For all the cookies and candy I eat from home I lost over 20 lbs living just 2 months in Benin...no joke. And that was the 2 months I lived with my host family with a host mother who fed me well, now I have to cook for myself (that was not going well before I had to leave post). But i really appreciate all the goodie bags...even when you find some tasty treats from home here in stores (ie. a Snickers bar) and you eat it, it does not taste the same, for reasons I addressed in earlier posts. I did sweep my rooms at post a couple times for scorpions before I left, and while I did not find one I did find many VERY large spiders...they look like wolf spiders 3.5 inches wide. We had a few sessions about scorpion stings in our medical training and I hear they are more prevalent up north, so that is good.

Will someone explain to me why Tebow is RUNNING the ball with under 5 min left in a 30-6 rout??? We have running backs!!!

My surroundings...

The med unit is nice. There are three bedrooms with multiple beds (with spring mattresses!!) in each room. Each med room has it's own bathroom and A/C unit. Volunteers come and stay in the med unit for COS (close of service) exams, Mid-service exams, and general sickness (like me). There is a movie room with a large number of bad movies and, of course I have access to the bureau Internet room and library. Eating in Cotonou is expensive (and by expensive I mean 6-10 dollars a meal compared to .50-2 dollars in village) but volunteers get increased per diem (money allowance) for staying here. In Benin the currency is CFA, or West African Francs. It comes in coins of 10, 25, 50, 100, 200, 250, and 500 franc denominations and 1000, 2000, 5000, and 10000 CFA billls. It is different from Americain money (and other moneys of the western world) because American dollars have US symbols and pictures on them since they are minted and controlled by the US government. The CFA is used by many West African governments, so there is no symbols or pictures on the currency linking it to Benin, specifically. All the sodas here are made with REAL sugar...no high fructose corn syrup or anything, so cokes and sprites and especially Mt. Dews taste different. As far as NEEDING anything, I don't. This will be the second day of anti-malarial treatment and I had no fever yesterday so I am very optimistic. I am 90% certain I will be out of here on Monday. I went to a western-type super market (we call them yovo-stores) and bought some cereal and milk to eat with my medications (it says milk increases absorption) but the milk here is very interesting. Since they have little/no refrigeration and this milk comes from France or the Mid-East it is some special 'long-lasting' milk. It actually has a 1-year expiration date (if you don't open it) and you can ship it unrefrigerated. As you can imagine it does not taste quite like real milk but it was good enough for my coco chrispies (these were imported from the UK and they also did not taste quite right. Foods for foreign markets, even produced by familiar companies are formulated for that foreign market and their tastes). I'm here till Monday so if Kellie or any of her classmates have any questions just email or leave a comment, thanks!

'Duck and Cover...All Clear'

That is what I awoke to this morning as the PC office ran some safety drills. These drills are pretty normal in US gov posts in foreign nations after sticky events (ie. Yemen) occur.
Before I go on, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I'm still in Cotonou and will remain here for the next couple days. The bad news is that after taking medications for amoebas I still suffered from a slight fever and my liver enzyme lvls were raised, prompting the doctors here to place me on anti-malarial treatment. Just a clarification: This is a precautionary treatment...I have NOT tested positive for malaria in ANY of the many blood tests they have already done on me (and there will be more in the coming days). But a continued, cyclic fever with no other symptoms is suspicious and now that my body should be free of amoebas the doctors felt it best that I should just cleanse my body of any malarial parasites, just to be safe.
Since this is my first time out of country and my body is not used to all the various native microbes in addition to all the things (viral) common here but uncommon in the states so I figure I'm getting off easy right now.
The plan now is: Monday will be a re-evaluation day. If after this newest round of medications I am not right-as-rain (2 consecutive days w/out fever) then they will send my blood out to the CDC in Washington to test for things they cann't here, and they will contact the regional PC doctor (Dr. Savage, nice guy), and if he approves it I would be heading to Dakar for specialist treatment. While I would love to have another stamp on my government passport, I would much rather be rid of this strange malady and have the opportunity to go back to my post!
Since I really did not spend much time at post I haven't been able to convey in my blog much about the people or happenings there...but at least everyone is getting an inside look at PC medical doctrine:)

This has been an excercise in 'Hurry-up...and wait'

