Au revoir!

My Beninese adventure is almost over, so this will be my last post. Thank you to all of you who followed my blog over the last two years. I hope to see many of you shortly in the US. Au revoir!

Goodbye!

Tobacco

When I was visiting a farm a few weeks ago, I got to learn how they prepare tobacco. Essentially, the leaves are woven into braids, hung up to dry, then pounded into powder. In northern Benin, tobacco is consumed by being snorted up the nose.

As for cigarettes, there are packs of commercially packaged cigarettes for sale in village. Curiously enough, it is nearly always Peulh men who smoke cigarettes. Bariba men rarely do, and it is socially unacceptable for any woman to smoke.

The braids of tobacco are hung up to dry

A bundle of tobacco braids

 

A man pounding the dried tobacco into powder

Loose tobacco

Sam Girls' Camp

A few weeks ago, I led yet another girls' camp, this time in Sam. We covered the same material as the Sonsoro camp, but this time we invited every girl in the Sam Middle School, and nearly every girl came (around 50 girls). Another innovation was that we brought four girls from the Sonsoro camp and had them run many of the sessions. We are hoping that this experience will allow them to take a leading role in subsequent editions of the Sonsoro camp (when I will not be around to coordinate).

The Sam camp was a roaring success, and my co-organizer (the person who originally asked me to do a camp in Sam) is planning to run such a camp twice a year indefinitely. At the request of some parents, he also wants to organize a few days of camp for local middle school boys.

Below are a few pictures from the camp:

Two girls from Sonsoro are teaching the campers how to make a fuel-efficient mud stove

A Sonsoro girl is leading the group in song at our closing ceremony

We celebrated the end of the camp with traditional local dancing, accompanied by drummers

The four girls from Sonsoro and my camp co-organizer

Cabane

 A few months ago, I decided to construct a millet stalk structure in front of my house in order to have a shady spot to relax during the hot season. Below are the photos of the construction of my cabane.

My friend is using a special tool to dig holes for the posts.

Using a hatchet to chop the posts down to size

The framework has been set up and a millet stalk roof has been installed.

Chopping the millet stalks to the appropriate length using a machete

A local child tying the millet stalks together

Two people work simultaneously to tie the stalks together

My neighbor boy trying to help

The finished product! All of the walls are attached like curtains, meaning they can be rolled up or pushed aside

Flora and Fauna of Benin: The Lorax Tree: Part 3

Loyal followers of my blog might remember that I posted photos last year of a tree I dubbed the Lorax Tree because it looked like it belonged in a Dr. Seuss book. Last Friday, I finally had a chance to take a picture of what this tree actually produces, and it turns out that that has a story of its own. Also, I learned the real name of the tree: the nere tree (pronounced nay-ray).

As you may remember from last year, after producing something that looks like orange Koosh balls, the tree produces large green pods. Inside the pod is a bright yellow material (as seen in the picture below) that seems somewhat like cotton or styrofoam.

A girl eating the sweet yellow substance that her family harvested in large quantities from the pods

Within the yellow cotton-like material are small brown things that are prepared for transformation into what the Beninese call 'mustard'.

These small brown things are separated out and collected

The small brown things are cooked and then set out to dry.

Dried and ready for pounding

Then they are pounded with a mortar and pestle and eventually formed into a round disc, which is sold in the market as 'mustard'.

The final product: "mustard"

This 'mustard' can be broken off into small chunks and added to sauces for extra flavor. In reality, it tastes nothing like mustard. You could really just consider it to play a role of a spice because it adds a new flavor to the sauce.


For those of you who never read my earlier posts on this tree or want a refresher, you can view them here:
Part 1: http://twoyearsasayovo.blogspot.com/2013/02/flora-and-fauna-of-benin-lorax-tree.html
Part 2: http://twoyearsasayovo.blogspot.com/2013/04/flora-and-fauna-of-benin-lorax-tree.html

Safari

A few weeks ago, I went on safari in Pendjari National Park in northwestern Benin. Below are some of the animals we spotted.

A crocodile calling out to a friend

Thirsty baboons come to the watering hole for a drink (note the baby on its mother's back).

While waiting outside the toilets at a hotel, I heard a noise and found this viper at my feet. It is apparently very venomous and dangerous. It was my most dangerous encounter of the trip.

The park is home to many antelope, which did not seem particularly exciting because many varieties look quite like deer.

Buffaloes resting in the shade

A warthog family

A lion getting ready to hunt

Hippos

Our guide and his car

An Announcement about Mail

Given the speed of transatlantic mail, anything sent to me from now onward is unlikely to reach me before my departure. If you had the intention of sending something, please do not waste your money on postage.

