Photos of Benin and Sonsoro, by Chandler Abraham

A few weeks ago, a volunteer and her American friend, Chandler Abraham, visited me in Sonsoro. The friend took some excellent photos with professional film and posted them on this link:

https://medium.com/adventure-fun-time/34003779ad5

The photos of Sonsoro start two-thirds of the way down (the captions will let you know when you are there). From that point, all the remaining photos are of Sonsoro except the last five.

While the captions are a guide, there are some inaccuracies, so beware!

Malaria: Worse Than I Knew

Now that the hot season has begun, few Sonsoro residents sleep under mosquito nets. Many people believe that they are hotter under mosquito nets and want to avoid any further discomfort. Others never bothered to move their mosquito nets when they started sleeping outside. Others yet do not see the need because they have observed that there are fewer mosquitoes. More than half of my health center colleagues have even stopped using their mosquito nets.

Unfortunately, malaria does not stop for the hot season, even though there are fewer cases than during the rains. We still treat people for malaria regularly at the health center. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however, because many people can contract malaria and not show any symptoms. They may never feel sick at all, but a mosquito who bites them can still spread the disease to others.

This week, we discovered just how ignorant we were about the malaria rate in Sonsoro. A researcher from Cotonou tested 200 schoolchildren, ages 2-9, for malaria. The children were randomly selected and not known to be sick. Of the 200 children, 82 tested positive for malaria! Interestingly, when he did the same test in Kandi, fewer than 15 of the 200 children tested positive.

What explains the difference? The researcher found that nearly all mosquitoes in Sonsoro are anophele, while few are anophele in Kandi. Anophele mosquitoes (specifically female) are the only type of mosquito that can transmit malaria. So while mosquito bites are relatively rare in Sonsoro during the dry season, if you are bitten, your chances of contracting malaria are excellent.

Though a 41% current infection rate sounds high, the worst is yet to come. Periodically, the researcher traps mosquitoes at night to analyze later. He found that during the dry season in Sonsoro, typically only 2-3 mosquitoes will try to bite a person at night. However, during the rainy season, the number is generally around 50! If 41% of schoolchildren in Sonsoro have malaria while mosquitoes are rare, I can only imagine what the rate will be when the mosquitoes are twenty times more numerous during the rainy season.

La Chaleur: The Hot Season

For the past month in northern Benin, we have been experiencing the most dreaded season of all: la chaleur (literally, "the heat"). I live in the part of the country with the most extreme temperatures. Triple digits are the rule, not the exception, and the daily highs are in the 110s. Houses are constructed in such a way that they retain heat, so indoors is the worst place to be, especially since there is no electricity to power even a fan. Nearly the entire population of Sonsoro now sleeps outdoors to escape the heat of their houses.

As for sweat, it streams down your body as if you are taking a shower. However, with the water shortages, actual bathing requires more effort. Many (most?) of the wells have dried up, and the water supply to the pumps (which are linked to a central water tower) is shut off for parts of every day. My water source, the pump at the health center, may be shut off for all but an hour of every day, and you never know when that hour will be. To make things worse, the nurse locks the pump and keeps the key for herself, so it requires a fair amount of good fortune to actually be able to get water. At many of the other pumps in town, there are regularly crowds of 20-30 people waiting for water.

Chaleur is the second half of the six-month dry season that started in November. There have been some advantages to the lack of rain: travel is easier/possible on roads that hold craters of water during the rainy season, and it is a great time for construction projects. The lack of rain, however, also means that everything is exceptionally dusty, and many people have come down with colds after inhaling too much dust.

A particularly interesting feature of the dry, often windy weather is the dirt devils, which are mini tornadoes that can spring up at a moment's notice. One school principal gave me the scientific explanation, then went on to explain that he does not believe it. In reality, he said, the dirt devil is a man who has transformed himself to do harm to others. You can attack it with a gun or knife to stop it. I asked him, therefore, why he was not rushing out to attack the dirt devil to keep it from hurting the children in his school courtyard. He explained that you must eat well to build up your strength before attacking it. Otherwise, it could kill you.

