oh you guys, I’ve been sitting on the floor of the work station, staring at facebook and trying to drum up the steam to type up everything about my life to tell you guys. I’m exhausted already, there’s just so much to tell and it’s gonna have to wait. BUT I will give you a couple of anecdotes that will give you a bit of the flavor of my life here.
I shaved my legs for the first time in a month the other day, and as my actual legs were revealed (a month is a loooong time, just in case you didn’t know) I noticed that my legs were actually covered in a bunch of small bruises that I’d never noticed because of all the dirt and hair. (I actually know where most of these bruises are from though, which is pretty uncommon in la vie de Camille. I got thrown off a zem the other day because there were a bunch of giant cows in the road who wouldn’t move. It was quite an adventure actually, and all I got out of it was a bruise and a good story. I was telling my dad about it last night and how normal it is when it dawned on me that, to me, my life is completely normal but it’s such a different kind of normal. The getting thrown off zems and giant cows in the road and not having to shave kind of normal.)
After the Volunteer Swear-In at the Ambassador’s house (we took the Department of the Interior oath and became real volunteers, not trainees! whoop!) a couple of us went out in Cotonou, the biggest city in Benin. There’s a road that is just full of Western food, where you can get schwarma and burgers and Italian food and Indian food, and we decided we wanted Indian food. We go, and get our chicken tikka masala and everything is just so amazing. We even got to speak in English with the staff (they actually yelled at us for trying to use French!) and we are sitting here, just so happy with our tasty tasty food, and we decided to splurge on some water. He brings us this giant bottle of cold water and we all just melt... oh my god cold water... you don’t even know how tasty that cold water was. It’s the little things, my friends.
I don’t have service in my house so when I talk to other volunteers or my parents, I have to walk out into the bush. I actually have a nice shady spot that I go and I sit under a neem tree just far enough the road to be noticed by some of the passersby. Usually there’s a group of kids standing at the road just staring at me, trying to figure out what I’m doing. Everything I do is weird to my village, they just don’t know what to do with me. Whether I’m running, or gardening, or washing my hair out my door, they just stop and stare and try to puzzle out what this strange white girl is doing in their village with all this hair and movement and speaking french.
I actually have to go, we’re going to the supermarches to look for can openers and chocolate and toilet paper and all the tasty/important things you can find in the city. More late my sweets!
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