While I am on the subject, I would like to say that there are few things that make a Peace Corps volunteer happier than receiving mail. To those of you have have written to me or even sent packages over the last two years, you cannot imagine how much it meant to me. I always tried to write back after receiving mail, and I hope I expressed my gratitude sufficiently in those letters.

Thank you all very much.

Cashew Nuts

This time last year, I wrote about cashew fruit. When cashew season came around this time, I decided to experiment with the cashew nut itself, and I recruited a Beninese friend to help me.

Look closely and you can see a cashew nut hanging at the bottom of this cashew fruit.

These are the cashew nuts I collected from the ground beneath the cashew tree.

The cashew nuts are enclosed in a hard shell that must be removed to get at the nut. The shell contains a toxic substance, so it must be removed with a special process. There are actually several means of removing the nut, but in Benin, we use fire.

A can of nuts is perched on three rocks so that we can light a fire underneath.

My friend changed his mind and decided to use corrugated tin instead of the can in order to roast all the nuts at once. Here, he is poking holes in the tin.

My friend has lit the fire under the tin. See that smoke? That is a toxic gas released by the burning shells.

The nuts are on fire! The oil in the shell is highly flammable.

My friend rubs the nuts in dirt to extinguish the fire and make them stop smoldering.

The next step, not pictured here, is to whack open the shells and extract the nut. After having been burned, the shells look like charcoal and are just as brittle. Inside is the nut.

Ultimately, our experiment did not produce many viable nuts. My friend said that he let the nuts burn too long.

As I shared in my cashew blog post last year, it is rare to find cashews for sale here because most cashews are sent to India for processing. I was told that when the Beninese do decide to process the cashew nuts, it is usually just done by teenage boys who enjoy a little pyromania. In particular, it is said that few women attempt to process cashew nuts because of the danger involved.

Pâte Rouge + Eba

Here are some more photos of local foods, one Beninese and one not.

Pâte rouge: this is a delicious variation on the traditional pâte (corn mush) that is the basis of Beninese diets. A bit of the sauce is mixed in with the pâte as it is being prepared, which is what gives it its red color and makes it so tasty. Then it is eaten with the sauce on the left. This sauce has tofu and hard-boiled eggs in it.

Eba: this is a Nigerian dish that is similar to pâte rouge. The major difference is that gari is used in place of corn flour. Gari is a sort of flour produced from cassava, a local tuber.

Snot

Here is a question I am sure you have never considered: how do the Beninese blow their noses?

Well, for starters, they do not use tissues. So the natural assumption would be that they use handkerchiefs, right? Wrong again.

The answer is actually pretty gross when you have grown up with American standards. If the snot is dry, they just pick their nose. It is perfectly normal to do that in public and no one is offended by it. If the snot is wet and mucus-y, they do a "snot rocket." For those of you who do not know this term, that means that you hold down one nostril with your finger and blow hard through the other nostril to send the snot flying out of your nose and onto the ground.

And what if your baby has a stuffy nose? Well, the technique I have seen is that the mom puts her mouth over the baby's nose, sucks the snot into her mouth, and then spits it out onto the ground.

You will be glad to know that on the subject of snot, I have retained my American habits and still use tissues to blow my nose. This is one area where I have decidedly refused to follow Beninese practices!

A Good Friend

A few days ago, a friend was at my house and he noticed a funny smell. He went investigating and discovered its source: a lizard nest in a large empty clay jar next to my house. The problem is, while the lizards easily got in the jar, they never figured out how to get out, and a few dozen had died in there. No wonder it reeked!

We were busy on a project and forgot about the jar, but remembered it the next day. The jar is too heavy for me to move, so my friend very willingly came back over to help. He lowered the jar onto its side, prodded out the few living lizards who were near death, then tilted the jar further to dump the dead lizard bodies onto a piece of plywood. He carried the plywood over to the fence and dumped the dead lizards on the other side.

Someone who offers to help you dispose of a heap of dead lizard bodies, now that is a true friend! I have found many people in my village who are exceptionally kind to me, going well beyond what I could have imagined. The northern Beninese are widely considered to be much kinder than the southern Beninese. In particular, the Bariba have a code of extreme generosity towards guests and foreigners. Not a bad place to be!

A few live lizards and many dead lizards, several of which had already disintegrated into dust

My friend ready to move the jar... it's much heavier than it looks!

Carrying the pile of lizard bodies to be dumped

A Mystery Vegetable

The vegetable below is one that I have encountered periodically on trips to Cotonou. It tastes somewhat like a potato and is fibrous. It is served prepared (cooked and sliced) as shown below and is always accompanied by slices of coconut. Since I had only seen it in this form, I have always wondered what the actual vegetable looks like before preparation and what it is called.

Then, a few weeks ago, I came across this vegetable in village and I finally got to see it in its natural form. The photo below shows the vegetable after it has been pulled out of the ground and boiled, but before it has been peeled and sliced.

