Rice House for Women

Hello everyone!

It’s been a busy few months for me, and I’m excited to share something that I have spent the last few months developing with my community.

I work closely with a group of women who produce & sell rice for a living. On Tuesdays, they meet under a mango tree, carrying from their houses all the necessary supplies to transform raw rice into a sellable product. Since they have no group infrastructure, they have to divvy up the rice and carry it all back to their houses when they’re done to store & sell.

Lemme tell ya, it is a LOT of long, tedious work, further challenged by unpredictable weather, inconsistent harvests, and long commutes. But rice is such an important food staple and source of revenue that these phenomenal women do what needs to be done to produce it. 

Friends, family, & generous strangers of the internet, we have the potential to make their lives a little easier by helping construct a rice house— a building that will streamline the rice process by creating a place to produce, store, and sell rice in one centralized location. 

My women’s group has already fundraised 25% of the project, and it’s up to me find the rest. Please, if you’re interested in supporting food security and empowering women’s businesses, share the link or make a donation. 

https://www.peacecorps.gov/donate/projects/rice-house-for-women-pp-20-680-001/

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"Do you wear shoes over there?"

It's been over 10 months since I arrived in Benin and I finally just took my first vacation. To everyone's surprise (myself especially) I went home to the U.S. to see some friends and family. I say surprising because when I left for Peace Corps, I had absolutely no plans to visit home, instead fully embracing a goodbye-everyone-I-am-GONE-for-27-months-type of attitude. A flight home would be long and expensive, and besides I wasn't someone who really got homesick...

(Let's all laugh together.)

Clearly Pre-Peace Corps Allison was awfully idealistic about her capacity for adventure, and did not anticipate that after just 7 months, she'd call her mom to abruptly announce that she needed to come home. I told mom I planned on a two week trip, but if I was being honest with myself, I wasn't completely sure I would be coming back after.

(For the sake of even more honesty, here's the quick & ugly: it had been months and I still didn't have a house; I was struggling to work effectively and collaboratively with my counterpart; my dog almost died; a good friend had just Early Terminated his service; violent protests were interrupting the projects we wanted to develop in my village; and to top it off, I was sick...again.)

Peace Corps is far from sunshine and rainbows. This shit is hard, and these past few months have required a lot of readjustment of my expectations of service. But alas, je suis là. I'm glad I got to go home and see a lot of people I love, and soak up the comfort of American culture. The trip home helped me get past the lowest low of my service so far, plus my situation has since drastically improved-- protests have died down, projects are taking off, I now have a lovely house, my pup & I are healthy.

Since I've come back to Benin, I've had a lot of thoughts that I've been meaning to get out of my head and onto paper (or more accurately, the notepad on my phone). My trip home felt like a teaser trailer for what's to come next December when I go home for good and will need to further confront the ways I've changed, and experience the mundane challenges of adjusting back to my American life-- feeling overwhelmed at grocery stores; getting sick from air conditioning; wanting to wear pants all the time because it looks way too weird to see my knees out in the open.

But mostly, one of the greatest and most constant challenges I found myself struggling with was how to respond to casual questions about Benin and my life here in a concise and articulate way. How do you sum up something like this? The space that exists between over-romanticizing my experiences as one big noble adventure and getting too far into the nitty gritty, God-are-you-sure-you're-okay area was hard to navigate. I tried to prepare with a few stories in my pocket that I felt captured my experience best, but in reality, I spent more time than anything fielding questions like this:

"How's Africa?"

"So do you live in a hut?"

"Do you even wear shoes over there?"

"What's it like seeing all those starving children?"

Questions like these quickly reminded me I wasn't in Benin anymore, and burst the Peace Corps bubble that we volunteers grow to live in as like-minded individuals in a shared experience. The truth, however, is we experience the daily reality of our work and the lifestyle & culture in a country that many Americans couldn't place on a map. Trying to reconcile the fact that most people I encountered in the US had never heard of Benin with the daily experiences I'd had for almost a year felt strange and disconcerting. And though Peace Corp's third goal tells me to promote a better understanding of Beninese culture with Americans, it doesn't tell me how to do that respectfully and effectively.

