This is a massacre of zombie proportions. - Rich Pasquesi

I received some really good news last night; I hear that Barack Obama has fixed the economy. Right on. Anytime you would like to send me some interesting news stories, please feel free to do so. I do not have enough time to research current events on my own and definitely not in the same capacity I have grown accustomed. My French is just starting to get good enough where I can make out some of what they are saying on the news, but it is mostly about politicians and pharmacy corruption. Not that I do not find that interesting, it would just be nice to break out of this bubble from time to time. The lack of information is a little bit overwhelming sometimes.

Model school has been torturing me for two weeks now. Not that it is really torture, but I would not call it fun. Each week I teach a different level of English students, all of them rougly middle school age. I teach for about seven hours a week in the mornings, have class until four, lesson plan for two or more hours and then go out to the buvette. After a grand bier or two I head home and eat dinner and continue to work on my lesson plans. This teaching stuff is a lot of work I did not expect. I am told it gets easier. With time. In case you teachers out there are wondering, I have pretty awesome classroom management. However, my lesson plans seem to fall apart and my board organization is a complete mess. It sort of reminds me of what being taught to wait tables was like. I had seen this job on the other side so many times by eating in restaurants. However, there is a lot of work I had never really considered, like refilling ketchup bottles and cleaning out the salad bar, that were hidden. It is frustrating because I know what kind of teacher I want to be, but I do not have the experience yet to be that person. I also do not really know if I will ever really love teaching English. Not that I need to. I absolutely do not think it is necessary. We will see when I get my own students. The first day of school is October 1st.

Christopher Kotfila was a good friend of mine back in the States. We worked together at Professor Javas Coffee Sanctuary in Albany for almost two years before he left for Peace Corps Benin. That is right. He is now in Cotonou awaiting medical debriefings and filling out tons of paperwork; his plane departs next Monday. It was so awesome having him around, it was really comfortable. It was also a little bizarre. He is, and has been, ready to leave this country to go back home to Upstate New York. I am anxiously awaiting a new life in Northern Benin where he has spent the past two years of his life. It is an interesting crossroads. He was an enormous help while he was here. We will of course see each other when I return, which I look forward to.

I noticed that a lot of my pictures, which I do not have the time or patience to upload until I am in a Peace Corps Bureau office with reliable and reasonable fast interent, are of people I am training with. This obviously makes sense as we spend all of our time together and do not seem to go anywhere except for the school and the Songhai farm. By the way, if someone could let me know where the capital of the ancient Songhai Empire was, I would be thankful. I have been wondering about that since we arrived.

I am trying to think of some mundane, yet vaguely interesting details about my life here. I spend the vast majority of it at school, six days a week. On Sunday I do my laundry by hand, which takes a couple of hours- and is fairly exhausting. I had a conversation with my Mama here about gender roles in Benin. I am her third female volunteer, so she basically knows what I am going to say before I even say it. She asks the right questions though to allow me to practice my french. She asked if women in the United States, well she said Mamas, do as much work as the men do. I responded that the United States is huge and it is difficult to make generalzations, that of course the men have some actual responsiblity in the United States in terms of housework and child care. Not just monetary responsibility. This seemed to be a point of contentions for Mama, whose daughter cooks all the meals and cleans the house all day. She works at the marche selling pharmacueticals and needles in Nigeria and Cotonou, both are fairly long commutes by American standards. "In Benin," she said, "The Mama does everything, everything. The husband, he comes home and sits like this," putting her hands on her chest and lounging about. I laughed because it really did look like Papa after he comes home from selling cell phones. It is a different culture I said, but I did admit that I thought the American standard was a bit more fair. We talked about the difference that shared income families make for women. I was told that it is a slow change, but it is a discernible change in the middle class here. When you have two people working, their roles are not as clearly defined. It is pretty neat to think about. Although, the husband apparently never ever tells his wife how much she makes per year. It is just not done. He has things he wants to do with that money. And only sometimes will the wife not tell her husband how much she makes at her job. The power is still not equal, but the impact of dual financial responsibility is something to chew on for sure.

As it is Ramadan, my family eats at four in the morning. They eat outside of my window because that is where there is enough seating for everyone. I have taken to blowing my fan directly into my face, even when it is not hot, so I can sleep through the noise of Yoruba and dishes clattering. They are so tired by the end of the day too, even if they haven't done anything. Oh, and I always eat by myself. There does not seem to be such a thing as a family dinner here. The papa eats first, then the oldest boy, then the rest of the children, and usually last is the Mama. Or some variation thereof. In my family I eat first because I am still very much considered a guest, then Papa, then Mama and then everyone else. I am not really sure how they serve other meals because I am never there or awake for them.

As expected this has sort of turned into a bunch of disjointed experiences awkwardly woven together. I know you all expect and deserve a bit more, but at some point I will have all the time in the world to craft actual journal posts instead of just a melange of weird memories.

There is a HUGE turkey in my quartier. We eye each other every morning as I ride by on my bike. His head us almost to my thigh when I am ON my bike. I know someday he is going to get up the nerve to chase me, and when that happens I am going to cry like a little girl.
I swear in the 25th, I leave the 26th for Manigri. I am getting consistently more excited for Manigri the more I hear about it from the Volunteers. Sarah Ellison told me it was a fantastic post for working with womens groups, which is all I want to do while I am there. She is also currently my Volunteer trainer for TEFL, and has been absolutely fantastic.

*it is not that he forgot his umbrella, it is that he remembered he forgot.*