Hello again my dear friends! Seven months down, one year older, four hours of sleep (my bush taxi left at 3:00 this morning which got me to Parakou at nap o’clock), and finally three days of good food, internet, and all the other lovely things of civilization. (I realize I must harp on and on about how glorious it is to be sitting on a cushy couch under a ceiling fan and drinking cold tap water, since the only times I ever write to you are when I’m experiencing all these lovely things. One day I will write a blog post while sweating on my cement floor, being stared at and bothered by my village army of children, drinking warm well water, and probably being all around cantankerous, and you’ll be wishing for those days when I was a carefree lass whiling away the hours in Parakou and talking up the glories of running water.)
Anyhoo, let’s party my friends! No seriously, I wanna talk to you guys about partying. Or rather, how this American parties in Benin. Or rather rather, how this American, and her group of closemates, translate Americana to the people of Benin. (Benin is rather a stretch, so for my purposes here we’ll just stick with Kalale commune, which is the specific region where I live. And the best and most dazzling commune in all the land. Except on days when it sucks and I hate everything.) Now that the fete-ing season is officially over I can tell you all about it in one fell swoop. Now most of you probably think the fete-ing season ends January 2, but oh how wrong you are. The real troopers among you know that it doesn’t end until January 21. That’s right all you lovely creatures, I am another year older! (And about 60 years wiser and 70 years more foolish all at the same time, if that makes any sense at all.) But let’s rewind back to October, and start at the beginning.
While all you guys were wearing your boots and eating your pumpkin-spiced everythings and crunching leaves underfoot while eating apple pies, I was experiencing the monotony of the West African heat. It actually wasn’t crazy hot, but the dry season had officially started, forcing me to visit the well regularly instead of just putting buckets outside and letting nature do all the work. Alas. On Halloween proper, I went to Chez Sandy’s, who is a dear dear friend and one of the Americans who live nearby. (She is actually not a Peace Corps volunteer but she used to be PC here in Kalale and now she works for the NGO that donated the gardens that we all work at. Full circle. Also she’s awesome and has a really awesome house with a fridge (!!) and she’s a bit of a stalker so I’m sure she’ll be happy to see that she is now blog-famous!) So the 6 of us volunteers in Kalale commune all met up at Sandy’s house, and we invited all the neighborhood kids over and introduced them to s’mores! Collectively, we managed to pile up all the supplies, collected on various trips to America, and built a fire in her front yard, and roasted marshmallows and told scary stories in french. (The kids were waaaay more into the s’mores than the scary stories, I think they just sat through out ridiculous made up stories in the hopes that we would cough up more marshmallows. Now those were a hit!) It was super cute. And taught them how to say trick or treat, and now they come to Sandy’s house and say “twick oh tweet!” for gummy vitamins. It is tres cute. The next morning we all slept in and drank pumpkin spiced lattes. (Take that America!) Afterwards I went to Parakou and we all played beer pong and people dressed up. I went as Peace Corps Barbie, which basically meant I couldn’t be bothered to dress up.
And then comes my (and let’s be honest, everybody’s) favorite holiday: thanksgiving. Now thanksgiving is actually the most glorious holiday there is, and for those of us with a true spirit of thanks (i.e., huge appetites and desire for anything that’s not yam-related) it can even be glorious in the middle of West Africa. And it totally was! We woke up early, went to market, and started cooking ridiculously early. (It didn’t help matters that all we had was a two burner gas stove with which to do all of our baking, boiling, frying, and all manners of cooking. But we did pretty well, we managed to crank out two pumpkin pies (with fresh whipped cream), homemade stuffing, a humongo salad, rice, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, guinea hen (our original stand in for turkey), and in a true thanksgiving miracle, we even found REAL TURKEY! Oh my goodness, it was absolutely amazing. Almost, maybe, perhaps, (I’m sorry Harpers!) the most delicious thanksgiving ever. And maybe it was so amazing because we had been slaving away and forgot to eat all day. Or when we had finally finished everything (right on time and right when all of our beninese guests arrived for the feast) we had to stand around and explain the history of thanksgiving while our stomach grumbled and complained. Or because after we explained the history of thanksgiving we had to go around the room and say what we were thankful for. So by the time we ate, we were more than ready to feast. In our explanations we explained that this is the guilt-free holiday when Americans just eat and eat and eat, but still everyone made fun of us when we went to the table for seconds and thirds. (Not many Americans go in for thirds when it’s Beninese food being served up.)
Alrighty, I’ll leave you here for now, and soon to come will be a mighty part two for all your reading pleasure. As for me, I’m going to go drink my orange juice and enjoy my papaya. Papaya season is on it’s way out, and then smack in the middle of chaleur (the outrageously hot dry part of the dry season) comes mango season. Bethany and I shared a sneaky pre-season mango the other day and it might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Of course by this point I had been in my village for over a month so my tastebuds were kinda going crazy.
