Add that to the long list of reasons I wish I were in Vietnam.

In Benin the convention is "every man for himself, the biggest vehicle has the right of way, and honk angrily at anything that you think might come out in front of you."

10/2/2014 4:06:02 AM

hey man, that guy's mighty cheek canyon is protecting you from the ebola

10/2/2014 7:30:24 AM

Quote :

"This is true, it does hang out in sperm. My guess is that the CDC doesn't just turn people loose after they get better and say, "Alright, have fun, bye bye." They keep a close eye on that shit."

so they keep people in quarantine until their sperm is good to go?


that info/video about street crossing was great. asians are awe-inspiring sometimes.

10/2/2014 5:26:04 PM

Quote :

"Belgians are stereotyped as being extremely thick. As in, stupid. "

That's a big brother, little brother thing. The French really look down on Belgians.

Quote :

"Apparently if you go to a party at a Norwegian's house, you bring your own drinks and consume them exclusively. There is no sharing or pooling of beverages."

This is pretty spot on for Sweden and in my limited experience, Norway too. It takes some getting used to.

10/2/2014 6:20:28 PM

So nobody hosts parties and serves all the drinks, booze or otherwise?

And is the BYOB policy limited to alcohol?

10/2/2014 6:51:55 PM

Pretty much. It is extremely rare to go to a party where the host provides the alcohol, you are expected to bring your own booze. Generally the host provides food and non-alcoholic drinks.

10/2/2014 7:10:27 PM

I was hoping for a lot more weird ones like that. "Austrians are terrible at contact sports." "Andorrans force their guests to eat pretzels." "Danes are exceptionally good at preparing breakfast." Shit like that.

As it was, sooner or later they got around to asking, "Do you want to know what we think about Americans?" Sure, we said, even though asking a French person about Americans is like asking the dog what it thinks about bacon. You know the answer already, but it's funny to hear them talk.

"They are...what is the word...idiots?"

I didn't have the heart to point out that the US has had 346 Nobel prizes to France's 59 (or that we still have the edge when you adjust for population, or that when you only count the "real" Nobels -- the science ones -- we positively blow them out of the water). Nor did I, in typical American fashion, remind them that at least we were smart enough to beat the Germans for them whereas their plan was to build the Maginot line. I just smiled and asked them to elaborate.

To hear this girl talk, in France they see two things about America:

1) The television show, Jackass
2) Spots on French variety shows where the host seeks out the fattest, dumbest American tourist he can find, then asks them geography questions.

With the result that she thinks that Americans spend their days jumping off of things trying to injure their testicles, and that none of us can find our own country on a map.

Then she added that we are all "hypocrites," because when she visited Texas everybody asked how her day was and were really nice to her, but she didn't think they were sincere. She didn't have any evidence to back that assumption up, but apparently basic human politeness is incomprehensible to our frog-eating, NATO-abdicating, strike-happy, gypsy-hating friends in France.

10/3/2014 4:17:41 AM

If you had to pick a decade to be born in, what would you pick?

I feel like you should have grown up in the 60s and 70s.

10/3/2014 4:24:03 AM

In other news, I've had a couple of weird Africa moments...

Last night I'm in a small grocery store to pick up some things. There's a woman walking around, talking in pidgin English to the guy she's with. I'm assuming she's Nigerian. At one point, they have a brief discussion about some or another item, and she says, "No. They make me want to vomit." I started laughing and she whirled around to me. "You speak English?"

"Yeah. American."

Pause while she looked really embarrassed. "Thank you for telling me. I was about to say something about you. I was going to say, 'I want to have sex with that boy.'"

I laughed hysterically and ran away, because in a contest of "what thing scares me more," it's a tossup between Nigerians and my girlfriend if I had sex with a Nigerian.

---

This morning I took my dog out to do her business. As usual, there were a bunch of pigs around, but as not usual at all, one of the babies was desperately trying to mount one of the much larger adolescents, which generally ignored the tiny rapist. The adolescent was much more interested in my dog, charging up to her every time Bea started to poop.

The punchline of this story is the image of me, jumping up and down waving my arms, yelling "What the fuck, pig?" to a porcine conga line.

