Category: Peace Corps

The Winds of Change

Posted on by Christina

Life has been interesting around here lately. After nearly two years of mostly static, unchanging days, the last few months have brought some new developments in my host community and in my life.

First of all, the electricity that everyone has claimed is “coming” since my arrival here seems to actually be on its way, however slowly. A few months ago, I noticed huge poles being placed along the road leaving the larger market town, Glazoue, and was informed that they were to bring electricity out of the city and into the small villages. Now, in the last month, these poles have arrived in our neck of the woods and men dressed in conspicuously new clothes and shiny shoes and toting little notebooks have come through and started asking questions about how much money people make as way of finding out if the population can afford electricity or if the power lines will just pass by without stopping. Still no sign of the actual lines that would carry said electricity, but it’s a start.

Second, a few weeks ago, people started clearing the land across the road from my house and digging holes into the ground. I thought someone wanted to build a house there and that I would have new neighbors, but as it turns out, one of the cell phone networks just bought the land to build the community’s first antennae there! This is huge news, because as anyone who has tried to call me here knows, we do not have good cell phone reception. Calls often drop after a few minutes and even if you have the good luck to carry on a conversation for a good length of time, the quality of the call isn’t good and it’s hard to hear the other person. So, it’s quite the exciting prospect to have an antennae so nearby. Reception is going to be fantastic, which also means I should be able to get online from village, because it’s through that cell phone network that I connect to the internet. Promising new developments!

Third, and I suppose the biggest news…my plans have changed in the last couple of weeks. The extra year that I was hoping for isn’t going to work out, so I will be coming home in November. The whole situation that led to this change is a long story that’s not really worth recounting, but it boils down to a few points. First, I’ve been having some issues with my work partners, specifically my supervisor, in that we don’t see eye to eye about certain things, specifically about how much my projects should benefit him personally versus the community as a whole. Second, the situation at the health center has been deteriorating even further (who knew it was possible?!) and I’ve found myself unable to do anything productive there in the last few months–even the work in vaccination that I had been doing before is no longer working due to management issues. But these were issues I was willing to work through, because I had big plans for the next year outside of the health center and not involving my supervisor too much.

And then I had an unfortunate incident with my summer school project that turned out to be the last straw for me. Basically, there was some misunderstanding between the folks helping me plan my summer school and those who had planned another, earlier session of summer school (an association of students/intellectuals that I didn’t know existed/rumor has it isn’t normally recognized as a functional group), and it all came out in the open the first day of summer school (which boasted a great turnout of kids) when a small flock of young men stormed into the school and started yelling about how we had to send all the kids home. It was a confusing and rather stressful situation, and was followed by several days of extremely high stress as I attended meeting after meeting where people were yelling at each other and at me and where we argued about whether I was going to accept their demand that I change two thirds of the teachers that I had chosen to work with me on the project. Apparently this association was so offended by some insults that one of the young men who was supposed to work with me had directed at them at one of their meetings that they decided that he needed to be fired (which I did on the spot) and in addition to that, they needed to become part of the direction of the project and their members should be employed as teachers instead of the others my team had chosen. Which would have been a fair proposal had any one of their numerous members approached me during the planning phase of the project to say that they would like to help, but to storm in with force after the thing is already planned and has started functioning and then to think that we are going to play together nicely is a bit hard for me to accept. We attempted to mediate the problem at the village chief’s house in a meeting that was conducted entirely in Fon and ended with me in tears. Finally, I had accepted a huge compromise just for the sake of the kids who were enrolled in the project, and then the association changed their demands again and I was (I think reasonably) unwilling to yield again, and the village chief decided that enough was enough and called off the whole project. I was pretty discouraged about the whole thing, not only because it was a solid project and I was really sorry to not be able to see it through to the end, but also because this is the first major problem I’ve had in the community and I felt that the support I received from my supervisor, homologue, and the village chief was really lacking, even though they were all part of the planning process. Also, the incident brought out some hostility towards me, not in a way that I feared for my safety, but just in a way that made me realize that if I stayed, it would be a year of one problem after another. While that may be par for the course to some degree for the first two years, it doesn’t make much sense to willingly enlist for another year of such problems that seem to be growing even more prevalent.

And after all, the whole idea of Peace Corps is that we work with communities that want to work with us; it’s not to force ourselves upon communities that wish we’d leave them well enough alone. So although I do think the majority of the community was on my side and will be sorry to see me go, I can’t ignore the small, vocal part of the community that seemed to be telling me to just mind my own business.

