Bonne Année!! Happy Deux Mille Onze, everyone! My year so far has been a series of ups and downs, mainly a function of just trying to get used to living and working in Mogou, mais on va se débrouiller (I’ll figure it out).
Eloise caught some sort of bug that wiped out almost all of our chickens and she died before New Years Eve. Luckily, Affaires and I had very strategically planned a CVD election meeting in a neighboring village a couple days before la fête, and they sent us back with 2 roosters, a chicken, and a sack of yams as a thank you. On the ride back to Mogou, Affaires gleefully told me that a village once gave him a whole goat to thank him for his work. We divided it all up and I got one big rooster and about 6 yams. To clarify, yams here (ignams) are not like the cute lil orange potatoes. These things are about as long as half your arm and look like logs. They’re super starchy and white on the inside, and when boiled and pounded up, become fufu. The thought of trying to make a meal that other people would want to eat out of 6 yams, a live chicken, and no vegetables really scared me. Luckily, a few things happened. One, my boyfriend came up from his post in the south and brought bread as a gift for my neighbor. She then agreed to cook the rooster. Two, not very many people came to greet me on New Years, and the ones who did were my homologue (who just gave me a hard time about not knowing how to cook), Affaires (same choses), and packs of kids, to whom I handed out candy. Three, everyone was busy giving us food and didn’t seem to notice we weren’t giving much back. We had chicken and rice and sauce with actual tomatoes and cabbage in it…mmmm. And everyone seemed pretty appeased with my offers of café-rum.
After Bonne Année, things settled down quickly in Mogou, and I got a lil post-holiday blues-ish. Classes started up again, the teachers went back to work, and everyone got back in their routine. I don’t have a routine yet per se, so I was feeling a little lost and it took me a few days to figure out what to do with myself. The combined forces of Affaires and my Gamgam teacher gave me the kick in the bum that I needed, and helped me set up some meetings, which then turned into more meetings, and now I’m as busier than ever. Latrine projects for Mogou centre, fixing more broken water pumps, organizing sensibilisations for apprentices, and the girls’ club.
About the girls’ club: last week gave me a very clear idea of where we’re at. Some of the other PCVs in larger towns told me that they had a hard time with girls’ clubs because the girls say “they’ve heard it all before” about HIV/AIDS, self-confidence, goal setting, early pregnancy, etc. My girls have heard none of it. Now, this is at the middle school, but the average age of these girls is around 15 or 16. We’re now down from 48 to 47 girls out of 300 students—one girl is pregnant and dropped out last week. When I asked them what they wanted out of the club, they said songs and dancing and games. So, we’re going to do all of that, plus life skills and the importance of staying in school. Really hoping we don’t lose any more.
Another, un-work related project I’ve got going on is my latrine. Right now, it’s a hole in the cement about the size of my foot. While that’s manageabe-ish for the time being, it’s really only a matter of time before I’m sick and wishing the hole was a lot bigger than my foot. So I biked out to my landlord’s house in the next village over and asked him about making a seat.
“There’s no cement. There’s sand. How much do you need?” “No no, I need cement, and by me I mean the mason or someone because I’m not skilled in concrete.” “Well why do you want a seat? You have a hole.” “Yes but it’s not big enough. And I would really like a seat.” “Are you sick or something? What are you eating that you need a hole bigger than that?” “Please sir I just want a seat…” “Ok fine I’ll get you cement. But you’re paying the mason for this, tu comprends?”
The conversation was immediately turned around when all of a sudden the landlord’s wives and children rushed outside. They surrounded me and greeted me for 5 minutes straight, and then started strapping yams to the back of my bike. Grand merci! Yams for days! I tried frying up one yam, the smallest one, and then decided to give the rest away. With the yams from the CVD elections, I had a small harvest piling up in my kitchen. So I handed them out to my neighbors who loved them and then fed me dinner for the next 3 days. Everyone wins!
