guerrilla gardening and incessant cluelessness

A couple of prologues before I get to the meat of what I wanted to talk to you about. 

Prologue 1: I totally meant to write all about the holidays I’ve been spending here, and the funny, interesting clash of Americanisms and Beninese-isms, and the cute and funny results. I had a super cute Halloween and one of the best Thankgsgivingses ever, with the kind of cultural exchanges worthy of lots of words. And I wanted to end it by describing the catharsis of our quiet Christmas, but here I am with something else on my chest.

Prologue 2: I am very hesitant to describe the kind of projects I want to start, just because I know that in 2 months I will hate all of these ideas and see all the flaws in all my plans, and I will hate it even more to know that it is immortalized in writing on this silly blog. But I also realize that you guys probably have no idea what I’m doing here, or how I spend my time, or what I’m trying to accomplish, or what a success would even look like. And I’m not sure exactly where this strong desire to shine a little light on what I actually do, but here you have it friends. Only about six months late, whoops!

I am an Environmental Action volunteer. Here in Benin, Peace Corps has four sectors, or areas of work: EA, Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Rural Community Health, and Community Economic Development. While most of them are pretty straight-forward and obvious, it’s usually the case that a health volunteer will start a community garden and an english club, and an environment volunteer will teach accounting for illiterates to her women’s gardening group and help the health center talk to people about nutrition and malaria prevention, and so on. There is absolutely nothing cut and dry about any of the work here in Benin, and the priority is to help where you can, try where you might, and talk to anyone and everyone about what the heck is going on. (The real work is just trying to alleviate some of the incessant cluelessness of being in a village that wants your help but doesn’t know how or where or what -- "just make it better," they say. Okay.) 

It would be much easier to describe the generic responsibilities of an Environmental Action volunteer, and over time we’ll just have to wait and see how I am able to manifest my abilities and can-do attitude into something useful. So that’s exactly what we’ll do!

Alright, so there are three pillars (pillars is kind of a douchey word, but I can’t think of a better one) for the work that an EA volunteer is expected to perform. The first is food security: making food more available (in the sense that more people can afford it, more people are able to consume it, and that it is available year-round instead of just during the rainy season or what-not) and more nutritional (in that there is a greater variety of food available and that people know how to prepare it in a nutritional way). Obviously there is a lot more to it, and it is a huge job to make sure that everyone is fed, and fed well, and able to battle the harshities of weather and environment and financial constraints and malnutrition and lack of technical skills. As for my particular post, I am working with a women’s group in my village who have an absolutely amazing garden, and hope to improve their financial earnings via the veggies they are able to grow. I definitely want to help them do so, and I am super lucky in that they are very motivated. AND they looooove to dance. It's always a party in Angaradebou. Also, because they already have all the gardening equipment and assistance they need (they even have agricultural technicians to help!) I am in a position that I can (hopefully) help them make money, increase the nutrition available to themselves and their families, and generally just improve their lot in life. It’s pretty amazing to see these women work hard and see the benefits of their labors. It’s very gratifying and I can’t wait to see what we can do together. (Especially since they have already done so much on their own.)

The second pillar (ugh, that word) concerns reforestation, and the consumption of lumber and lumber products. Oh man you guys, it is a totally different world over here: everybody (EVERYBODY!) cooks over a fire outside with logs and lumber that they cut down in the bush. Maybe in some of the larger cities and surrounding suburbs they’ll use charcoal or a gas stove, but where I live it’s burning wood all day everyday and cooking over a campfire, usually in a huge cauldron called a marmite. (You can make anything in a marmite. I use mine all the time, mostly for cooking popcorn.) So that’s where I come in -- how can we decrease the consumption of wood in these smaller villages? And can we find a way to sustainably plant trees (fruit-bearing to meet the nutritional needs of the community, and wood-producing so they will have a way to prepare all this new nutrition)? Now this doesn’t seem like it’d be a huge job (or maybe to you it does, it certainly seems like a huge job to me!) but there are all kinds of politics involved: who does the land belong to? can we use that land for planting crops? (and if so, let’s do that instead because who needs trees?) who is going to be responsible for maintaining a nursery during the dry season? why do we care about trees when our babies are dying from malaria and our children are malnourished? how can we decrease the use of wood and still cook food? 