So, I’ve notified Peace Corps and my community and am in the process of wrapping things up and planning a goodbye party. I’m trying to not let these few unfortunate things that happened at the end spoil the memory of the amazing two years that I spent here, because they were great and the community was beautiful and welcoming and I don’t want to forget that.

Thus, I’ll be home in November, around the same time I had previously planned (just before Thanksgiving), but instead of it being a vacation, I’ll be moving back. Since I hadn’t planned this move, I’m not really sure what I’ll be doing when I get there. Probably some hanging out and decompressing for the first bit, enjoying the holidays, then studying for and taking the GRE and probably looking for a job as I figure out the grad school situation and start applications.

Short (I mean relatively) post today. I’m still doing some processing of all that has happened, because it’s been a lot of change very quickly, but I wanted to get you all the update because it’s big news. I’ll try to write again soon.

Peace.

CMK

The Girls Who Lead Our World

Posted on by Christina

So we just finished Camp GLOW Parakou 2013 and I wanted to share with you some of what happened during the week.  It was a great experience, much like last year, and I again thank all of you for your various types of support for the project.  Between 17 Peace Corps Volunteers who are based in the region, we brought 52 girls between 6th and 9th grade to the University of Parakou, where they spent a week staying in the dorms, speaking French, meeting new people, pushing their limits, and learning about the possibilities that exist outside of the village life they know.

(I tried to post some pics but the internet refused, so that will come later)

The week went fairly well despite some bumps in the road (to be expected anywhere, but especially in Africa, where even the best laid plans often don’t equate to reality).  We borrowed the same university classroom that we used last year (though the dorms this year were much nicer!) and each volunteer chose several sessions to lead the girls through while the rest of us helped guide our assigned campers along.  I taught about hand-washing, malaria, clean water, and domestic violence, as well as escorting the campers on a field trip to an NGO that’s doing interesting work in agriculture and livestock raising at the end of the camp (the thirty minute drive to and from the field trip site felt much longer with a van full of girls singing camp songs at the top of their lungs the entire way…).  The most interesting session that I led was on domestic violence–I presented with my friend Rachel and we decided to emphasize the need to address this problem on a community level; the community is aware when a husband is beating his wife, and the neighbors and family are likely to be the ones capable of making a difference in the situation.  At the end of our session, we passed out different scenarios to each group of campers to see their thoughts on various domestic violence situations and to let them try their hand at resolving the various problems.  This was an intriguing activity that brought about an involved discussion about gender roles and what each person was expected to do in a relationship.  In the end, we arrived at the conclusion that a man never has the right to hit his wife, no matter the error she has made, but left many other gender questions unresolved.  

Much of the program was the same this year as last year, but there were some good changes to the schedule as well.  We added in a session on sexual harassment in schools, led by my friend Mariah (an English teacher posted near me who also plans to extend for a third year).  I see this as one of the most important sessions because it is such a huge issue in Benin, and it’s so widespread and typical that there are very few people telling the girls that it’s not actually acceptable behavior for a teacher.  The frustrating thing is that there are relatively few concrete actions that a girl can take if she has this problem (technically sexual harassment is against the law, but I’m not sure if any teacher has ever been convicted for it unless he has actually impregnated a student), but I think it’s equally as important for them to just be reminded that it’s not something they have to put up with and to do what they can to be strong and to avoid engaging in those situations.  Another change to the program was the addition of a relationship panel, featuring three married couples–one Beninese, one American, and one Beninese-American.  The couples were asked a series of questions relating to the roles of each person in the relationship and ideas on gender roles, having/raising children, etc, and they discussed the differences in answers.  The girls seemed to enjoy this session, and it was an interesting discussion.  The responses to the questions actually didn’t differ terribly much, probably because all of the couples were composed of young-ish, educated individuals with fairly progressive attitudes, but it seemed good and positive to have the girls see several varied examples of healthy relationships and the way that men and women can work together as equals.

