Sample interaction (in user friendly English):
Beninese woman: Are you pregnant?
Me: No, no Im not.
Woman: So why is this fat? (points to my stomach)
Me: Uh..I just ate...
Besides that delightful conversation, last Saturday I helped kill a chicken (which we then plucked, cooked, and ate) and yesterday my papa took me and two other stageaires to his home village to "walk" around and say hi to people. In actuality this same village is flooded for three months out of the year so we ended up boating around on small, slim vessels called pirogues.
Ive found out my post, its a small village in the northeast, close to Togo. I am replacing another volunteer who did a lot of work in building latrines, weighing babies, and community education. I will have no running water or electricity, and the local language is Lokpa (gna nelim--good afternoon). Next week we all go to our posts to check everything out, meet with our Beninese counterparts, and see what we need to buy in terms of furnishings. Then its just two more weeks till swear-in and we all become actual Peace Corps volunteers (insert the exclamation point that I cant find here)
2 years ago