I Know My Post!!

I’m in Parakou, where there is a Peace Corps workstation with high-speed internet, which will serve as my workstation for the next two years. I just finished visiting my post, and that is why I am now in Parakou getting to know my workstation, and I have the opportunity to post on my blog.

I’ve been in Azove, Benin for the past three and a half weeks now training for my Peace Corps service. There are 14 small-enterprise development trainees here in all, and each of us is living with a host family while taking classes all day, mostly French language classes, with a few technical classes, cross-culture classes, some health, some bicycle maintenance, some safety, and some cooking classes. I was lucky enough to be placed with the king of Azove, although this is mostly just a hereditary title. It is honored by the entire village, but there is still local government such as the mayor and police. Being the host “son” of the king of Azove, I joke around with my Beninese language instructors that I am the prince of Azove, so they have taken to calling me “Monsieur Le Prince.”

The king himself is a great person. I have nothing but good things to say about him. He has two wives, one of which I don’t see much, and the other who does most of the cooking and cleaning around the compound. I have a number of host brothers and sisters, but I mainly talk to the older ones, who are 14 and 17 because they speak French. People here speak a language called Adja, and learn French if they go to school, so the younger children around here only really know a few phrases in French.

I found out my post for the next two years. At the end of September, I’ll be moving from Azove to Ouesse (pronounced Wess-ay) , a small town near the center of the country, in a region called Les Collines. It’s absolutely beautiful, very green, and much more relaxed and open, and less polluted than the south. My house there is very nice and I have “the nicest porch in all of Benin,” as one volunteer who just left said. So for all of you that are planning on visiting, there’s some added incentive. Electricity is coming soon, as is cell phone service, most likely before January. I’m really looking forward to moving out there and having my own place and being able to start working. I’ll be teaching basic finance, marketing, and accounting classes to groups of local artisans, as well as possibly working with the local radio station. Apparently the volunteer I am replacing started a weekly radio program, and the people there really want me to continue it, so hopefully that will happen. The people I’m supposed to work with seem very motivated, which is good. With time, I’m sure I’ll also start my own projects.

It’s been great getting to know the Beninese culture. Being third-world, there are a lot of similarities to Latin America, but so many differences as well. There really are no other white people here in Azove, so for the children who see us walk by, it’s a big deal, they get whipped up into a frenzy and start shouting “yovo” which means foreigner. People here are very nice, though, and love to have the opportunity to talk to an American about anything.

I’m still trying to figure out how to run this blog. After getting here, I feel I’m doing this country and this culture and experience a disservice by trying to explain it to you in words, since the only real adequate way to know is to live it. Nevertheless, many of you won’t have the opportunity to visit over the next two years, so it’s my responsibility to allow you to share a little bit in what I am doing. So, there might be some posts with just updates, such as this one, there might be posts with single stories, and there might be posts with entire concepts laid out. Hopefully my poor writing ability will be enough to express this amazing experience to all of you. Also, if anybody has anything they want me to touch on, or any other questions, feel free to post them in the comments section or email them to me and I’ll try to get to it in some posting.

As I mentioned before, I don’t know if I’ll be able to post at all again before I move out to my post, but once I get out there, I hope to be able to make it to the workstation in Parakou to post every couple of weeks or so. As for the cell-phone, I still plan on getting one, but the government and phone companies are still negotiating, so once that clears up and cell-phone service is back in Benin, I’ll be without a phone. Till then, wish me luck having to endure many more boring French classes until I swear-in and become an actual Peace Corps volunteer and not a Peace Corps trainee. I love you all,

Sebastian