Culture is a tricky thing to talk about. The words we use matter, especially in how we choose to represent our experiences with other cultures. 10 months of living in a rural village in Benin has absolutely challenged me to become more intentional about the words and stories I use to share what I've experienced in Benin. It's changed the way I feel about international service trips, and given me a lot to think about in terms of the way we interact with and present the people of other cultures.

(During our three months of Pre-Service Training, we received multiple sessions on cultural sensitivity training, where we discussed approaches and challenges to integration. One of the things that really stuck with me was a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called "The Danger of a Single Story," that offers an enlightening perspective on the stereotypes we have of other cultures, especially in African countries. The problem, Adichie explains, is not that these stereotypes are untrue, but rather that they are incomplete. So when we visit these other cultures, we have the power, and duty, to challenge existing stereotypes by sharing a more complete picture via the stories and photos we choose to share.)

*The talk is linked here & I highly recommend giving it a watch: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Recently, I've stumbled across several posts by different social media friends, keen on sharing their experiences of recent service trips. They post about how wonderful the trip was, how much they learned & grew as a person after experiencing just 10 days in a developing country, how eye opening it was to see people so happy with so little.

And you know what-- that's great. Truly. Cultural exchange is so important in building greater understanding of one another and creating more compassion in this world. Especially coming from the U.S., it's important to recognize that the way we Americans live is extremely different privileged compared to how the rest of the world lives.

The thing is, while these posts are well-meaning, many of them lack context and tend to reaffirm the beliefs people already have about that particular culture. Since service trips are so short and often lack technical training & skilled labor from volunteers, the real service comes from sharing your stories and expanding intercultural awareness. Sharing knowledge from an experience is a service in itself-- a service to yourself, to those with whom you share the stories, and to those whose stories you help share.

Anyway, I've been keeping a running list of my thoughts/reactions on how to talk about my experiences in a developing country, all jotted down very messily in my notebook where, of course, no one can read it. So here it is below, cleaned up and more coherent for your viewing pleasure:

• Africa is a continent, not a country. I serve and live in Benin, a small country between Togo and Nigeria in West Africa. The country of Benin is comparatively about the size of Pennsylvania. Asking me "how is Africa?" is like asking someone who has only ever lived in a small, rural town in Pennsylvania to speak on behalf of all Americans throughout the United States. I'm not sure how the rest of Africa is doing, I can only tell you about Benin (and even then, only my unique, individual experiences as a yovo).

• In the same vein, when talking about serving in African countries, we do a disservice to the country we're in when we fail to use its name, and instead sum our experience up as "serving in Africa." There are 54 countries in Africa, and we should be able to name other countries besides Nigeria and South Africa. Bring awareness to the existence of the country you serve in, and correct your friends and family when they ask how ~Africa~ is. (Be better than me, who'd never heard of Benin when I received my invitation to serve, and had to go look it up on a map.) 

• People are people and it's not great to talk about them as if they are otherworldly. Using language like "those people" and "them over there" further emphasizes the us versus them mentality that only serves to heighten the barriers against intercultural understanding. This mentality is why the person who asked me if people wore shoes in Benin was so surprised when I responded that yes, in fact we do! As if it wasn't a perfectly normal human behavior to do so. Remembering how similar us humans are to each other is so important, especially when you consider how one of the cool things about culture is that human values actually tend to be more similar, than different across cultures. Rather than clinging to cultural relativism as a beacon for our differences (there's a lot of problems with cultural relativism as a theory), consider instead that people, regardless of their culture, tend to universally exhibit the importance of caring for children and showing respect for the dead. Ultimately, differences between cultures stem not from differences in our values, but rather in the beliefs and manifestation of these values. (This article by James Rachels gets more into this point, and also offers a more developed response to culture relativism : https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil1100/Rachels1.pdf)

• A picture is worth a thousand words, and even more so when you post it without a caption. Not only does it feed into the white savior stereotype when (typically white) volunteers post pictures of small, black children, but it's also weird and misses the opportunity to challenge the existing stories that people already have about Africa. I rarely post pictures of people, but my rule of thumb for myself is: 

1. I must know their name and they must know mine.

2. We must be able to talk and have a conversation in one language or another.

3. Making a social media post of this person would benefit or challenge the perspectives of people back home. 

4. I would make a similar post if I was working with similar people in similar circumstances in the U.S.  

To me, that means providing a caption about my host brother (who is also a bit older) to explain how much he studies every night because he dreams of being a professor one day, or to share a cool tomato preservation business that my summer camp kids are starting themselves. My point is that there is a side of Africa that needs to be photographed to break down stereotypes, but sharing photos of you holding malnourished, half-naked children is not it.