10/3/2014 4:26:25 AM

I should have been born in 1922. Enlist in 1941, shoot Nazis or japs. Come home. Go back to shoot communists in Korea. Meet black people in the army. Become progressive on race but rabidly hateful of communism. Come home. Have kids. Basically be Red Foreman from that seventies show. Vote against jimmy carter. View for Ronald Reagan. Die shortly before 2000. Pretty much my ideal life. (Sorry, just saw your question)

10/3/2014 11:06:00 AM

Saturday was Yom Kippur and Eid al Adha, so naturally my Jewish girlfriend, Muslim friend, and I went to Garba, a Hindu dancing festival. It turns out there are a LOT of Indians in Cotonou.

I'm trying to make friends in this community for several reasons, the first of which is "free Indian food." But I've also always had a number of Indian friends, and I'm curious about the Indian community here. I've already answered some questions, namely, "What the fuck are all these Indians doing here?"

Mostly it's business. A lot of that business is cashews -- when cashew season hits in a couple of months, hordes of Indians are going to descend upon Benin to buy them up and ship them home. They also do a brisk business in textiles and pharmaceuticals that may or may not work, and apparently they own one of the larger markets in town. Throw in the embassy and you have a large enough population of Indians to support a few specialty groceries and three restaurants.

These interest me the most, because they represent the meeting place of "vicious competition" and "shared community." All three restaurants were represented at the festival, providing free food -- how they got away with this at an event open to the public in Benin, I don't know. They must not have told any Africans or the place would have been overwhelmed. But I digress. The restauranteurs are all members of the Indian Association of Cotonou, so they get along, but at the same time they are all in a bitter and never ending struggle to get a larger share of the relatively small market of Indians and whites who want their food. Peace Corps volunteers have learned to use this to cadge free drinks and appetizers out of all three restaurants. We're clever.

We were the only white people there (and one of us was Iranian so he barely counts). Each restaurant owner came in turn to welcome us and point us to the food and generally try to become our friends. The other 250+ people there ignored us, except when we tried to dance.

The proceedings were organized, moved forward in a timely fashion, and were conducted (mostly) in English. After two years of Benin, it was fucking surreal.

10/6/2014 6:31:46 AM

I'm going to get to see the run-up to the 2016 election, which will probably be in March, but I'll be home before the election. It may not make a difference, because the possibility everyone has been discussing for years is that the current president, Boni Yayi, will change the constitution to remove term limits and attempt to stay in power. To hear people talk, they would be very, very upset if he did so -- particularly in the south, where he is universally reviled. It's hard for me to imagine any actual violence, though.

That said, a couple of years ago there was supposedly an attempt to poison His Excellency Doctor Yayi, involving his niece, his doctor, and his main campaign contributor-turned-enemy. There were port and cotton contracts involved (the port and cotton being the only two things that make this country any money), but everything else is kept hush-hush.

My theory is that, if Boni does try to stay, we'll have the usual Benin political transition. The military will surround his house and tell him to step down. He will. A general will take over and call for elections. People killed: zero. But, exciting opportunity to hide in the Peace Corps office listening to regular news updates from the embassy.

10/6/2014 10:46:42 AM

How concerned are you about food prep sanitation? Do people, like thoseIndians, know about washing their hands and stuff, or is it something you try not to think about when eating out?

10/6/2014 12:12:22 PM

These Indians probably do. They seem to be an elite and their restaurants are fancy. Otherwise... I mean, you try to about places that are covered in flies, or that have a kid with diarrhea pooping right out front (I see this a lot), bit otherwise I don't think about it and have been sick for a total of about ten days in more than 800

10/6/2014 5:32:00 PM

Quote :

"Saturday was Yom Kippur and Eid al Adha, so naturally my Jewish girlfriend, Muslim friend, and I went to Garba, a Hindu dancing festival. It turns out there are a LOT of Indians in Cotonou."

that's hillarious.. Garba is done mostly by Gujaratis, wich I am; and I miss the festival most years. I went this year to show my girlfriend how Gujaratis do.