(See what I mean??) 

And the third mainstay (I thesaurus’d pillar for a new word) of the EA program in Benin is environmental education. Phew, now we’re talking, I’ve been doing environmental education for the past 6 years! Can I talk to you about beluga whales? Do you know the difference between the taiga and the tundra? Did you know that the southern sea otter has up to a million hairs per square inch? I’m gonna just ask a bunch of questions because that’s how you engage your audience when educating them about environment-y things..... eek I am super unprepared for this country. Or at least that is how I feel 98% of the time.

Now translate that into french, and into relevant information for Beninese children, and do all that within the Beninese education system with completely different rules and expectations. Whew. But really, its an important thing, and where a lot of volunteers feel most successful, to work with the youth of Benin, especially if you are able to encourage leadership skills, literacy, gender equality and women’s empowerment, environmental awareness, hygiene and sanitation skills and habits, nutritional practices... I suppose the list can just go on and on. Many EA volunteers start an environmental club, or a school garden. In my village, it’s kind of difficult because I don’t have a high school, and while it is possible to work with a primary school, it’s very difficult because they don’t speak french very well yet and all Beninese kids have a million responsibilities in the home (especially the girls, but that’s another post for another day, my friends. And not a very nice one either, there is a huge gender inequality here, and it is heartbreaking). I have ideas for how I can reach the youngsters of Angaradebou. I might even work a little bit with Bethany to help her start an environmental club in Peonga, my closest high school. We’ll just have to wait and see how I can educate environmentally. 

There are lots of things I can do to help Angaradebou, and I have lots of ideas. Any and all progress is very slow going here, but I remain ever the optimist. One teeny tiny village at a time, right? One zucchini, environmental lesson, french verb conjugation, fulani greeting, mile ran, women's group meeting, explanation of nutrients, mosquito net, baby held at a time. 

cheers, my dears. I hope that 2014 finds you well!

How to Make Christmas/How to Be Good

You lucky devils, I have been sharing so much of my life with you this past month. Mostly it's just guilt because I didn't blog at all for a very long time, but also there are just so many little things about living in another country. Right now, it's been Christmas for 15 minutes, and I have been sitting in the presence of other Americans, all of us on our computers, facebooking and emailing and cramming as much mindless internet-time-wasting in the little time we all have internet. We are sitting around a tv which is playing a dvd of a fire burning and listening to the (very small amount of) Christmas music we have between us, with a tiny Christmas tree sitting in the middle of all of us. Tomorrow we will cook a lot of really good food, and continue our Christmas movie marathon, and make mimosas and be merry. We're doing a really good job of making do and spreading Christmas cheer, considering it's a million degrees outside and we are all a million miles away from home.

(To all the Harpers/Coopers that read this, I hope all of you are enjoying cheesy potatoes and summer sausage on crackers and making amazing no bake cookies, and eating Santa's cookies and arranging Christmas presents and stuffing stockings with precious moments ornaments, and watching Christmas Vacation and Santa Claus is coming to Town and It's a Wonderful Life, and loving each other and laughing and generally just being amazing. I miss you, and love you, and am sending all of my love and best wishes your way. And just know that I will expect so many cheesy potatoes waiting for me the second my plane touches down upon my return. Love love love. And a pre-emptive thank you thank you thank you for the care packages that are en route to Benin, I am very very grateful!)

There is no way to explain how my emotions work in this country, or what it's like to be eating antelope while everyone else is baking Christmas cookies and putting the photos on facebook, or having babies and getting engaged and generally being normal, responsible grown-ups. There is no way to explain what it's like to be a stranger to every person I meet here, and to be strange to every person I've left back home. Just know, I appreciate your attention as you follow me on this journey, and your patience as I make it work and share the amazing experiences (and the ridiculous ones and even occasionally the really sad and heartbreaking ones). There is so much I could say about what this experience actually is, and how I actually feel, and what I'm actually doing, and I will try my best to give you these little nuggets from Benin whenever I have internet, but for now, I really just want to wish everyone the merriest of all the Christmases, and the hope that you are enjoying your snow and cookies and white chocolate peppermint bark and loved ones and prettily wrapped presents and real fires in the fireplace. I miss all of those things, but mostly I miss the people that made all of those things amazing for me, and the people that made me who I am today. You, really. I miss you. And I hope the best for you and yours.