• I've noticed several posts now that make this weird conclusion seemingly rooted in two general observations: 

1) Many people in developing countries live on and get by with very simple means, referred in some posts as a more "pure lifestyle." 

2) Despite these simple means, people in that developing country looked quite happy, and were even seen singing and dancing at times. 

Consequently, these people observed must not truly be ~less fortunate~ than us. Or alternatively, perhaps they are just simply happier with "less materialistic things." 

As if the people in these developing countries are making a lifestyle choice to live without electricity or running water. 

As if an insufficient living standard and meager human development index is a noble decision, rather than the direct result of exploitative history and corrupt conditions. 

Yes, of course, people in developing countries are capable of experiencing joy (people are people!). But we need to be careful that we aren't romanticizing the very real hardships they face. Our work is supposed to be empowering people to help reduce their hardship, NOT leering at their hardship and dressing it up as an exotic life choice. 

• Similarly, denying that people of developing countries are ~truly~ disadvantaged/less fortunate/etc. (because they seemed happy...?) is problematic in the same way as saying one is "color blind" to race. It *sounds* woke, but actually fails to recognize and validate the inequality that exists, and the privileges that that one group gets to experience over another. Less developed countries ARE at a disadvantage and less fortunate because of an array of reasons, and that's why volunteers are there, to help address those disadvantages. We need to recognize this if we wanna fix the inequality.

• Spending a week in a developing country does not make one an expert, or even well-informed on the culture & challenges of that country. It’s hard to relate to the hardships of a country when you’re most likely staying at facilities nicer than what most of the population lives with, even though it still might be quite different from the standard you’re used to in America. In fact, spending two years in that country through peace corps STILL doesn’t make one an expert. There is no X amount of time that could negate the fact that I was born and raised in a different culture and context, and therefore will always see Beninese culture through different lenses.

Alright, I'll get down from my soap box now. A lot was said here and I might update this as I continue to think about it, so if you made it this far then kudos to you.
To wrap it up, here's a picture of my favorite road by my house, where I walk with my pup almost every morning, all while wearing shoes! I’ve also attached a reading we got during training to reflect on the lenses we use to ~see~ other cultures. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Oro & Spirits

Thursday, November 29, 2018

After the first five weeks of training in Benin, each trainee spends two weeks visiting their respective site to become familiar with their village. Well, the first night of my site visit, my homologue (work counterpart) handed me a chamber pot as I was going to bed and told me not to use the latrine that night. Or actually every night that week. The "Oro" had just arrived in my village for their annual visit.

The Oro are the most secret of secret societies known throughout Benin, found mostly in areas in the South near Porto Novo and throughout the Collines department. During the day, life carries on as usual. But starting at 10pm, the Oro come out en masse to patrol the town, discourage crime, and chase away evil spirits.

The timing varies with each village, but in my village Oro season occurs for about 7 days, once a year, always the last week of October. This is because the first of November is All Saint's Day, a day to honor ancestors, and consequently when the spirits of the dead (good and evil) are most visible. I like to think of Oro as an extended practice of Halloween- at the end of October people get dressed up to scare away things in the night. The interpretation is just a bit more mild and commercialized in the U.S.

But in Benin, spirits are taken very seriously, whether or not you believe in Vodun (voodoo). Oro is simply a manifestation of that. People in my village do their part to help Oro by collecting bad spirits in jars and bottles in their house throughout the year. On All Saint's Day, they bring the various containers to church so that a religious figure can bless the container and banish the bad spirits. Some people avoid this burden by simply building their house in an octagonal shape, since it is also believed that spirits can get caught in corners of rooms.

No one knows what the members of Oro look like because historically, if you happen to encounter Oro, you are killed. Or if you are a man, you could potentially be initiated into the group. Some people have asked me how the government lets this happen, so I want to briefly explain the interesting power dynamic that exists here between authorities. From my understanding, the government has authority over laws, administrative affairs, and economic activity, whereas the King in my village is in charge of cultural affairs. Therefore, Oro falls under the jurisdiction of the King, and under his permission, Oro is allowed in my village at their granted time.

