Re-locating my Bossy Toes

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My biggest worry is that all I will do in Athieme is talk, and not necessarily talk about relevant issues, but just drink beer and sodabi and just shoot the breeze. What if I am a person that likes to study, talk, and write, but not actually do any work?
I guess if that is the truth, I will satisfy two of the Peace Corps goals, those of culture-exchange. I will learn all about Beninese beer and the palm-wine distillation process, and the Beninese will learn that even Americans get a beer belly when they drink too much. I will learn how to play true football, and the students will learn how to play basketball better. I will teach them UNO and I will learn the West African version, called Eight Americans. Somewhere in there I will help transplant saplings or graft a few mango trees, or encourage my close friends to think a little differently.
But I also really want to be dynamic. I really want to do everything. I want to bring clean water, I want to build latrines, and I want to equalize the status of men and women in society. I want successful compost piles that significantly increase the quality and production of the fields. I want UNO to be sold in Cotonou, and be well supplied in every CLAC in the nation. And I want to be able to see all of that still in place in another twenty years, if nothing better has replaced it.
In short, I want to make everyone happy.
So, the problem the problem the problem.
I don’t want to be the person who says, “Do this, this, and this. It will work better that way.”
“Well, Ms. American,” the Beninese might say, “You’re awful bossy.”
I prefer to let people be people. If pate is eaten with your hands and shared between four people from one plate, by golly, that’s how I will eat it. If goats run free and we fence in the plants, by george, that’s how we’ll start the tree nursery. If it’s the women who do most of the street cleaning, then that’s how our streets will get clean. Now I just have to find those people in the community who are motivated enough about the ideas to start doing something. More importantly, I have to trust myself in bringing ideas out of my head and talking with other people about how things could change. I have to take myself seriously, treat myself as a professional, and not just a pro-basketballer, before I can expect others to listen to me.
In-service training made me start thinking. Talking with other volunteers made me feel like I had done nothing but play, play, play, since the end of September. The in-service training is kind of like a follow-up week of stage, with sessions on topics relevant to the work we reported to be doing at post. In my case, this week of training really motivated me and encouraged me to just start doing things. Start talking, start using resources, and really start making things move. I can do it, I can!
All of the health and environment volunteers brought themselves and their work partners to Porto Novo, the capital of Benin. We stayed at Songhai, a beautiful center of ideal environmentally sound practices, agro-forestry, pissiculture (fish farming), and composting. And, omelettes for breakfast and soy milk for a snack. Porto Novo itself is a beautiful town with colonial-era buildings and a couple boutiques with bags and lamps made of marche sacks and tin cans. Lovely. We, the volunteers, also met Mr. Gaddi Vasquez for lunch one day. He is the Global Director for Peace Cops in Washington, D.C., and was visiting Benin for the week. We had a very good lunch.
After Porto Novo, I caught a ride on the Peace Corps shuttle to Cotonou with other Peace Corps people.
Ah, Cotonou, what a love/hate relationship I have with her. I hate the pollution, the traffic, the noise, the smells, and the fact that everything costs more… But, I love the supermarches with all the little things I don’t find elsewhere, like sage, and vanilla tea, and Togolese coffee, and dry cream of mushroom soup; you get my drift. A grocery store.
Cotonou also provides the Peace Corps office. The Peace Corps office is like the Holy Grail for a volunteer, providing everything I have ever hoped for: mail, including peanut butter, but even better, letters, also reliable internet (no lying!), administration with resources and moringa seeds and good advice. I also have an English-language library there, doctors, and the air-conditioned t.v. room with movies, movies, movies. The medical unit also has a full kitchen, so I can buy feta cheese, chorizo sausage, and brown bread and make a hot sandwich. The office also brings lots of fellow Americans, which gives ample opportunity to make “ex-pat” type memories.
On this trip I had some beer. Oh wait, I have that on every trip. But, with the beer this time I had sugar-plus-milk powder popcorn, which kind of changed the taste of the beer. I also went to a play. Two plays, actually, both of which were provided by the French cultural center. I really like theater. The next day I went to the beach.
I love water. The ocean here is violent, though, so I “swim.” I “swim” by standing/lying in the water while waves wash over me/knock me down. I can stand in two-three feet of calm water and watch a wave higher than my head wash toward me, and strong enough to leave me snorting snot/salt water from my nose and pulling my swimsuit back into place while removing sand. The volunteers are strongly cautioned on entering the ocean.
Lovely water all the same.
I had no definite plans for the evening, so I headed out of Cotonou. I had really started to feel guilty being lazy, watching a movie in air-conditioning and bathing in warm water I had not heated myself. I only had each of those novelties once. I visited another volunteer and together made yet another beautiful version of Wakiki chicken. We ate it with one of her friends, who was either really hungry or liked the meal, because he ate it twice. I could have eaten it ten times, but contained myself.
At the end of this week, I have new ideas on how a volunteer is effective. At first, I had thought I would be a better volunteer by staying in Athieme as much as possible and working with the resources I have available there, but now I realize that I can still be a good volunteer by participating in nation-wide events as well as Athieme events. I also realize that with myself as the leader, a project can still be effective, as long as the people around me know why I am doing whatever I am doing.
So- back to post, with more energy to work than to play! Though I am sure I will do both…

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Jacy Says...
To kill cockroaches, leave water and a little oil in a bowl outside, then leave for a week! Works like a charm!