But also, I want to leave you with this incredibly eloquent description of life as a Peace Corps volunteer. It has nothing to do with Christmas, and this person doesn't even live in Benin, but he gives such an accurate portrayal of what Peace Corps life is all about, in a better way that I can. Or at least a better way than I can right now.

http://waidsworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/the-real-peace-corps/

Where the wild things go

So I keep wanting to compare Benin to my time in Alaska last summer. You wouldn't think it at all to look at them, but they do have quite a bit in common. Or maybe it's just my reaction to living in a wild west, frontier, remoter than remote situation.

So last summer, when I first got to Denali, I was so gung-ho about running, especially in the picturesque-ity of Denali. But after about my first week, a quite pessimistic higher-up told me a story about a young woman who had been running somewhere in Alaska (not in my neck of the woods) but she had been listening to her ipod, jogging along (as you do) when a pack of wolves stalked her, killed her, and ate her. Eek, how am I supposed to run in Alaska when there are wolves about with the taste of man flesh?? Haha, obviously it was not quite so dramatic as all that, but it definitely put me off running for a bit. And now, here I am living out in the picturesque-ity of West Africa, with the beautiful trees and the fields and the sunsets, and when I had decided to sign up to run a race (in February, yay!) my program manager told me to exercise caution and exercise with caution, since I'm so close to Nigeria. Not that I ever see any signs of danger, being waaaaaaay off any main roads and in a tiny tiny village. But still, I always seem to end up in these gorgeous places and with a desire to run with the odds just stacking up against me. (Don't worry Mom and Dad, I am very very safe!)

Also, I find that I am quite accustomed to living off the barest essentials and being able to throw whatever I have in my cabinets (or, in my present case, on some bricks stacked up on the floor) to turn it into a delicious meal. Surprisingly, I live much closer to a grocery store now than I did when I was in Alaska. (Isn't that actually crazy to think about? I was an 8 hour ride from the closest grocery store when I lived in Denali, and now here I am in a land of few grocery stores.) It is still quite a chore to get to any kind of well-stocked (and that is well-stocked with a grain of salt, mind you) supermarche -- the hour long zem ride to Nikki, the waiting for a taxi, then the 2-4 hour taxi ride to Parakou. From there it's quite easy, there are 2 nice supermarches to choose from, with quite a selection of tasty and sometimes odd things to choose from and spend all your money on. The best thing is when you get back to village and have the weirdest collection of things with which to cook: soy sauce, peanut butter, ginger powder, balsamic vinegar, regular vinegar... et cetera. And then I get the fun task of putting things in a pot and watching what happens. (It usually turns out pretty well, but it might the desperation talking.)

When I was in Denali, we were super aware of the risk of forest fires and what a threat that could be for... well, I guess everyone. But now that I am here, people just set everything on fire at the end of the planting season. So last night, I was on my bus to Nattitingou (where I am for Christmas, more on that later!) and we were just driving along and we would crest a hill and everything would just be on fire and spewing smoke everywhere. Its odd and ridiculous and unhealthy and bad for the land (like so many other things here), but its what they do here.

And now it's Christmas and I realize I haven't told you about how the Beninese celebrate any of these holidays we've passed to get to this point, Christmas Eve! Eek, well never fear my little ducklings, all that (and more!) to come! As stated, I'll be in Nattitingou, with all the internet and electricity and Christmas cookies my little heart can handle. (I've definitely already started on the Christmas cookies, don't you fret!) More to come, my friends! And I hope this finds you happy, and well, and surrounded by friends and family and puppies and kittens and Christmas trees and cinnamon brooms and those cute little porcelain villages and all the other lovely things of the season. 

This is what bragging in Benin looks like

Scene: three volunteers riding in the back of a bush taxi on the way to parakou, where they will part ways to spend Christmas in the far-flung places of Benin.

Vol 1: Oh, when I get any candy it's gone in like a day.