Everyone in town is aware of when Oro season begins, and they make sure to lock their doors and windows at night. It is almost impossible to accidentally encounter Oro because they announce their presence well in advance by making extremely loud whipping noises. It doesn’t sound human, but rather as others have speculated, it is perhaps the sound of a stick with a leather strap attached, whipping a metal ball through the air loudly and at different tempos.

That first night, I woke up in a panic to the distinct sounds of Oro at roughly 1am. I jumped out of my bed and promptly fell into my mosquito net tucked into my mattress (I was still adjusting to that). I double checked my windows to make sure they were closed and listened as the Oro got closer. At one point, it sounded as if they were standing directly next to my house, and I could hear them jostling my back door. Oro have been known to run objects (like a branch of leaves?) over doors and windows to check if they’re closed.

Their noise continued for ~30-40 mins before moving on. Somehow I managed to fall asleep when they left, only to be awoken again at 4:30am when they came back. It carried on like this for the rest of the week--they coming each night at different times, sometimes multiple times in one night and even when it rained. In total, they ended up staying for 10 days rather than 7 (no one explained to me why that was).

In the future, I will leave my site before they come, as a measure for my safety but also my sanity and ability to sleep. It was certainly a unique cultural experience but not one that I am eager to repeat.

There are other secret societies in Benin, but Oro is the one found in my village and it is the most secret/unknown society. If you’re interested in learning more, the Zangbeto and Egwugwu are two other secret societies in Benin. I haven’t researched them as much but there is a lot more information available on them online than Oro.

Bon Appetit

Notes on Food in Benin:

• Food is always served hot (I think this is a preference thing, but also it makes it safer to eat). It's also often served with piment, a spicy pepper the Beninese use in almost everything.
• Food is always served covered, usually using a plate to cover the top. 
• It is culturally unacceptable to walk around eating (only kids do that).
• The diet is very high carb, but I'm getting better at finding fruits & vegs. 
• Did I expect to eat as much mayonnaise as I do? No. Do I mind? Also no.
• Moringa is a rly cool super food found in Benin (more on this later).
• Ask any Beninese person what their favorite food is and they will say pâte--a thick, almost jello like substance made from cornmeal and water, usually served with a spicy sauce. However, you will notice there are no pictures of it here. Why? I have avoided eating it since moving out of my host fam.
• The norm is to eat most foods with your hands, specifically your right hand only. This is especially true when eating with your neighbors, but I've found that most cafeterias will give you a fork if you ask for one.
• However, if you are going to eat with your hands, you are expected to rinse them first using a bowl of water.
• I've noticed that Beninese like to eat then drink. Restaurants serve you your food then ask what you want to drink. If you're eating at someone's house, they will eat then get water.

"So happy I found vegetables I threw them all together in a pan and ate them at once"

Speciality in my village: chicken, goat cheese, peanut sauce, and mashed yams

Beninese shandy with fries and mayo poolside

Hummus platter at a Lebanese restaurant in the city

Homemade shrimp tacos turned shrimp taco bowl

"Look Mom, I have vegetables sometimes"

Always found at my market: rice, beans, grains, tomatoes

Coconut rice, veggie mix, and pineapple

A balanced meal of rice, chick peas, and moringa

Homemade gari tortillas with spicy salsa

Beninese Salad

A fine meal cooked chez moi (chick peas, moringa, cashew fruit)

   

Papaya and Coconuts

   

Cashew fruit and Mangos

Final meal at the host fam's-- it's rare to eat together

      

American food

Coconut & honey oat balls served at a family funeral

Thanksgiving at the training center: mashed potatoes, turkey, plantains, bread, quail egg salad

Popular dish found in cafeterias throughout Benin: spaghetti & omelet

A volunteer favorite: Mohammed's egg sandwiches with café au lait

Maman preparing fish for dinner

First meal with my host family: a whole box of spaghetti, an omelet, some veggies, and an orange

Puppy Post

Writing is hard, but talking about my dog is not. Therefore, I present to you, viewers of the interweb, this puppy post.

My third day at site, a woman showed up at my door and handed me a dusty, sleepy little bundle of puppy. She informed me that even though he was only 5 weeks old (too young, I know) that this tiny pup was now all mine & he would be good for my security (which is funny because he could barely walk at the time).