I always knew there were tons of Indians in East Africa due to the proximity, but did not know there were a bunch in West Africa. my mom was born in Tanzania and lived there and Zambia as a child (now that she's a naturalized US citizen, I wonder if that makes her and African American Indian), and my dad lived in Kenya and Zambia for a couple of years after college.

it should not surprise me though, Indians, particularly Gujjus, will go to the ends of the earth to make a rupee out of fifteen paise.

10/6/2014 6:29:09 PM

One of my closest friends in the states is a Gujarati guy, so I'd actually witnessed this kind of dance once before, at a baby shower of all things. The climax was the brother of the dad to be having to smack the (white) mother to be. He was not real enthusiastic about it

10/6/2014 6:44:49 PM

having to smack?

10/6/2014 7:18:01 PM

Yeah. I looked it up later and apparently it's a pretty common custom there. If the father has younger brothers, they're supposed to ritualistically bitch-slap the mother-to-be, to represent that they are jealous because their brother used to take care of them, but now has to take care of the kid instead.

It was funny to watch the younger brother, who was raised in America on the American principle of "it's pretty much never OK to slap a woman, let alone a woman who is eight months pregnant." He went up, blushed as much as a brown guy can, said "Sorry," and cracked her across the face.


---

I'm about to head off to a meeting at UNICEF (the same one from last week, it got postponed repeatedly). Got my pimp shirt on and no idea what I'm doing.

10/7/2014 3:10:16 AM

The UNICEF meeting alternated quickly between "depressing" and "somewhat heartening."

On the one hand, the UNICEF lady in charge seems to have a good idea about what's up. She's restraining the bad and overzealous ideas and trying to keep everybody in the land of shit that makes sense.

On the other hand, it was a little distressing to see how much overlap there is between all the different aid organizations. I'm not one of those "Dead Aid" apostles who think that all foreign assistance is bad, but Jesus, no wonder the Beninese have made an industry out of milking these organizations for money: at any given time there are five or six of them offering cash for the same thing.

It was also distressing and absurd how many people thought that there organization was primarily responsible for coordinating with other organizations. Every NGO, UN branch, and government aid group loves partnerships. It sounds good, like we're cooperating. But how much redundancy is built into this system? If, say, the German aid people and USAID are doing the same things in the same place, we're duplicating a lot of jobs and functions. The whole thing would benefit from streamlining, which the UN could theoretically do and I guess is trying to do in the person of this UNICEF lady, but it wont get very far.

10/7/2014 9:04:05 AM

Quote :

"If the father has younger brothers, they're supposed to ritualistically bitch-slap the mother-to-be, to represent that they are jealous because their brother used to take care of them, but now has to take care of the kid instead."

10/7/2014 1:16:49 PM

Quote :

"I wonder if that makes her and African American Indian"

hahaha

Quote :

"It was funny to watch the younger brother, who was raised in America on the American principle of "it's pretty much never OK to slap a woman, let alone a woman who is eight months pregnant." He went up, blushed as much as a brown guy can, said "Sorry," and cracked her across the face."

hahaha, wtf?

how hard are they smacking her?


___________

I mean, yeah, everybody knows that Africa is fucked up, with scope and severity that's hard to fathom.

Every time I click on this thread, though, I think I become aware of more fuckeduppedness regarding things that I had never even thought of as candidates for or avenues of fucking up.

10/7/2014 1:38:38 PM

Fuckeduppedness finds all avenues. Like water, it finds it's way in.

10/7/2014 1:43:08 PM

i've never seen or even heard of a face smacking ritual such as the one you described.. you sure they didn't just make that shit up cause they wanted a reason to smack a bitch?

..anywho, stay safe from dat 190% ebloa

10/7/2014 4:38:21 PM

Have your travel's influences your political outlook?

10/7/2014 6:46:02 PM

Quote :

"how hard are they smacking her?"

I'm wondering the same.

10/7/2014 9:55:38 PM

Quote :

"how hard are they smacking her?"

They're not trying to loosen teeth or anything, but it's harder than any American outside of Alabama would consider appropriate. She was game about it, though, and I'm sure if she'd said "No way" they would have let it go. I think she thought it was funnier than anybody else.