For me, what stood out this year about camp is the way that it encouraged the girls to speak French and what a great thing that was.  Even during the school year, it’s rare to hear students speaking French outside of the classroom, and inside the classroom it’s mostly male voices who speak, because many girls are afraid to make mistakes in their speech for fear of being made fun of (and this is a valid fear–it’s an accepted practice in Beninese classrooms to harshly correct anyone who mis-conjugates a verb or can’t find the right vocab word, etc).  And especially in a rural environment like where I live, once school is out, students very rarely speak French.  I see the students that I live with forgetting their French week by week as the summer progresses, due to lack of practice.  And while I think it’s good for them to use their local language, because it’s part of their heritage and culture, it’s also important to have a mastery of the French language, because it opens up so many more possibilities for a young person, not only in Benin, but in the larger world.  When French can be competently spoken, youth can communicate with their counterparts from all over the country, and from other French-speaking countries, whereas the person who speaks only local language will always have to rely on a translator and thus will be less independent and less mobile, restricted to areas where their local language is spoken.  But during camp, because girls are interacting with people from many different regions and with volunteers who don’t understand local language, it’s necessary to speak French, and because there are no boys around to make fun of them, they feel more free to try, even if they’re still nervous about it.  

I brought five girls with me to camp this year and again relished seeing the transformation that occurred in even a single week.  I think I was a more competent chaperone this year after having done it once last year and I knew to walk them through the small things that I didn’t think of last year, like how to use a flush toilet (really rather different from a latrine or from other things that are practiced in village), and I regrouped them for a small, informal village reunion every night to check in and see their reaction to the day’s activities and to make sure there were no problems.  There was a bit of turmoil amongst the group, especially in the first few days, which I think largely comes from them being pushed so far outside of their comfort zones, combined with living in close quarters.  But generally, they seemed to really enjoy the camp and responded well to the experience.

Now that camp is over, I’m reflecting on ways to reinforce what the girls learned and to bring more girls into the group of leaders, so that it’s not just one week out of the year that inspires them and me.  I’ve decided to start a girls’ club this year with the high-schoolers, where we’ll meet once a week and talk about things, do fun activities, etc.  Other volunteers have these, and some work better than others–many have problems with attendance, which is why I’d avoided this idea before.  But I’ve decided to give it a try and to have confidence in it.  One thing I’ve learned from my two years spent here is that often, if you believe something will work, it will work.  If you’re not sure, other people pick up on your uncertainty, and it flops.  Additionally, I’m recruiting the ‘graduates’ of Camp GLOW to help me lead sessions during my academic camp on the subjects they learned about during camp.  That way, they’re given the chance to serve their community, to be a role model, and also to be a translator between the strange language of yovo and the way younger students understand things.  I’m pretty excited about this idea.  I’ll let you know how it works out.

Academic camp is set to start next Monday and will run for a month before school ‘starts’ in October.  I put that in quotations because the first month or so is usually taken up by the kids doing manual labor and the administration trying to put together a working schedule.  It drives me crazy.  But then again, how else are you going to essentially ‘mow the lawn’ of the school campus when there are no machines to do it and no money to pay someone else to do it?  It’s just accepted that the kids will work for their education.  The main unfortunate thing in my opinion is that it takes away from instruction time, which is already limited to begin with.  

When thinking about problems like these, there’s a quote that often floats into my mind, the origin/exact wording of which I’m unsure of, which I find to be quite fitting for the problems one faces in a Peace Corps experience:
God give me the strength to change the things I can,
The grace to accept those I cannot,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Amen.
—

In other news, I recently got two rabbits!  They live in a largish cage behind my house and run around my concession during the day.  Their names are Etin and Oto, two words that mean “ears” in local language.  Their American names are Betty and Otto.  They’re adorable, as you can see if the picture posts here.  They’re not really much work to take care of since they can run around with the other livestock and they eat the by-product of the soy cheese that my concession family makes most days, as well as leaves that one finds in the fields, and I can buy rabbit food at market for fairly cheap.  I’m really happy to have them around, and I love to sit and watch them–they’re hilarious, cute, fluffy creatures.  

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The first night I got them, I didn’t have a cage yet and so they stayed in the house.  My cat wasn’t there when they arrived, and so I wondered how he would react to them.  I closed one of them in a spare room in my concession family’s house, and one in my living room and went to bed.  Around 5AM, Awi started meowing at the door and I thought “oh boy, show time!”  I got up and let him in, and in he pranced as usual, invigorated by his nightly prowl.  He got about halfway across the living room when he caught sight of the rabbit.  He froze.  He stared at the rabbit.  He didn’t hiss, he didn’t growl, he didn’t try to pounce, he didn’t try to run.  He just stood there and studied it.  The rabbit was actually fairly unconcerned by the cat.  She looked at him a little, and then carried about her business of investigating the house and eating anything in sight.  They played a funny game of slowly chasing each other around for about an hour (sometimes she would slowly hop after him and he would walk away, not wanting to seem like he was afraid, but also not wanting to get too near her, and then the tables would turn and he would follow her while she made her way away from him) before I became convinced that he wasn’t going to eat her and I went back to bed.  After a little bit, he made his way up to the ceiling, where he rested aloof until the rabbits were out of the house.  Now they co-exist peacefully and have virtually no interaction. 