I immediately named him Honey. Why? His fur is the color of the local honey here, more importantly, I could now come home and say "Honey! I'm home!" and that brings me a lot of satisfaction.

Yes, he is male. Some people seem to think that means he can't be named Honey for that reason. Please do not say this to me. I will roll my eyes and tell you just how silly (read: stupid) I think that is. In fact, here is a haiku to express how I feel about comments like that:

Honey is made by bees
Bees are cool, just like my dog 

Don't be a bully

Anyway, rather than try and describe what it's like raising a dog in Benin, I'm gonna share some pictures and let them do the talking. I hear they're worth a thousand words, and as I've already said, writing is hard, and I'm quite sure everyone would much rather look at my dog, than read some descriptions about him.

So here he is!

Day 1: dusty, sleepy bundle of pup

       

Hammocking with Hun

One Second a Day for Honey's First Three Months
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Most recent pic of pup (on the right) ft. his new friend who stayed with us while his volunteer was traveling

Some Notes About Pets in Benin:

Having a pet in Benin is very different experience from having a pet in the U.S. Animals here often carry rabies or other diseases, so they are not approached with the same level of affection as they are in the US. Families like to have dogs for security, and keep their dogs outside and purposely trained to be aggressive.  I can't get too close to any dogs in my neighborhood without being growled at. In fact, I've been told that Honey is "not mean enough" because he gets so excited to meet people (he's been known to pee on friends), and lets me pick him up and hold him. 

Furthermore, it is a gamble to get attached to your pet. This is something I am constantly worried about--I know more than one volunteer who is on their third dog because of factors outside of their control. Many of the same threats--disease, malnutrition, traffic accidents--facing the human population are also present against dogs, and so the life expectancy for them is not impressive. Dog meat is also not an uncommon cuisine, and dog napping can also be a problem, especially as the pup grows into an adult. 

Even so, it's pretty popular for volunteers to have a cat or a dog, or both at some point during their service. Some choose to take their pets home after the two years, while others choose to leave them in village. You have to make this choice pretty early on because it influences how you choose to raise your pup. Whereas many dogs stay outside and wander around village, Honey is house trained and stays indoors when I'm not home. If you choose to let your dog become a village dog, it's almost cruel to take it home and expect it to live such a dramatically different lifestyle. So it's not uncommon for volunteers to give their pet to a trusted neighbor or incoming volunteer. 

Finally, this is not Honey (it's another volunteer's pup), but it is a pup and so it feels appropriate to include this here anyway. This is how mamas carry their babies around village. People in my village think I am the mother of dogs so here I am fueling this propaganda. 

Protests en Ville

For over 10 days now, I have been mandated to one of our workstations because of political protests in my village.

They began in the Northern part of my region last Monday before appearing in my village the next day, where they unexpectedly but unfortunately turned violent. It began the exact same as the protest in a nearby village the day before, with a blockade in the middle of town impeding traffic in both directions. When I walked outside of my house that day, I saw trucks lining the street with drivers climbing out, clearly resigned to remaining where they were for the day.

My house is far enough away from the center of village that I couldn't see the actual blockade, just all the cars at a standstill. Since there didn't seem to be any immediate threat (the previous protests were nonviolent), we held our weekly rice meeting that morning. It was just a little later than usual to give time for the women to walk from town to our meeting spot because they couldn't zem (moto taxi) as they would usually.

I don't fully understand the details of the protest and there seems to be mixed information in the news. But from what I understand, there is an election coming up in April and recently the candidate list has come into question. A political party that thought it would be on the ballot discovered it was not, so people protested in hopes of changing that.
This political party is based from my area, so that's why my village specifically was involved in the protests. Otherwise, my neighbors tell me that things like this usually don't happen in my town and it has never before been violent like this. I could plainly see how scared everyone was, and it was a pretty spooky feeling leaving my village and seeing hardly anyone outside.

It is unclear why things got violent but it resulted in at least 1 death and more than 10 injuries, both civilian and military. The women in my village use one giant GroupMe chat to talk to each other, so my homologue showed me some photos that women had sent of the protest.
There were pictures of military personnel crouched with their guns sticking out the drainage trenches that line the sidewalks, and pictures of people, both military and civilian, with blood on them. She sprung a picture of one of the dead bodies on me before I could close my eyes.

