Hey all~

I miss you all!! This is so long, so please bear with me...I tried smooshing a whole month into one email. I dont have much internet access but I still love emails. Theyll just get checked sporatically.

So I just love this. I love being here. It's such a neat thing that I was able to define myself enough to find the right things to do and be where I wanted to be. Thanks to my freakout last fall where I discovered a lot about myself. And I survived thanks to my roommies Jenn and Mary, Deborah and my mom. I love you guys! I don't think I've ever quite been at that position before. Until now, I've always done something because it was the next step. And with this, it wasn't the next step. It was off on left field and yet, still so right.

My host family has been nothing short of amazing in helping me feel right at home. Papa has the best laugh ever, as do most of the Beninoise. But his is that much better just because of his energy level. He's the most hyper person I've ever met! He works at one of the governmental offices where he works with AIDS education and I'm not sure what else. Mama works in the market, so she's on a four-day schedule of traveling to Togo to buy corn, peanuts and beans. She's gone for a night, comes back to spend a day around the house then is off to the big market in Azove selling what she bought in Togo. She also comes back with bananas for my breakfast and plantains to fry up for the fam. These two things are by far my favorite food here. Everything else was good the first ten times I ate it, but after eating practically the same thing (lots of starch, a little meat, and a spicy tomato sauce or a salty collard greens sauce) for every single meal, I'm really ready to move on and cook for myself. They have no concept of a balanced diet. They're just content that they eat. And they definitely make sure I eat enough. I get hassled at every meal about how little I eat as they pile on more.

These people are so full of conflicting perceptions and resulting paradoxes. I can't help but wonder what they would think about the existing quirks in American culture. Their surface and material priorities make no sense. Why would you have more than one house if you don't even have running water in the first (much less air conditioning, a flush toilet, etc.)? Why have stereo systems nicer than the one I've got back at home but eat the same, cheap and not-very-nutritious food everyday? These are things I have yet to discover. Papa begins by being a proud Catholic with only one wife who he really loves. Except they never go to church. After assuring me that he loves Mama, he asks what he would have to do to get an American wife. And he has recently revealed his real beliefs in voodoo only after I was exposed to some of it with training. These are things I have yet to understand.

So they are obsessed with being clean, but I've never been so dirty or felt so nauseated eating in my entire life. I wrap my pagne around my body, prepare my bucket with nice, cool water, and walk across the farm-like courtyard of a deep red-orange dirt full of goats, chickens, ducks, and pigeons. I always feel covered in the dirt. The courtyard is filled each day with orange peels, banana peels and dirty water from laundry and dishes as everything is cleaned outside in the courtyard. The women pee standing up against the back wall. The world is your trash can here. They throw everything on the ground, even in their own courtyard. I asked where the trash can was and my sisters looked at me like I was crazy. The animals eat most of it. Then each morning, the dirt is nicely swept. Somehow, it's "cleaned". So, I walk across all of this to the most awful "bathroom" ever. The girls' bathroom at 4am after a frat party doesn't even compare. At night I have my flashlight to find whatever insects happen to be visiting with me at the moment, and all I can do is stare at them, trying to make sure the damn things aren't coming after me. I'm sure latrines really don't need to be this bad. But to give a standard, I would like to say that I live with a middle to upper-middle class family. So, then I take a bucket shower, which I really like cause they're cold, refreshing, and they remind me of laps at Barton Springs. But then I walk right back through the farm, my feet are quickly covered in the world's trash pile (trying to wear anything other than flip flops really is ridiculous because of the heat). I begin sweating again, and I'm wrapped up in my pagne that will never really be clean for the next two years because it's been hand-washed and is impossible to get all the soap out of.

There's Papa who tells me that I need to shower twice a day. Mama that points out my zits and freckles everyday, asks if I'm sick, has me explain both phenomena to her and that I don't need to go to the hospital. Then she is only satisfied if I agree to get medicine from the pharmacy. Yesterday, we made sure all of my clothes were nicely ironed (with a charcoal iron) so that I would be presentable when I left the house. Appearances are apparently important. But I'm leaving with wet hair, no makeup, dirty feet, soap in my clothes, sweating, etc. You get the point.