Vol 2: I have an entire box of chees-its waiting for me back in village. I had a bad day yesterday and I thought to myself... I need to eat those chees-its but I wanted to wait for a truly awful day.

Vol 1: Oh I have no shame eating an entire box of chees-its in one day. I get no less happiness if I eat them all at once or if I spread it out... so I just eat them all at once.

Vol 3: I still have half a bag of reese's cups still from when I went to America!

Vol 2: well you have to savor them! especially cuz they get all melty.

Vol 3: I unwrap the foil bit and then I eat the whole thing and spit out the paper wrapping when I'm finished since they are so melty.

Vol 2: Yeah I unwrap the whole thing--

Vol 1: BUT YOU LICK THE WRAPPER RIGHT??

Vol 2: oh yeah, of course. I unwrap it a little bit and then I stick my tongue in there and scoop the whole thing out.

Vol 1: Like an anteater?! Hahahaha



Now you have to guess which one is me. Good luck my little starfishes! Haha and merry almost Christmas!

A secondhand account replete with inaccuracies

My friend Raili and I decided it would be really funny to write a blog post describing what we think of the other person's life, throwing together all the snippets and fragments to create as whole a picture of each other's lives as possible. And if you guys at home think you are getting an incomplete picture, just remember that 90% of the phone calls my friends in country are getting are when something really devastating or traumatic just happened. But Raili did pretty good job - my corrections are bracketed.

The Villagoise Life of Pa(l)mudo – a secondhand account replete with inaccuracies

Camille lives in a small village in the northern Borgou called Ingardidaboo (more or less). [It's called Angaradebou.] Her village is in the commune of Kalalé, which she shares with two other environmental volunteers. It is in the middle of nowhere, where cell service does not exist and where it can take you all day to find a ride out of village, a feat which can break your fragile spirit if you cannot find a moto. [TRUE AND ANNOYING STORY; it took me 5 hours to get out of village one time. Dumb.) She is vraiment in the bush - it takes her 70,000 hours to get from her site to her workstation town of Parakou.

In village, she is known by its 200 inhabitants only as Palmudo, which in Fulani means roughly “a person who comes to fix all of the problems.” [Pamudo, and it means "one who pays close attention and thinks ahead. But I'll take it!] Each day, Camille strolls the red dirt paths toward her community garden, illustrious hair disguised under a fulard, sword at the hip. [I don't have a sword YET but I can get one any time I want at the market, and when I do I'm gonna wear that shit all day everyday, and I'm gonna intimidate all the annoying children. Swords are the northern version of machetes, which are the southern version of "unnecessarily large and scary thing that does everything."] She’s growing all of the things in her community garden (the best in the commune!), and trying to convince her fellow women gardeners to eat things like lettuce and eggplant instead of just tomatoes and onions and peppers.

In addition to the fruits of her garden labor, Palmudo eats a lot of pounded yams, and the meat and cheese from the Fulani cattle who roam freely throughout the bush. [I don't eat the meat, it really grosses me out.] She does not eat poultry because she simultaneously despises and is terrified of them. And occasionally she also eats Cheeze-Its, when someone from America is awesome enough to send them to her. (Cough, cough.) Because the village is so small, she can’t buy food in her village, but instead has to go to market in a nearby village and cook food on the floor of her house. It’s kind of like indoor camping, complete with the gas cookstove, lack of electricity and indoor plumbing, and the mosquito net tent. [TRUTH.]

Because she has no electricity and because she is a machine, Palmudo reads a book a day. Other hobbies when she is not working in the garden include: scrubbing bat poop off the walls of her home, biking out into the bush in search of cell reception, practicing extensive Fulani greetings with everyone in her village (“Napinday! Seyja! Wodeedama!”), and blaming any and all her epidermal problems on the sun because it’s easier than trying to explain it in Fulani. Oh, and trying to avoid accidentally wandering into Nigeria. Dumb. (But not really...actually, it's pretty rad.)

Pretty good, huh? Welp, that's my silly life. You can read my idea of her life here:

http://journeydujourbenin.blogspot.com/

And my lovelies, c'est tout pour maintenant. I have to jet off to market before I go back to village. Or I could wait a week for market day but I ain't got no food and that don't work. I hope this finds you well and enjoying snow and drinking hot chocolate with real marshmallows, and watching Christmas carols and decking the halls.