Now that I have seen the vegetable in its natural form, that just leaves the question of its name. Do any of you Africa aficionados out there know what it is called?

A-Hunting We Went

On Thursday, I went hunting for the first time in my life. I had called a friend in the late morning to see if he could help me with a project at home, but he was unavailable because he had plans to hunt, so I convinced him to let me tag along.

My friend warned me in advance that there would be a lot of walking, yet I was unprepared for the death march it turned out to be. We were out during the hottest part of the day, from 12:30 to 3:30 pm, in triple-digit heat under the direct sun. We walked at a fast pace, the fastest I could walk without jogging. The terrain was rugged nearly the entire way and most of it was through plant life with thorns and burrs. I was wearing sandals and capris, as I always do, and my feet got sliced so much that they were bleeding most of the time and I had to pick splinters out of my feet when I finally got home.

Given that I was already exhausted simply from walking so quickly under the hot sun, I could not fathom how the others found the energy to run at prey when they spotted it. There were perhaps 40 people in our hunting party, along with 10 or so dogs, and the group spread out to cover more territory. Each person was armed with a few branches, each 2.5 feet long, and often a slingshot. The branches were often weighted on one end with a knot of wood, and when prey was spotted, these batons were flung into the air, spinning round and round like a boomerang. After a few batons had struck the prey, often, but not always, a dog would charge in to finally catch the animal.

Hunters running after an animal that has been spotted

Ultimately, most people in our hunting party seemed to have caught something, either a rabbit or bird, from what I saw. My friend killed two animals. He said he usually eats his kills, but sometimes he sells them instead. I came home with nothing, as I intended. I had simply wanted to witness the hunt.

Two hunters displaying their kills: a rabbit for the man on the left and a bird (somewhat hidden by his hand) for the man on the right

The next day, I was fascinated to discover that my participation in the hunt was the talk of the town. Several people told me that they heard I had gone hunting and asked if it was true. Only men hunt in Sonsoro, which made my participation even more unusual. One woman told me that I should never go hunting again because as a woman, I have no business doing so. That, of course, only made me want to go hunting again to prove a point, but given how miserable I found the experience, I think my hunting days are indeed over.

Benin on Jeopardy!

"Benin There" was a category on Jeopardy! last night. Do you know the answers?

$800

Majestic elephants & this scavenger, Canis Aureus, share W National Park, named for the shape of bends of the Niger River

$1000

If a tree grows in Benin, it might be the karite, which produces the skin restorer called “shea” this

$600

Vodun, still the faith of many in Benin, came from the area to the Western hemisphere, where we call it this

$400

On a December morning, your sinuses may be irritated by a harmattan, this, but it only lasts until March

They ran out of time for the $200 question.

If you want to watch the episode yourself, here is the YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrI3kfFMLsk

Sonsoro Girls' Camp

Last June, I wrote about a girls' camp hosted in Kandi by the region's Peace Corps volunteers. I was very pleased with the camp, yet disappointed to only be able to send three girls, so this year I decided to host a girls' camp in village. This three-day village camp was held at the beginning of this week, and 29 girls attended.

In many regards, the camp followed the same format as the Kandi camp. We taught the girls about health (malaria, hygiene & sanitation, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, puberty, and more), we brought in guest speakers to inspire the girls to continue their education and pursue dynamic careers, and we threw in a few fun activities (friendship bracelets, frisbee, etc.).

However, I changed one major thing about the camp: I designed it so that it would be easier to replicate by my community even without a Peace Corps volunteer. This meant one major difference from the Kandi camp: no external funding. While the Kandi camp was funded with a $2000 grant, I intentionally had no grant and instead sought community donations. We saved money by holding the camp in village (meaning no money needed for lodging, transport, or food), and we received donations of t-shirts for each girl, free snacks for the last day, free use of a sound system and generator for a post-camp party, and more.

Another innovation is that I turned my star camper from the Kandi camp into my assistant. We met weekly to plan this camp and she helped me develop the schedule and decide which guest speakers to invite. During the actual camp, she taught and led songs and games, conducted a lesson on malaria, and provided organizational support.

Overall, the camp was a roaring success. Some members of the community are already discussing how to run such a camp every year (without the help of foreigners, Peace Corps or otherwise). Now that's the kind of sustainable development we are supposed to be promoting as Peace Corps volunteers!

Here are some photos from the camp:

The girls are making friendship bracelets.

The girls just finished making a mud stove. This design saves trees by using less wood (as fuel) than the regular model.

Our guest speaker is singing with the girls.

The girls are performing a skit about mosquito nets during our closing ceremony.

Another improvement I made to the camp model was to invite the girls' parents to the closing ceremony. The parents are seated on the left while the girls sing on the right.