Quote :

"you sure they didn't just make that shit up cause they wanted a reason to smack a bitch?"

I subsequently used the ceremony as the basis for a paper in grad school, and came across the the smacking ritual in my research.

Quote :

"Every time I click on this thread, though, I think I become aware of more fuckeduppedness regarding things that I had never even thought of as candidates for or avenues of fucking up."

Ten minutes ago, I walked into my office. As I have every day since we moved to this new building, I have marveled at how modern and nearly American it seems. It has AC and reasonably fast internet. I've got a land line telephone (unheard of in village). Truly, I'd made it.

Then I started noticing a smell. It was, unquestionably, human shit. My office is as near to hermetically sealed as makes no difference, so it was coming from inside. Had I shit my pants without knowing it? Wouldn't be the first time. But no. It was on my shoe. On my way to work, I had stepped into a pile of human feces, deposited in the middle of the road.

Quote :

"Have your travel's influences your political outlook?"

Not really. I had already mellowed out a lot prior to leaving, and in fact I quit the Republican party over the gay marriage amendment just a few hours before I got the Peace Corps invitation letter.

I guess one way it changes, almost from day to day, in in terms of how libertarian (or not) I am. On the one hand, Benin is a perfect example of government at its worst. Hard not to want to shrink it, especially in a country that has Ministries for everything, including (this makes me laugh out loud just typing it) "Decentralization and Local Government."

On the other hand, in most cases the government doesn't actually do anything, and that vacuum has not created a flourishing, effective private sector. The government doesn't build roads in villages. Private individuals, then, take a bunch of tools out by the road and dig up a small area of it. Then they stop every passing vehicle and extort money from them, to pay for the "repairs" they are doing but have no reason to ever finish.

In the course of going between "slash the government" and "Jesus, can we get some government up in here?" I settle at pretty much where I've always been, which is "I'd rather have smart government than small government and a smart, small government is best of all, but fuck you if you want to privatize the fire department."

10/8/2014 3:39:33 AM

so what are your plans for your little USA vacation?

10/8/2014 8:23:41 AM

I don't have many and I want to keep it that way. Some people visit the states, they go camping and shit. Fuck that. My two years in village were camping. I want climate control, handicap toilets, and hot water.

My girlfriend has to fly all over the country seeing people. Nah. Nah, son. I like flying but I'm not spending my vacation traveling around. I even nixed an offer from my parents to go to the beach, partly because it's traveling and partly because I live at a beach that is swimmable year-round.

This brings me to my parents, by which I mean my mother. On the one hand, I'm a grown-ass man who will be very nearly 30 at the time of this visit. On the other hand, mom has helped me out a lot since forever but especially since I've been in Africa, so I kind of owe her. My deciding to stay for a third year nearly drove her over the edge, so part of the compromise is that my home stay will mostly involve me staying at home. Which is fine by me. Home means good, free, nearly infinite food. It means a bunch of DVR shows saved up and a playstation with some games I need to catch up on. It means real internet. I don't mind staying at home.

That isn't to say I will be completely trapped, and short trips out of the woods of Randolph County are on the list of the few things I am definitely doing, which include:

1) Getting Bojangles at the airport (my folks will meet me with some) and very frequently after that
2) A poker/games night in Durham, where my buddy par0d0xe and the lovely katiencbabe live. Apparently they have a kid I'm supposed to meet or whatever.
3) Attached to that trip, a detour into Raleigh, if only to hit a couple of restaurants.
4) Two welcome parties at my parents' house, one for stodgy relatives and one for friends / relatives who still drink. Fortunately this does not include my mom. The last time my friends came over and she still imbibed, she played asshole and never have I ever with them. I learned things I did not want to know.
5) Meeting any TWW people in Greensboro, Durham, or Raleigh who feel so inclined. One beer buys you all the Africa stories you can stand.
6) Play video games.
7) Did I mention Bojangles?
8) Also, Mexican / Chinese / Korean / Vietnamese / Thai food and sushi

10/8/2014 8:58:25 AM

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/08/peace-corps-applications-rise/16905369/

10/8/2014 1:09:18 PM

^^I'd like to meet up. I'm in North Raleigh now but could possibly come downtown. If we can get some folks from the ol' program together, too, that would be nice.