When I write a book about my life

So a bunch of volunteers are all together right now, celebrating the end of IST (In Service Training) and enjoying the last moments of our free hotel rooms and all the perks of city living... air conditioner, A POOL (!!!!), pizza, eating an entire block of cheese, boxed wine straight from the box, electricity, fan milk (which is kind of like ice cream, but not really in the slightest), other people who can speak your language, sharing new music/movies/tv shows... et choses comme ca.

Right now we are playing a game where we try to name our biography, and here are some of the best ones to describe my life:

Malaria of the Face: The Camille Harper Story

(Everyone is always very very concerned with how awful my skin is here. Everyone in my village gestures to my face and asks me in Fulani what's wrong with my face, and since I'm unable to answer in Fulani I just gesture to the sun, or to water, or to any likely or unlikely scapegoat or actual goat. The absolute best time was when I had malaria and I met with the doctor and he asked me if my skin problems was a symptom of malaria... hence malaria of the face.)

Pamudo, what do you think you're doing? The Camille Harper story

(I already explained that my village name is Pamudo, right? Everything I say, do, or try to do, everyone thinks I'm acting a fool.)

Things Falling on my Face: The Story of Camille

(During my two week post visit, when I visited my site for the first time during training, I was staying in my house and the women, in their excitement, gave me a headboard and a footboard to prop up on the wall. It doesn't actually connect or prop up a bed, but they were really excited for me to have it and it proved to be very useful when I hung up my mosquito net. One night, towards the end of my two week visit, I grabbed a handful of mosquito net and pulled gently, accidentally pulling the entire headboard with it. It came falling towards me in slow motion, so I very confidently put out my hand to catch it, only for the metal bar to sail right past my hand and smash into my face. I had an awesome bruise on my face when I met back up with all the volunteers I trained with, and naturally they all thought it was hilarious. 

To add to the things-falling-on-my-face phenomena, about a week ago I was trying to hang up curtains in my house. I don't have a hammer but I was able to use my beninese hoe, which is basically just a club with a metal plate stuck loosely into it. So I was hammering away, so proud of my homemaking skills and ingenuity, when the metal plate flew out and hit me in the face. AGAIN. But now I have a pretty awesome scar from the gash I had on my face for a week. And the next day, when all the women were tasking what happened, I just blamed it on the sun. If they can blame malaria on the sun (which they do all the time here) then I can certainly blame a gash in my face on the sun.)

PAMUDO ARE YOU SLEEPING RIGHT NOW? BECAUSE WE'RE GONNA TALK TO YOU IN FULANI AND PEEK IN YOUR WINDOWS UNTIL YOU COME OUTSIDE AND SAY HI: A Volunteer's Story 

(This is pretty straightforward actually, but this is how I'm woken up almost on the daily. And my window is right over my bed so the women will just come to my window and peer down at me while I'm laying in bed. I's not a great thing.)

Other contenders - 

Living with Giardia: The Camille Harper story

Do I have to eat that? A Volunteer's Life in Benin

How to get away with Washing your Hair once a Month: A Guide to Surviving Peace Corps

Sitting Around and Watching the Chickens

My life according to 30 Rock

"Guess who has two thumbs, limited french, and hasn't cried once today? this moi!" -Liz Lemon

Azonto! Azonto! Azonto!

I am here to satisfy all your senses, my friends! I gave you pictures yesterday (with many more on facebook) and today, I give you something for your ears. But first, a non-story story.

So as you know my village is not electrified, but Benin would not be the Benin it is today without cell phones. (Not so much in my village, but everywhere, regardless of what you eat or what you wear or where you live, you have a cell phone.) And naturally, they must be charged! So I take my cell phone to the only place in village with a generator, and pay 100 francs to charge my phone. C'est facile. Conveniently, the charging station is very close to my house, just across the street. And to advertise their business (they also provide the services of hair cuts, a small television which might show occasional soccer matches, and the only working fan in village) they play INCREDIBLY loud music, at all hours of the day and night. But, because they are Beninese above all else, they tend to play the same song on repeat. For hours. They really like Nigerian music. This is one of the songs they particularly love:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grPJ8DemVrE

What's particularly amazing is that this tends to be a hub for the young men of village to come and, I don't know, gossip? Watch football only occasionally? Glory in the breeze of that one, hard-working fan? I really only hang out with old women so I have no idea what the young men do. But every once in a while, when I come back from taking my evening jog, there is a group of teen-ish boys all dancing in the middle of the road to some simultaneous, boy band dance routine. It just warms my heart. And then I come slogging through, sweating my face off, breathing hard, and hating life because I just went on a run in Africa, and everyone laughs at me and dances. It's cute.