Even though the protest ended up lasting only one day, I've been mandated to stay away while the tension is still there. The day I left I saw military trucks entering my village, and over the days following that, there were several meetings held between the election committee and representatives of political parties to hammer things out. Yesterday, the king in my village met with the military to bid them goodbye, so now I can finally come today!

From what I've heard, the political party is still not on the ballot, and when the election comes around next month, there's a good chance there will be protests again. I will probably be mandated to leave again for a few days, which is frustrating but understandable. I'll be sure to take my dog with me next time if that happens.

Where & What

Almost five months have passed since I first arrived here in Benin, and while I am anxious to post all about my life and the crazy things that have happened since then, I also have come to realize that many people do not know where I am in the world, or what it is exactly that I am even supposed to be doing here.

So before I get started, I need to do some clarifying. 

Where is Benin? This country that you probably never heard of and probably are unsure of how to pronounce (*full disclosure: when I got my invitation to serve the first thing I did was look up Benin on a map and ask a RPCV how she pronounced it. For the record, it’s Beh-nin with emphasis on the second syllable*). 
What is Peace Corps, and how on earth did *I* end up working in agriculture when I have no experience there?

I have also noticed the tendency for people to say that I am “volunteering in Africa,” which is true, but also is a vague simplification that doesn’t do much to promote Benin nor give proper dignity to the Beninese people here. Since part of my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer is to empower the people and promote understanding, I challenge my friends and family to tell people that I am in Benin, a country that is the birthplace of voodoo and that had some of the largest slave ports, and not just ~Africa~. 

Where am I?
Benin is a small country in West Africa, roughly the size of Pennsylvania, located between Nigeria and Togo. It is divided into 12 different departments (similar to states), and though I cannot share the name or exact location of my village, I can say that I am somewhere in the middle of the country in the Collines department, living in a rather cosmopolitan village. “Colline” means “hill” in French, and so my department is aptly named after the small, lumps of earth that sprawl throughout our department and that volunteers love to climb. 

What is Peace Corps?
Peace Corps is a federal volunteer organization that trains Americans in providing a grassroots approach to international development. It was started by President Kennedy in 1961 to provide other countries with technical assistance and to promote mutual understanding between the U.S. and the countries served. Peace Corps only serves in countries where it is invited, and has currently served in 141 countries. The overall mission has three goals, which in short are:

1. To provide training to people of the host country
2. To promote understanding of American culture within the country served
3. To promote understanding of the country served within the United States

Even though Peace Corps is a volunteer program, it is highly competitive and involves a rigorous medical and legal clearance process. Last year, over 24,000 individuals applied for less than 4,000 open spots. When I applied almost a full year before my start of service, I didn’t realize I would spend almost 6 months getting interviewed, accepted, cleared before being officially approved to come to Benin.

Each Peace Corps country program is different (I have a friend in the DR and another in Thailand whose experiences are wildly different), but in general volunteers receive roughly 3 months of training in preparation for two years of service in their respective country. 

During those two years, we essentially help people help themselves. Besides the length of service, this is what drew me most greatly to Peace Corps because volunteers aren’t there to give handouts or take over communities. Our work is slow and challenging, but ultimately we seek to empower and provide training to interested individuals so as to make a sustainable impact long after we are gone. 

“Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. But teach a man to fish and he can eat for the rest of his life.” 

We are here to teach people how to fish. 

Peace Corps just celebrated 50 years of uninterrupted service in Benin in 2018. This is a big deal because it’s one of the longest continuous relationships in Peace Corps, and it is not uncommon for Peace Corps to temporarily suspend or close a program because of safety threats to volunteer safety.

What makes Peace Corps Benin unique?

• We were recently ranked holistically as the number one Peace Corps program. From training to med staff to people reached to volunteer satisfaction, our program had the highest score.