10/8/2014 1:17:25 PM

The changes to the application process kind of irk me. I'm not sure that it should be easy to get into Peace Corps. Also, truth be told, if I could have picked my country of service I would not have picked Benin. I would have picked somewhere I spoke the fucking language, so Central / South America (where i was originally nominated to go anyway).

---

Last night was poker night. A Lebanese friend hosted, and for the first time since I arrived in Benin, it was a social event with no women present. Honestly it was a relief. Also a relief: he has money, and spends that money on a well-stocked bar. It was the first time since undergrad that I consumed jaergermeister, and now I remember why it's been so long.

Today is the first day in my life I've showed up late to work because of the previous night's activities. Fortunately, the one perk about this job (other than unmonitored, unfettered internet access) is that nobody gives a shit. They'll take any excuse, no matter how flimsy. At least once a week I peace out at lunch because "I need to take care of Peace Corps stuff at the office." Normally I'd feel guilty, but this job is awful and they only use me about 5% of the time anyway -- it was outright said to me that my primary duties are translating the quarterly report into English (which I can only do, you guessed it, once a quarter) and simply existing, because having a PCV on staff makes it easier to get grants.

10/9/2014 6:07:13 AM

living the dream

10/9/2014 8:18:59 AM

Why do people shit in the street? I feel like I shouldn't be shocked, but you're in the city now and I guess I just expected more from the city folk. I get annoyed with my dog when she shits in the yard instead of the woods because I think my DOG should have enough sense to not shit where she plays. Maybe you should start up your outhouse project again to help combat stepping in shit and ebola.

10/9/2014 10:10:14 AM

It's because my neighborhood is a really weird mix of wealth and poverty. My apartment building, for example, is NICE. I look in my neighbor's apartments, and they are furnished just like you'd see in America. They all have cars.

Step right outside the gate, and it's a flooded mud road adjacent to a swamp. People live in that swamp. Poor, poor people.

That said, I think there are some unspoken rules about what makes an area suitable for pooping. Another of the drawbacks of my neighborhood are the pigs, or more specifically, their shit. Pigs shit a lot and they shit everywhere. Pig shit poses pretty much the same risk as people shit, so if it's going to be all over the ground, why bother holding back yourself?

More broadly, the rule seems to be "dirt roads = ok for pooping =/= paved roads." And even on dirt roads, it's only OK if you're a kid. The only outdoor public space grownups can poop on is the beach. It really kills the mood when you're sitting under a palm tree, drinking a cold beer, watching the sunset...and then some guy twenty yards away from you goes past the tide line, digs a little hole, and fills it with his fresh feces.

10/9/2014 10:34:35 AM

man, i want to shit in the street.

[Edited on October 9, 2014 at 12:57 PM. Reason : SHITTING IN THE STREET! DE DA DE DA DET!!!!! ]

10/9/2014 12:55:21 PM

Quote :

"a country that has Ministries for everything, including (this makes me laugh out loud just typing it) "Decentralization and Local Government." "

hahahahaha

Quote :

""I'd rather have smart government than small government and a smart, small government is best of all, but fuck you if you want to privatize the fire department." "

I'd say that's pretty representative of my philosophy as well.

10/9/2014 4:22:59 PM

This is one of my absolute favorite threads on TWW. An engaging read. A++++ would read again.

10/9/2014 7:12:54 PM

For a lark, I decided to go to the Benin government website and look at a list of all the ministries. Here they are, translated directly for your amusement:

State Ministry in Charge of Secondary Teaching and Scientific Research
Minister of Development, Economic Analysis, and Forecasting
Ministry of the Economy and Finance (for some reason not in charge of economic analysis and forecasting)
Ministry of National Defense
Ministry of the Interior, Public Security, and Religious Affairs
Attorney General, Minister of Justice, Legislation and Human Rights, Spokesman of the Government
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, African Integration (it's a country in Africa full of Africans, how much more integrated can it get?), the Francophonie, and Beninese Abroad
Ministry of Public Works and Transport
Minister of Secondary Education, the Technical and Vocational Training, Retraining and Youth Opportunities (How this is different from the first one, I don't know)
Ministry of Preschool and Primary School Teaching
Ministry of Health
Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Fish
Minister of Labour and Public Service, the administrative and institutional reform for social dialogue
Minister for the Management of Climate Change, Reforestation, and the Protection of Forest Resources
Minister for the Environment, Housing, and Urbanization
Ministry of Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Research, Water, and Renewable Energy Development
Ministry of Culture, Literacy, Handicrafts and Tourism
Ministry for the Evaluation of Public Policy and Programs for Denationalization
Ministry for Communication and Communication Information Technology
Ministry of Microfinance and Employment for Youths and Women
Ministry of Youth, Sports, and Leisure
Minister of Industry, Commerce, and Small and Medium Enterprises
Minister of Family, Social Affairs, National Solidarity, the Disabled Persons and Pensioners
Minister of Decentralization, Local Governance, Administration and Planning
Minister for Inter-Institutional Relations
Minister of Maritime Economy and Port Infrastructure
Minister in the Presidency of the Republic in charge of Policy Coordination of implementation of the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals

So that's, what, 28 cabinet-level departments? And I for one think we need a Secretary of Youth, Leisure, and Sports in the US. I nominate myself. I'm not on top of sports too much but I'm still in my 20s and I've got leisure down pat.

10/10/2014 3:32:23 AM

I want to be Secretary of handicrafts

10/10/2014 9:28:27 AM

There are supposed to be elections for local government positions soon, but apparently Yayi Boni announced last week that there's no money for them. How much money they could possibly cost, I don't know. Yayi, you pay to print the ballots, and I'll buy the cardboard boxes and ink pads. There. Election had.

It's funny, in a sad sort of way. The CIA says Benin's total government expenditures last year were $1.8 billion. Benin is comparable in territory and population size to North Carolina, which spent $51.4 billion.

---

It turns out that we moved into our new office largely because it is in the same neighborhood as President Boni's house. We don't have any particular affinity for the man, but it turns out that the President's neighborhood rarely gets water and power cuts.

---

Cotonou improves the food situation in a lot of ways, but the quality of street food has sadly declined. Street meat is a lot harder for me to find, and more expensive when I do. The red sauce that goes on everything in Benin is, I guess due to regional variation, watery and bland everywhere I go in the city. The selection of fried snacks has changed, and not for the better.

On the plus side, pineapples are to be had year-round, and they're one of the few things that isn't more expensive. And there is now a level of food between "roadside stand" and "nice restaurant," in the form of cafeterias. Village had them, too, but they only ever had spaghetti with omelets, a combination that wore thin real fast. Here almost every cafeteria has couscous with meat sauce for 800-1000 CFA, around $2. It's a big increase from the 100-300 CFA meal I could get from a stand but a hell of a lot less than the 3500-7000 I can spend on a restaurant before drinks.

10/14/2014 6:19:33 AM

Because I'm bored at work, I'm going to start posting "Grumpy's Peace Corps Benin Cookbook." Give you some idea of what I ate in village and often continue to eat here.

Peanut Curry Animal Sauce

You will need:
1 Medium/large onion
3-4 Medium tomatoes (in village, more often 10 tiny, oddly phallic tomatoes)
1 Big-assed spoonfull of peanut butter (organic, freshly crushed peanuts with no sugar is what I had, who knows if Jiffy would work)
1-2 handfulls of cooked meat (I preferred chicken or pork in this, but goat and bush rat are acceptable)
2-3 green chillies and/or Sriracha (does letting the Sriracha sit in a care package while it flies all over the world for three months age it?)
Curry Powder

Chop up the onions and tomatoes. Don't worry too much about how fine you cut them. Throw them into the frying pan. Add meat. If you're using chillies, dice them and add them. Leave the seeds if you're feeling frisky. Alternatively, add Sriracha or whatever other hot sauce. Add peanut butter and curry powder to taste. Stir until everything is reasonably well-distributed. Turn on heat and keep stirring. The tomatoes will let out a lot of water at first that will help dilute the PB and coat everything, and then you want to let that cook down. Serve on rice or add cooked spaghetti noddles and stir in.