Trippin' around in someone else's home

Eep my friends! It's been so long since I've talked to you about my life! It's kind of ridiculous that I'm approaching my six month mark, n'est pas? I kind of can't believe I've been in Benin for that long, the days can be long but time goes by soooo fast, especially in village.  I'm in Parakou for IST, a week long training sesh, which means a week of electricity, internet, running water, cold beverages, and food that isn't yam-based. That also means I get to see all my friends from training, most of whom I haven't seen in the three months I've been living and working in my village. And I realized that I haven't even told you about my village, how awful am I? (Not that awful, I'm actually pretty great thank you very much!)

Well, I live in a teeny tiny village in the commune of Kalale called Angaradebou. (I know, quite the mouthful, huh? It's pronounced An-GAR-ah-DEH-boo.) You won't be able to find it on a map, but it's about 3 1/2 hours from parakou, which is where I am right now, at our lovely volunteer workstation. Angaradebou is a small Gando village, which means that even though everyone speaks Peul, the language of the Fulani people, they are actually Bariba who, when they were young, were thrown out of their village because it was believed they had an evil fetish (bad juju, it's a voodoo thing) and were raised by the Peul people. Complicated cultural and historical nuances aside, there are around 250-300 people who live in Angaradebou, and the population fluctuates as people travel for work and school. The main language spoken is Peul, but there are small sub-sects of people who also use Bariba occasionally. Very very few people are able to speak French, which makes my job equal parts more interesting, and more complicated, and usually really funny as we try to cobble a language everyone can understand - usually lots of hand gestures. 

Angaradebou has very few amenities. While most villages have at least a weekly market, Angaradebou does not, which means I either have to ride my bike (or zem, because I'm lazy)to Matchore, which is another small town with a terrible market about 3 miles away, or go to Peonga, where another volunteer lives, and go to the much better Fulani market there. Market day is a glorious day: soy cheese (which tastes much better than it sounds), couli-couli (which is like this spicy friend peanut snack, very tasty), tissue (which is what they call the very distinctive fabric here, usually printed with some garish pattern in ridiculous colors), gateau, which is French for cake but market-speak for savory fried dough, and a varying selection of produce. And because Bethany, the volunteer who lives there, and I are friends, we usually run around the village looking for adventures and mischief. Angaradebou is situated along one road which bisects the village; it is a small road, not even pictured on most maps and almost impossible to reach by car in the rainy season. Because it is so far out in the bush, it is incredibly quiet on most days, and seldom in my time here so far has it hosted many events outside of the religious holidays. My village is primarily Islamic, with a very pretty mosque within shouting distance from my house (I am often woken by the call to prayer in the mornings, which always sounds like they are saying "Allllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaah hot butter!" It's actually quite nice and comforting) but there is also a small church. Also my village is not electrified; the closest village with electricity is Kalale, the seat of the commune and about an hour by zem away. Naturally, my village also lacks running water. It wasn't nearly ass hard to get used to no electricity or running water as you would believe. I get absolutely ecstatic when it rains, because then i can fill my water barrel with rain water instead of going to the well and pulling up well water. (Not that I'm complaining, because usually when I get to the well theres a bunch of kids pulling up water and they just pull it up for me. No one lets me do anything in village.)

Well, that is the briefest of brief overviews of life in Angaradebou. And since I'm in Parakou for a week, I'll be sure to catch you up on all the silly misadventures of living in the bush, the tasty triumphs of gardening, the outrageous miscommunications of learning another new language, the perks of being chief of a tribe of children, and all the other ups and downs and sidewayses of living in a teeny tiny village in Northern Benin.