On the other hand, no-one washes their hands after they go to the bathroom. No-one washes their hands before preparing food. Everyone always shakes hands with everyone. No-one washes their hands before eating; only after. And they eat with their hands. I was fine eating for the first couple of weeks until I discovered a little more behind everything. Cooking with my sisters showed me that the same flies that hang around the nastier-than-frat-party-"bathroom" also hang around the food that is being prepared that is not covered or refrigerated. At an informal restaurant, I was brought in the back to order some cheese and bread (because I'm dairy deprived) where they brought in a huge bowl of freshly slaughtered chickens and the cook was in the middle of cleaning out fish for the daily special. A kitchen that could not pass a US inspection is not even in the same league as the "cleanliness" of this kitchen. In the market, it doesn't matter if bread, tomatoes, peanuts, whatever tumbles to the ground. Just pick it back up and put it back in the pile. Everyone touches the food they are inspecting whether they think they're going to buy it or not. Who remembers the dentist check in elementary school? Brush your teeth, then put that red dye in your mouth to see if you got all of the "bugs" out of your mouth, and your shocked that because you didn't floss, you're teeth are stained red. Now imagine being able to do that at a market in Benin. Yes, nauseating.

On the other hand, I now understand (and am actually thankful) that everything is prepared hot. Everything I eat is plunged into a pot of peanut oil or palm nut oil. Everything is hot and everything is oily. The meat is always cooked until its tough. It's easier to prepare food without burning it when you're cooking over with fire or charcoal with oil, and cooking everything thoroughly guarantees that you won't get sick from the food.

So as far as "working" goes, our training is structured with language, cross culture and technical sessions. The French kicked in much easier than I expected it to. After letting my ear get used to hearing the Beninoise accent, I've been able to communicate just fine. For now, I'm working with ten mechanics that know how to offer their service but have nothing resembling a business. Not only is it interesting to learn about how politics and businesses work in an informal sector (laws, taxes and contracts are all a joke), but its discovering all this and their perspectives through French: it's my second language and for most of them, it's their third or fourth!

For my two cents on my future post, I just asked for an unstructured job in a relatively pretty part of the country. And I ended up with Save (with an accent over the "e", its pronounced sah-vay) as my post for the two years. It's a city of 35,000 people in the heart of great hills and "mountains" in central Benin, closer to the Nigerian border. The local language is Najot. If you check out Yahoo, it's one of three cities that you can check the weather for. It's in Lonely Planet too, but pretty much just says there's good rock climbing close by. I think I may even have the internet. I'll be the third business volunteer in the town which means I'll be closing up the project and my main goals will be to ensure that the projects started and ongoing are sustainable, as no-one will be replacing me. I can't wait to visit my village (if you can call a town of 35,000 a village)!

The origins of voodoo are from Benin. So for a cross cultural session last week, they brought in a traditional medicine doctor. I was chosen to bring in a chicken for the ceremony "a nice healthy, lively chicken" were the instructions. So there I am, wearing my new African outfit I just got back from the tailor, hiking up the skirt to ride my bike, and with a chicken dangling by its feet from my handle bars. This is just too much. So, I get there and the doctor explains how the invisible world works, how people can communicate over long distances and how he can cure people of unnatural sicknesses (these are the ones that an enemy provokes; AKA: you pissed someone off and they put a spell on you.) He asks me to kneel (how I was picked for this ordeal, I have no clue). He starts whispering to the chicken, then grabs it by the neck and swings it around my head, stops it and asks me to tell the chicken to take away all my sicknesses- in English. Weird. So I do. He swings it again, and I say it again, louder this time. This goes on four times until I think he broke the chicken's neck. The chicken almost shit on me, its eyes rolled back. I'm extremely disturbed at this point. He lays it down and it starts breathing. He asks me for money to give to the chicken, so I lay down 150 CFA in coins ($0.25), and I have to say With this money I buy your soul, three times. The crowd of uncomprehending Americans just stands and stares as the chicken struggles, flops around, and eventually dies. His soul, of course, leaving with all of the sickness within my body. So we practically tortured a chicken as a sacrifice for me, and I wasn't even sick. It was so messed up. I can't even begin to describe the cloud I walked through for the next day and a half. And now that I told the story to my family, they think I'm all initiated into voodoo and assume I'd believe it, so they want to do all these ceremonies for me. Yes, the Catholic family.

Now nothing that I have to say is going to top that story and I've definitely gone on too long. I miss you all so much. Buckling down for the first round of tests, making plans with families for Thanksgiving, settling into Fall? Congratulations to Melanie who will be having a baby girl! Please be random and write often.

Always, Sara