Hobo Teriyaki Sauce

Honey, soy sauce, and ginger powder. I haven't been measuring exact ratios but these three things together, with no cooking or fancy dry rice wine, will get you close enough to the real deal that only obnoxious foodies and Japanese people will know the difference. In Benin, honey is expensive, but this is one of the things I would happily use it for. There's one place in the whole country that sells actually teriyaki sauce, and it goes $12 for a smallish bottle.

I will add more with time.

10/14/2014 9:45:00 AM

A volunteer in a northern town just got evacuated because it burned down. A mob went crazy and started setting fire to shit because "there was a witch, and the mayor has been protecting the witch."

Another volunteer has had the worst medical luck you can have without dying. She had a motorcycle accident that damaged her shoulder almost a year ago. They've tried to manage it here, but earlier this week gave up and sent her back to DC for real doctors. In the intervening time she's had a number of parasite, including one that caused giant red bumps to form along her arm as it moved up towards her trunk, and another that laid eggs behind her eye, giving rise to larvae that started to eat her cornea.

---

Our boss, the country director, is kind of a weird cat. He obviously has some stuff going for him in the brain department, but sometimes talking to him you'd think he was profoundly stoned, or maybe senile. Take this exchange from a couple of weeks ago:

Me: Afternoon, sir.
Him: Are you my intellectual brother?
Me: Uh...(waits for clarification, receives none)...yeah, I guess I am.
Him: (Smiles broadly, walks away without saying a word)

Every time a volunteer officially finishes their service, the office does a little ceremony. One of the staff bangs a cow bell to let everyone know to go outside -- staff, visiting PCVs, everybody. Then, starting with bossman, everybody says a few words about the departing volunteers, who then make their own little speech. Everybody bangs the cowbell before and after speaking. I don't know why.

But the boss's contributions are usually (and unintentionally) hysterical. Half the time, he looks at the PCV and says, "Yeah...you're one of the ones who fell through the cracks, I never really got to know much about you." Direct quote.

Or, he'll start off talking about their service and start drifting into a totally unrelated subject, which is how we get English teachers looking confused while he talks about improved rice farming for five minutes.

But one of the weirdest things is that the boss and his family are part of the relatively small expat community in Cotonou, so we know and socialize with his kids. His son is about my age and a pretty chill guy, who plays poker and is connected with the music scene here so that we get access to good stuff. That's all great, but it's intensely awkward -- for me, anyway -- when the poker game or party is at his (and thus my boss's) house. Even when the boss isn't around, it feels like a trap.

Even more awkward? His daughter is hot. She knows that she is hot. She wears clothes designed to make sure you cannot forget that she is hot. Interactions with my boss are difficult enough already, as you can tell from the above. They are not improved by my brain screaming "DON'T LOOK AT HIS DAUGHTER'S CHEST! DON'T LOOK AT HIS DAUGHTER'S CHEST! YES, I KNOW IT'S MAGNIFICENT, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LOOK AT IT!"

From what I gather, my girlfriend has the same problem.

10/17/2014 4:32:38 AM

You seem like you're having too good of a time for being in 3rd world Africa.

You need some more parasites or something.

Also, are you worried at all that some Americansc might succeed in getting the gov to institute a travel ban before your flight?

10/17/2014 6:11:42 AM

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"Also, are you worried at all that some Americansc might succeed in getting the gov to institute a travel ban before your flight?"

Not in the sense that they will prevent me from coming home, no. Any travel ban will necessarily have to have exceptions for Americans in the region -- including the US military personnel currently working in the affected countries to contain the outbreak.

My bigger concern -- the main personal concern of all PCVs in West Africa -- is that I will eventually be evacuated and prevented from continuing my work.

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"You seem like you're having too good of a time for being in 3rd world Africa."

Yeah, it's kind of sad -- I had all of my good Africa stories when I was in village but had no internet to share them. Now that I have internet, I'm in a city so a lot of my experiences aren't so "African."