• We are one of two countries in Africa that provides workstations for its volunteers. Workstations are places located throughout major cities in the country where volunteers can go to do work, especially on computers, have wifi, take hot showers, find books and produce and things otherwise not found in village, and enjoy a little American time. We get three nights each month, and as a new volunteer, they feel like a sanctuary to the grind of village life. 
• We are one of the few countries that allows its volunteers to use moto-taxi services (called “zems”). This isn’t because the zems here are particularly safer than anywhere else, but actually because it would be nearly impossible to go anywhere without them. For our safety, each volunteer is issued a motorcycle helmet and given training during the first week where we practice mounting, dismounting, and negotiating the price of zems. Failure to wear your helmet results in end of service and a one-way ticket home.
• Pre-service training of any Peace Corps program lasts from 8 to 12 weeks, and so ours is one of the longest at 12 weeks. This is because ours is one of the most intense, where we learn not one, but two languages (French and our local language), and are required to have a high standard of proficiency. By the end of PST, each volunteer must be at intermediate high for French, and by one year of service, we need to be at intermediate low for local language (On a scale of 1-10, intermediate high is a 6 and intermediate low is 4).
• Each volunteer is placed in their own house to live in during their two years of service. Some programs keep volunteers with host families the entire time, and others allow volunteers to find a place of their own after so many months, but in Benin each volunteer lives on their own. This is a big contributor to volunteer satisfaction (personal privacy is an American ideal), and also a large part of our training because it’s not so easy cooking and doing laundry on your own.
• We have one of the highest thresholds of medical clearance to become a volunteer. This is because medical care throughout Benin is still very much developing and it takes hours to travel cross country to the medical office.

What am I doing?
My official title is a Sustainable Agriculture Systems Extension Agent, but within the volunteer community we are generally referred to “SAS” or “sass-ers.” I could explain the different goals and objectives and sub-objectives that my sector has, but frankly that’s a lot of words and they are still working on clarifying that information anyway.

You see, my cohort is only the second SAS cohort ever in Benin. Before SAS, there were two separate sectors, Community Economic Development (CED) and Environmental Action (EA), but a few years ago administration decided to combine CED and EA into one program that focuses on agribusiness and food security, and voila SAS was born.

My work has a wide net. We work with gardening, nutrition, money management, business development, VSLAs, and more. It's been said that Peace Corps Volunteers plant seeds for trees that they will never sit under, and SAS volunteers are literally doing that.

SAS doesn’t have the same level of structure as TEFL volunteers who go to the schools every day or the health volunteers who work at the health centers. We have a lot of freedom to ffind work where we are needed, often wandering our village to seek out community and individual gardens and businesses based in agriculture so that we can help with their development. Our target groups are women and children, and so we also work with schools to lead different types of clubs to aid in youth development and education on nutrition, gardening, entrepreneurship, leadership, English, and sports (the type of club formed depends on the interests on the school).

To provide some structure, each SAS volunteer is assigned to a host organization to help develop the organization and work in the community. Each host org does a different activity, from rice making to beekeeping, and also has a very different structure and level of development.

My host organization is a group of roughly 20 women who alternate making rice and shea products. Some SAS volunteers work 9-5 at places with offices, and some even have computers. My group, however, meets outside under a mango tree on Tuesday mornings. We grab some chairs & benches and sit in a circle to make rice, talk about work, and exchange the village gossip.


OK, what am I *really* doing?
Honestly, I’m still figuring this out. My first three months at site are focused on community integration and relationship building with the people in village. I’m learning their norms and ways of life, and also figuring out how I can live on my own in this new environment. A lot of time is dedicated to cleaning my house (Beninese culture expects you to sweep your house every day), fetching & preparing water (gotta boil then filter before you can drink it), figuring out how/what to cook, searching for fruits and vegetables, ordering furniture, and frankly just sitting around because it’s too damn hot to do anything else.

Mondays are market days, where I go to get the bulk of my food for the week, and wander around practicing Tchabé, drinking bissap (hibiscus juice), and hanging out with mamans.

I get one of hour local language tutoring on Wednesdays and Fridays, and try to still study French in my free time.

Throughout the rest of the week, I see different women’s groups in the communities, so far mostly to observe their meetings and try to learn their strengths, opportunities, and needs. I also visit my community garden at least once a week and am currently working on setting up a schedule to visit the school by my house. A few weeks ago, I gave my first sensibilization, explaining to 14 gardeners the various methods one can use to create organic insecticide and the different insects they combat.

Each day is different, and admittedly I spend a lot of time hanging out in my hammock with my dog. I'm trying to find a good balance between work and personal life, but that's a constant effort. That's the life of a volunteer.

Collines aka Small Hills aka Lumps of Earth