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.
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