Petite a Petite

This is me in a nut shell right now. There are good days and not so good days but little by little I am learning the language. Now that I am getting better at it my Beninines family is more willing to wait and listen to me struggle rather than simply reverting to English.

I have been in Benin for about 10 days and staying with my host family for a week. It seems like a lot more time than that has passed because so much stuff happens in one day.

My Family: Papa is an X-ray tech. My Mama is a nurse who is always working. When she is not physically at work sick people come over to the house and she helps them. I have a sister who is my age (24). She is going to school to be a nurse but is home for the two months that I am staying here. I have a younger brother, who is 13 and he has to hang out with me. It is rude to leave your guest alone here; so he gets to entertain me when no one else is around to do the job. I am fully using his misfortune to my advantage and making him teach me the language. I keep telling him that he is my friend, my brother, and my professor, to which he responds with a huge grin. He thinks I am a total nerd boomer (which does not translate). When I put my helmet on in the morning he has the funniest look of mortification on his face. I am totally doing my job as an older sister to embarrass him at every chance I get. Even though I embarrass him, I am pretty sure he enjoys my company and I think he even defends me a little when his friends laugh at me. My family is totally westernized. My sister dresses more hip than I do when I am in the states. They are hip to the music and everything that people of their respective generations typically are into. My sisters’ friend is always here, and is like a family member. I mostly sit with them and try to throw in a sentence here and there. There is also two other girls who live with us. They are 16 and 6 and help with the house work.

My family is middle class which means that they live pretty well here. All the children (there are four, one boy I haven’t met and the other I just met tonight) will be educated when all is said and done. They have a pretty nice house with all the amenities one needs. I even have a refrigerator which is huge here. I have my own room and bathroom. There is no running water but there is a well on the property. The water from the well is used for cleaning and cooking. We have to pump water from a different location to drink; but the pump is less than a block away. I pumped water for the first time yesterday. I even carried it back to the house on my head. Luckily there was a top because I totally would have gotten soaked with no lid. I managed to get pretty wet even with the lid. I will learn to wash my clothes by hand on Saturday. And will have to learn how to cook Beninese style soon enough.

I enjoy the company of my family. I am trying my hardest to follow cultural norms but don’t know all the rules yet. My papa speaks English and will let me know in English when I should be doing something. I should walk my friends out to the street when they leave. I should greet everyone in an appropriate manner. I should give friends water when they come over, ect… I have been speaking way to much English with my papa but now that I am getting better with the lang. he is more encouraging of me speaking it. He tells me in one month’s time I will be a pro. I can only hope! (and try). A lot of people speak English here…or at least broken English and they are all too willing to try it out on me. I am told this will change when I get to post. In smaller villages it can be a challenge to find people that speak French much less English. Tonight I had to talk the older brother out of not speaking English to me. I told him if I don’t learn French I go home. and I would love for him to come and see me when I return to America. I will gladly teach him English then. He was satisfied with that answer.

A typical day starts at 6.30a when I am expected to be awake. I get dressed, eat, boil water and other wise get ready for school. Depending on how I am feeling that day I spend more or less time in the bathroom before I ride over to my friend’s house. I ride my bike to school with another Peace Corps trainee. We go to class and learn to be good Volunteers until 12.30 when we have our lunch break which lasts until 3. Yes that’s right a nap right in the middle of the day is mandatory. I love this place! I actually haven’t really taken a nap because I am doing other stuff but am looking forward to conforming to this cultural norm. The latter half of my day is usually technical training where I get to get down and dirty. We started a garden today and we made mud stoves on Monday. The technical training is what I live for. I go to tutoring or just go home and hang after school. I have dinner at 8. I eat at the table with Papa and my bro. The ladies don’t eat at the table or even at the same time as we do. By 9 I am beat but like to hang out. I have learned a Beninese card game, but mostly we just sit around and try to talk. My family laughs all the time, which totally makes the experience better.
There is one good road in the city that I am in. The rest is this red dirt sand stuff. Luckily it has been raining at night which kind of paves the dirt and makes it easier to ride your bike on. When it has been dry for a while the sand/dirt has soft pockets and it is not easy to ride on. I fell one time. Luckily when you fall on these patches it doesn’t hurt anything except your pride. Everyone seems to notice us trainees, not only because the majority of us are light skinned, but because have to wear helmets which people don’t really do here. As I rode by a bunch of kids one day, I heard one of them say something about my hat. I am at the stage in my language when I know when people are making fun of me; I just don’t know what exactly they are saying. When my family says stuff about me I can tell and I tell that I understand what they are saying. They know I don’t get all of what they are saying, but it is only a matter of time at this point