Now, for all that I have said about dry weather, I must make a confession: it rained today. I was shocked since last year's first rain reportedly did not come until mid-May. My colleague explained that if the rain is light, the heat and misery of chaleur will only amplify. On the other hand, the first heavy rain is supposed to break the heat and bring relief. Our first rain was light, but we had a small thunderstorm once the night came. Will that be enough to break the heat?

My Newest Neighbor

When I returned from Senegal last week, I discovered a new addition to my concession (concession = group of houses around a common courtyard). My neighbor had just given birth to a baby girl. I asked her name, but the name will not be announced until the baptism next week. If only my name (Bake) didn't mean "third daughter", I could try to convince them to name the new baby after me! If it had been a boy, I would have suggested Bakenduro ("Bake's husband").

Here she is:

Sidebar in Senegal: Life in the Village

Greetings from Senegal! I have been sent here for a root canal because Benin lacks adequate dental facilities, so I have been taking advantage of my free time outside of dental appointments (today will be my fifth) to explore this new country. Most of my time has been spent in Dakar, the capital city, which is home to a quarter of Senegal's 13 million residents. Dakar bears an uncanny resemblance to a European city with its modern buildings, nice cars, and bakeries that seem to have been transplanted directly from Paris. With the palm trees and beaches, it would be easy to believe that you were somewhere on the French Riviera.

However, since I suspected that not all Senegalese live this life of luxury, I accepted a Senegal Peace Corps volunteer's offer to get a glimpse of rural Senegalese life by visiting her village. As expected, life in her village of 400 is radically different from Dakar.

The Peace Corps standard in Senegal is to live with a host family. The volunteer has his/her own small hut within the family complex, but the hut is simply a bedroom with a latrine and shower area behind it. The volunteer eats all his/her meals with the family. Even though Senegal is a former French colony and schooling is in French, one of the local languages, Wolof, has become the lingua franca. Volunteers learn Wolof during their first few days in Senegal and then immediately switch to learning the local language of their future village. The village I visited was a Wolof village and the volunteer spoke Wolof fluently. When I arrived, I was given a local name (first and last): Awo Lo.

Senegal boasts 260 Peace Corps volunteers, second only to Ukraine in the number of volunteers. Volunteers intervene in health, business, but mostly agriculture. The volunteer I visited was an agriculture volunteer herself.

Below are some photos of the village.

Inside the volunteer's hut, which is only as big as what you see here

Part of the courtyard where the volunteer lives with her host family. Some family members live in the building on the left; the volunteer's hut is the white building with a grass roof on the right.

A biogas digester that the volunteer made with her counterpart. The gas will collect in the tire tube (hanging on the right), and then it can be used as cooking fuel.

A view of some of the fields where the volunteer and the villagers work

The family eating "breakfast" together at noon. Eight of us ate out of this bowl, some with hands and some with spoons. This meal was millet with milk, butter, and sugar.

Ataya, the tea that concludes breakfast. It comes in three rounds: the first is very strong and somewhat sweet, the second is weaker and sweeter, and the third is weaker and sweeter yet. I noticed that many Senegalese have terrible teeth, and I wonder if it is because of their high sugar diet. The Beninese are the opposite: generally good teeth and a low sugar diet.

Photos: Food - Part III

Cassava flour porridge for when the Beninese don't feel like cooking: mix cassava flour with water and sugar, then eat... no heating necessary

Homemade "African couscous" from corn flour, plus a few cooked veggies and an egg

A beignet: a fried flour dough ball

These frozen treats are omnipresent in Sonsoro and come in multiple flavors: lemon, orange, hibiscus, etc. You rip off a corner of the plastic baggie with your teeth and suck out the liquid. It's the local Flavorice!