Im STILL in the Cotonou PC bureau because the doctors wanted to see how I responded to the groups of pills I've been taking. I believe that TOMORROW I WILL be leaving for my post. This gives me an excellent opportunity to explain a little about the Beninese sense of time and schedule which has invaded the PC hive mind here (it is only natural since peace corps has been here for 40 years now and many of its employees are host country nationals). Let me preface this analysis by saying that this is not a negative critique...if the doctor wants me to stay another day to make sure my health is on the right track then he/she is the boss and I am behind him/her 100%. Unfortunately when I left post to come to Cotonou I had no idea what to expect as far as a time frame for my eventual return was concerned. I thought I was going to get some blood work done and put on beefy anti-malarials and sent back to post, either that very day or the next. I thought this because for northern volunteers they have to take the trip all the way down to Cotonou and they take their beefy meds on the way down if they think they might have malaria and they get approval from the docs over the phone, being a southern volunteer means I can come into the med office more readily and let them take their time in correctly diagnosing me (all of this is to my benefit). After arriving and being told that they were going to take blood samples at various times of high fever in order to 'catch' some malarial parasites (malaria is a serious disease and only a very small concentration are actually needed in your blood to make someone very ill, this way it is very hard to actually find the malarial cells in the blood) I figured that I would probably be out of this office by Monday afternoon. After multiple negatives in my blood screening and the eventual confirmation that I had amoebas I was sure that i was going back to post Monday or Tuesday. But, in the name of thoroughness the date kept getting pushed back to make sure the plethora of pills I've been taking to kill off the amoebas have worked, my final date of departure is tomorrow...thursday....i hope. My homologue (work partner) probably thinks I skipped town on him since I told him I would probably return last Fri/Sat.
On another subject, being in the office means I still have access to the mail and I just got 2 packages from Grandma (cookies/candy/protein bars) thanks! I'll give the animal crackers to the dozen or so kids that live around me in my concession.

One good thing about Cotonou...the mail!

I got some mail today from my mother! A letter and a package of cookies. I shared some cookies with the medical staff that spent their weekend coming into the office to take my blood and run tests to find out what has been trying to kill me (j/k). Looking forward to getting back to post so that I can actually START my work here. I really did not hae all that much time in the first week since thru most of it I was running a triple digit fever. I'll probably check this blog once more before 8AM EST before heading back to post. I'll be back online October 5th. See everybody then.

Med Update Redux

Had some more tests run, presently it looks like I just contracted a 4 day long tropical mystery fever and its probably not malaria. Made current my cell phone #. Apparently you have to leave out the 011 prefix while using Skype and just use the country code. Catching up on the football scores...man, not watching football is NOT awesome.

Medical Update...

So after three blood screenings the lab tech have failed to find Malaria in my system. They tell me my week-long on again / off again fever is viral...aka we are not sure what it is so we don't want to unnecessarily throw medications down your system. Luckily the fevers have been lessening so it is not a concern. I took a hot shower today and that was pretty awsome.

So that was quick...

Normally I would still be at post right now and for the following few weeks, but shortly after moving in on monday I developed a fever. This fever continued with varied severity throughout the week and today I called the Medical office here in Cotonou and they asked me to come in to do some preliminary screenings to see if I have malaria or not. Chances that I actually HAVE malaria are VERY low because I regularly take my anti-malarials, bugs don't bite me, i don't hang out out-doors at dusk/nite, and I sleep under a mosquito net. But, all that said, malaria is a serious illness which is very prevalent in W. Africa and PC Benin takes possible infections very seriously. On a more positive note I'm now in the Cotonou office for a few days and can enjoy all those things only living with water and electricity can bring :)

My cousin Kelli's gifted class with Ms. Thompson at Stewart Elementary got their first look at my blog on monday. Hopefully they will start sending me questions via email or on this blog and I can answer them the next time I am near the internet (ie. Oct 5th). In the meantime, Kellie asked 'How do the Beninese people choose a president?' Benin became a Republic like our own nation in 1991. They have a national assembly (like our Congress), a constitutional law court (like our Supreme Court), and a executive branch. They held elections in 2006 and Yayi Boni won the presidency. I believe he serves until 2011.

OK, thats all I have for now. If any of Kelli's classmates get to read my blog before Monday, go ahead and email me a question or two and I can probably answer it before leaving the PC office my monday morning...your monday 2AM (because I'm 5 hours ahead here in Benin!)