I commute to an office and sit in front of a computer all day, doing not-terribly-interesting work at the moment (translating a SWOT analysis of the pineapple industry in Benin). The day ends, and I either eat at a tolerably good restaurant or commute home and cook food that isn't all that different from what you'd eat in America -- though with nothing but a gas stovetop, that is frequently a lengthier process involving some ingenuity. Walk the dog, go to bed, repeat the next day.

I would love it if people had questions about anything, give me something specific to respond to and talk about. My daily life just at the moment doesn't provide the wealth it once did.

10/17/2014 6:19:29 AM

Is yoru working on pineapples a coincidence? Because I seem to recall that you've acquired a love for them in Africa.

What happened with your girlfriend, if I may ask? Is that still going on? I was happy to read about you fucking her 12 times in a given weekend, iirc.

Really broad question, but in what ways have you found African morality to differ from morality in the States? Are there areas in which you think Africa's got a lot to teach us?

Have you met any internet scammers?

Please don't feel any compulsion to answer all or any of these; I'm just blabbering out poor material for you to work with.

10/17/2014 7:19:46 AM

I don't think this was covered in February, so I'm just going to leave this here:

http://geneqbenin.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/gsp-tomato-conservation-training/

Follow the link for a pic of Ian. Don't want to kill his internet.

[Edited on October 17, 2014 at 7:26 AM. Reason : ]

10/17/2014 7:25:31 AM

he has real internet now and/or is blocking images

here i'll post it

10/17/2014 8:06:05 AM

Yeah, I have big boy internet at work and don't use the 3g anymore.

Quote :

"Is yoru working on pineapples a coincidence? Because I seem to recall that you've acquired a love for them in Africa."

It is a coincidence. The USDA, I think announced that there was a bunch of money to be had for pineapple stuff in three countries, including Benin. My boss, who is single-minded in her obsession with finding new funding sources, quickly realized that one of the guys in the office is a pineapple expert who would make a great "head of party" (whatever that is). In order to sell the folks in Washington on that, though, all of his stuff has to be in English. Wednesday I translated his 12 page resume, in addition to hacking it down into a manageable 3 page format. Today I got his big paper analyzing the pineapple industry in Benin and was told to translate it.

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"What happened with your girlfriend, if I may ask?"

She's still around, we both live and work in Cotonou now. And though I don't remember talking about quantity of fucking on here ( ) one aspect of living in the same town is that we don't have to frantically get in as much sex as possible once or twice a month when we see each other, we can spread it out over the week.

We do not live together, for a variety of reasons; Peace Corps wouldn't really like it, but more importantly, village made both of us dependent on having personal space and alone time. So just like my job here will help me transition to a "real work" environment, this time in the same town will let us adjust to having each other around all the time without throwing everybody into a cohabitation situation that might blow up.

Quote :

"Really broad question, but in what ways have you found African morality to differ from morality in the States? Are there areas in which you think Africa's got a lot to teach us?"

A lot of African morality would make perfect sense to a fire-and-brimstone Baptist. Gays are bad, women who have sex before marriage are all whores, the devil is very real and active on Earth, shit like that. It is not tolerant of change or new things. Even between the religions here (Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Vodun, animist) there isn't a lot of difference, morality-wise, because regardless of what they call themselves the vast majority of people here are working with a fundamentally Vodun/animist view of the world.

The moral weight assigned to things is also different here; theft is viewed as much more severe than in the states, for example.

Do they have something to teach us? Sure. Family and community are important in a way that would be unfamiliar to most westerners. There's an attitude of rolling with the punches and sticking it out through the hard times that I wish could be applied to some of the self-centered, If-this-gets-inconvenient-I'll-just-quit attitude that a lot of people back home seem to take to marriages or work.

Quote :

"Have you met any internet scammers?"

Every single person behind a monitor in an internet cafe here is an internet scammer, so I'm sure I have.

10/17/2014 9:48:11 AM

What are you going to do with your dog while you're visiting home?

10/18/2014 12:01:09 PM

There is an expat who will be around the whole time who is willing to dog sit. She isn't my first choice - pretty dumb and someone recently set her boyfriend's car on fire in front of her house - bit she's around, knows dogs, and I don't have a ton of choice.

10/18/2014 8:43:06 PM