Summer Vacation

Posted on by Christina

Greetings! It doesn’t seem like it’s been so long since I wrote, but I guess it has. First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who donated money for Camp GLOW…it’s now fully funded and it’s set to start in 2 weeks from today! So excited, and so thankful for all of your support. I’ll make sure to update you on how it goes and post pictures from the camp.

Also, thank you for the kind responses to the last blog. As an update, Fidelia is doing well. People have been helping out little by little with what they can, and the family is doing as well as could be expected for the moment. She’s almost three months old now and in the care of my work partner’s older sister. Here’s a photo of her on her grandmother’s back (if the internet cooperates to post it):

Fidelia

As for me, life has been fairly busy lately. My latrine project has been taking up virtually all of my time. We successfully built 20 latrines and the project is coming to a close. We actually got six more latrines out of the project than we had planned because of some kind of shifty business that had happened during the drafting of the budget. Apparently people working on the project with me had thought that they were going to be able to use the grant money/materials for other things (such as building their own houses, eating, buying televisions, etc) without me noticing… They were incorrect. So, we ended up with a lot of extra money. I was kind of put out about the whole situation at first, because it is admittedly annoying (and an insult to my intelligence) that they thought they could trick me like that, and also it just kind of stings that when you’re trying to do something nice for someone, they’ll still try to pull a stunt like that, but finally my friends here have helped me to not take it too personally because it’s unfortunately so widespread that it happens essentially universally in the country.

I’ve now gotten to the point where I see it more as a game–can I catch the mason before he steals my cement? Can I trick him into accidentally admitting that he took more materials than he needed? I still ended up losing a small portion of the materials that I bought to problems like that, but the vast majority were used for the intended purpose, and I was able to build 20 latrines, which is a significant number, so I’m fairly happy with the outcome. And I’ve learned so incredibly much in the past few months from this project–not only about how one actually builds a latrine: the materials you need, the prices, the number of bricks that one package of cement will make, etc, but also about how people work: how to manage them, to read behind what someone says to understand what they mean, to resolve conflicts and work-related crises, and especially how to do all these things at the crack of dawn (this project has really impeded my running routine, and more than once I had my work partners or the masons knocking on my door before I had gotten out of bed in the morning–that was always a lovely start to my day). I’ll definitely be happy when it’s over and I’ve turned in the final reports, but I’m glad I did it. And I’d consider doing another similar project, because there was a ton of interest for it in the community and I know it will go much smoother the second time.

We’re pretty solidly in the middle of summer vacation. Though the school year only officially ended last week, no one has gone to school since early June, when the three big end-of-the-year exams happened. In the Beninese school system (which is modeled on the French school system), you have to take a big test at the end of primary school, then at the end of “junior high” and finally at the end of “high school,” and if you don’t pass, you don’t move on and you don’t get your diploma. It’s kind of like the IB program in the US, except that I’m pretty sure IB students still get a normal high school diploma even if they fail their IB exam (correct me if I’m wrong–admittedly I don’t know much about IB, having been an AP student during high school…). The results of all the exams were just released in the past couple weeks, with fairly typical results, I suppose. The vast majority of the candidates passed their post-elementary school exam, slightly more than half passed the post-junior high exam, and less than half passed the final exam that gives the equivalent to a high school diploma, called the BAC. I know various people who both failed and passed all three exams. They read all the names of those who passed on the radio, so the day of the release of the results, everyone gathers around whatever radio is nearest and listens intently. It’s fun when you hear the name of someone you know, and is probably really great for them because everywhere they go, people will be congratulating them. But also everyone knows if your name didn’t get read, and that’s tough. The oldest girl in my concession family just tried the post-junior high exam for the second time and failed again, which is really discouraging.