So I'm in...

We just had a long swear-in ceromony and now everyone is in the Cotonou office, sorry i cant tell you guys where my post is because of security reasons. I m going to let someone else on the internet now. C-you guys in a month!

Wrap up and grad bash

This is a final note on calling me...on my post visit i found out my cell coverage does not work there so i will have to buy a new SIM card = new number sooo you won't even be able to reach me at my original cell number (if you have been trying to call i hear there is calling cards that work and apparently keepcalling.com only costs ten cents a min)...Also, when i go to post Im not supposed to leave my post for very long or very often in the first 3 months so I WILL ONLY BE ABLE TO REACH THE INTERNET ONCE A MONTH!! Prob on the fith of each month...so keep the email traffic down and don't expect quick answers from me unless you ask on the fourth.
About my post visit, i went to my post and did more labor in 3 days than most volunteers do in one year...it was interesting, a little gardening, a little fishery work, and a little coup couping (cut down with machete) 400 square meters of forest and an entire tree...thats right, im a enviro volunteer on the front lines of deforestation.
I got packages from the Mr. and Mrs. Morris and Grandma, thanks a lot. I passed my french exam so I will be able to swear in on friday. All volunteers selected special tissue (cloth to make clothing) to represent their sectors and we all got outfits made for the ceremony. It is going to be a big deal because it is the 40th anniversary of PC in Benin and the president of Benin will be there. Afterwards all the new volunteers are invited to a dinner with the president, so many are excited about that!
Right now were are learning local language: mine is Gun. We are also doing a lot of admin stuff...like when/how you are getting paid, budget yourself, what things PC will pay for and what things they won't. We get paid pretty well to live in village but if you do a lot of traveling around benin or your starting a new post (like me) and need to buy stuff like a bed or a table or spices or basins or buckets to carry h2o or anything you can think of when starting a house from scratch then you will be poor for the first few months...they call that bien integré. Its ok, i think while i cannot leave post during the first three months i'll just eat rice and drink boiled filter water so i can save up for a trip to the center of northern Benin to do a world map and a biodiversity project.
I realized that I don't put much on here about life here in benin so here it goes. Trash is a huge problem here. In the states we have laws and dumps, here you just throw your trash on the ground and sometimes prople gather said trash and burn it...there is a lot of plastic bags so one of the enviro projects i can do is do some crocheting with plastic+bag+strip+yarn. Big cities have electricity but it can go in and out...most places in Benin have no potable water and no electricity (like my post). We are pretty spoiled right now by living in this big city for the first two months. I will be living in the south so there are two rainy seasons and two dry seasons and it is always hot or muggy( for those in FL think april thru august on a loop). People in the south seem a little higher strung, for example when a volunteer like myself bikes down the road you are the only white person these people will see all day or all year (if you are au village) and most yell out at you. the word for whitey here is yovo or le blanc. the children scream a song and here is how it goes: Yovo, yovo bon soir. Ca va bien. Merci. Translated it means white person, white person good evening. I am well. Thanks. It basically is a way to teach children some french when they are 3 to 4 years old so i don't take offense to it. That said it does get old because the same kids will yell it very loudly EVERY DAY. Apparently there is a youtube video of children doing this in africa, just search yovo yovo bon soir. There are not many if any native land mammals in the south....people have been living here for thousands of years and basically have hunted all animals from the south. In fact there is little native fauna because people have been cultivating the land for soo long. The hills around my post are nice, think Georgia gone tropical. The big cities are polluted by all the motos scooting around, there are no emission requirements. I went to the beach near Cotonou with a few other volunteers and that water was not clean. But on a day trip with Peace Corps to Grand Popo ( the tourist beach town) we got to hang in the big waves and that water was nice. My post is near the Nigerian border but since im american i cannot go there, volunteers near togo/burkina faso/niger might be able to get visas to those countries thru PC for work.
tomorrow I have to buy a lot of things for my new post because I will be moving on monday and friday is the swear in ceremony. It is fun to go to the bank and pull out thousands of cfas...unfortunately it will all be spent in short order and my bank account now reads zero, haha. I hope everyone has a good school year and New Orleans still exists when i get back near the internet on the fifth of october...peace out