Answers to Ms. Thompson's 5th grade class...

Since I'm here in Cotonou with wonderful access to power and Internet I can take this opportunity to respond to your questions...1: Francophone is an adjective used to describe someone or something are french-speaking. Benin's national language is French and for this reason the people here are francophone (Americans speak English so we are anglophone). The keyboards for computers over here are also francophone which means some letters are not in the same place as they are on our keyboards back home and you have to hold the shift key to type numbers. The french languages uses many more symbols than the English language so they had to fit more things on the same number of keys. 2: My village has a population of about 800 people. It is a small village, not even on the map! Many people (I would say almost 80%) do not even speak french but speak a local language instead (Gun, Tori, Nado). Most of the people in my village grow crops, such as beans or corn, for food and to sell at market. A typical family here has about 6 kids! 3: No, I have not yet gotten a CIA shirt. 4: People keep dogs for security but they are not like your pet dog at home. They are not well fed or taken care of, but they are surprisingly obedient. Along with dogs people own and raise many chickens and goats for food here. Every once in a while you see a cow. All these animals live around their human owners...sometimes even sleeping in people's houses for safety! I have a picture of one of the dogs at my post and I will put it on my flickr site or post it here for you. 5: I was researching topics on Select Palm...it is a type of oil palm that has a smaller inner kernel inside it's fruit. They harvest the fruit bunches here to make palm oil, and they use the oil for cooking. 6: I have a cell phone but my reception (called rizzo here) is not very good. 7: In the market you can find rice, corn, flour, potatoes, yams (not the orange/yellow yams you are used to but white yams), large potato-like tubers called manioc, spaghetti products like macaroni, eggs, tapioca, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onion, various canned items such as instant coffee/hot coco/sweetened condensed milk. Typically I buy some rice and beans with pepper/tomato sauce for breakfast. I have a spaghetti and two egg mixture for lunch (they fry it all up in a pan with peanut oil). And for dinner I eat a 2 egg 'omelet' which is really just 2 eggs fried in more peanut oil and served with on a french bread. The market cafeteria that I go to to eat cooks with a gas burner but most villagers cook using charcoal or wood fires. 8: The term for my house is concession. That can be roughly translated to apartment. I live there with about 7 other families and I have 3 rooms. It is a mud building that has been plastered with cement to fulfill Peace Corps regulations. I have an outdoor latrine/shower area. I will post pictures of this on my flickr site as well. 9: I eat 3 meals a day. 10: Malaria is very common in my area and throughout the developing world. The flu is common here and so is meningitis, tuberculosis, and typhoid. People can become infected by amoebas or worms because they don't wash their hands before eating and no one uses soap. 11: There are international agencies that come to the schools to vaccinate against polio and to do AIDS testing but that is about it. 12: Yes, I did recover from my encounter with unconfirmed malaria. After taking the anti malarial medicines my fever disappeared completely! 13/14: Sunday is church day in Benin. So is Wednesday. This was a French colony in the past so there are a lot of churches in the country despite the fact that the people follow their traditional beliefs as well. This country is known as the birthplace of voodoo. 15: The differences are amazing. Other than cellphones (which everyone seems to have and everyone wants the white guy's number) everything is very different here. The school system is different, transportation is different (mostly by motorcycle or by shoving 7 people in a compact car with no working dials), the way businesses operate is different (service at food places is horrible at best and very, very slow), the family structures are different, the workday is different (they take a 3 hour break in the middle of the day for lunch, it is called repo). But a couple things you do recognize that we all have in common...babies cry for their mothers when they are scared (sometimes they are afraid of me because they have never seen a white person before) and the kids laugh and play and fight with siblings just like we do in the States. 16: I have learned to play a local version of checkers which allows the king to move much like a bishop in chess, a game a lot like Sorry, and a game resembling Mancala. All these games resemble the American versions but changes to the rules and/or playing board differ slightly from our versions. All right guys...it is midnight for me here but only 6PM for you in FL...there is no daylight savings time here because I am soo close to the equator...so I am going to bed. I will probably be here in Cotonou for a couple days so feel free to message me and I will try to send your class something in the mail from Benin!