It’s odd, because apparently this sort of school system works in France, but here it just does not seem terribly successful. I mean, less than half of the students who complete high school actually get their diplomas each year–that isn’t a sign of success. It must be really difficult to have to repeat the same grade and the same exam over and over again, but there aren’t a lot of options here for people who don’t get their diplomas, and often people are already in their mid 20s before they finally get their BAC. I think probably a lot of the problem with the schools is the lack of proficiency in French from an early age. In the US, most of the students start school already speaking and understanding English, and if they don’t, there are supplementary classes offered to them, but here (especially in a rural place such as where I live), the children often start the first year of school not knowing a word of French, having only spoken Fon at home. Then there are also structural and personnel problems in the school system that keep them from accelerating as much as they might in their studies, and I think a lot small things just add up day to day, week to week, and at the end of the year, they’re still not proficient. For example, there are only six hours in the Beninese elementary school day, and Wednesdays are half days. Attendance for teachers is pretty flexible, and they are often late or don’t show up, and sometimes even when the teacher is present, the class will be left to just hang out if he is tired or wants to grade papers or write the next exam. Nearly all the work that American teachers do at home or in their free time is done during the school day here. But admittedly they aren’t paid very well, and some of the money that they should be earning typically disappears at some point through the chain of payment, so that by the time it gets to them it’s even less than it was. And when people aren’t paid well, it is difficult to motivate them to do the best job they can.

And then there are outside factors, such as the fact that many of the kids don’t eat well before coming to school or during the school day. And that they really have no time to rest–any time they’re not in school, they’ll be working around the house, or in the fields. On the weekends, almost all the kids will be helping their parents in the fields, and summer vacation is like one long session of field work, because it coincides with the rainy season, which is when there is a lot of work to be done in the fields. So while American (and I suspect this is similar for French) children use their summers to recharge or learn new things or otherwise improve themselves through various types of lessons or camps, their Beninese counterparts are doing manual labor so their families will have enough money to pay their school fees the next year. Which makes me even more frustrated about the state of the school system, because people sacrifice so much to pay for school which is of such low quality. But as is kind of a theme here, it’s the best that’s available, so they have to make do with it.

Reflecting on this problem has led me to an idea for a project that I’m in the process of planning–a kind of academic summer camp for kids just entering junior high. I’ve been really excited about this since the end of the year, and had tentatively programmed it for mid August, to run until mid or late September (the school year starts again in October), but have been running into funding difficulties because I haven’t gotten the official stamp of confirmation on my extension yet. Since I’m not “officially” approved, I’m not eligible to receive grants, so I’m looking into trying to find other funding sources because it’s not a terribly expensive project, and it looks like it still might happen. But basically, the idea is to select a group of kids that will be in 6th grade this year–either because they failed last year or those who have just passed out of elementary school–who aren’t the strongest students but are motivated and to provide them with 4-6 weeks of intensive reinforcement in French language and possibly also math skills. I’ll recruit a few local teachers who are good, reliable, trustworthy and interested in helping the community to lead the academic sessions, and then I’m going to intersperse some more camp-like activities that I’ll lead, possibly with the help of other volunteer friends, like games and art and talking about health and nutrition and study habits, etc.

I’m in the process of trying to balance what I think would be the most beneficial with what might be the limit of the reality for these kids; I’d like to take up a good portion of the week with activities and then supervise a study hall kind of a time afterwards or in the evenings, but I know that their parents need them to help in the fields and at home. It’s a little difficult to figure out what is within the realm of possibility, but we’ll get there. Then, if I can work it out logistically, we might try to continue the extra support into the school year and see if we can succeed in making a positive difference in some of these kids’ academic careers. We’ll see.

Honestly, I’m finding myself in a bit of unfamiliar territory here because my area of expertise is health, not education, but I’ve taken enough classes on education and I’ve also been a student enough that I think I can manage this. As my work with the health center has been steadily dropping off as time goes along, I guess I’m sort of throwing myself into more youth activities and working with the schools as a replacement for that–as something to fill the hours of the days between big projects such as the latrine project. But also, as I’m getting more jaded with reality, I’m clinging more and more to the idea that things can change through youth, and that the next generation has opportunities that the previous one does not. So wish me luck!

—

In other news, my cat is doing great. He’s getting quite big now and has recently been vaccinated against rabies, which I’d been wanting to do for awhile. I’m not sure if I told you that he had learned how to get into my ceiling (which is a layer of straw mats that are suspended between the walls with iron wire), but he has. And at first, when he went up there, he didn’t know how to get down, and I had to go through an annoying process of rescuing him from the ceiling each time, but recently he’s learned how to descend as well, so his habit of getting into the ceiling is much less annoying than it was. And I think he finds some sneaky mice up there, too, so that’s good. I’m going to try to post a picture of him in his ceiling hammock here–we’ll see if it works. Until next time! CMK

CeilingCat