Life in Comé
Trip Start
Sep 22, 2003
1
4
62
Trip End
Dec 13, 2005
Comé,
Benin
Sunday, October 5, 2003
We have now been living with our host family for three days and it's going really well. But before we talk about that, we're going to fill you in on the last few days in the big city.
By far the biggest event was "Zimidjan"(pronounced Zimmy John) training. Zimidjan meqns go fast in the local language Fon. They are little mopeds or small motorcycles that are the main taxis here in Benin. In order to get around, Peace Corps hired a bunch of them so we could practice calling them over, saying where you want to go, bargaining the price, and getting on and off. It was really funny seeing 15+ americans (all wearing their obligatory helments) zooming around the block. No one here wears helments for anything so PC Volunteer are always easy to spot. We went around the block a couple of times and then took a longer ride through the market which was lots of fun.
Our host family has around 9 children between the ages of 3-22. Both parents are nurses, but Papa works in Cotonou, so he's only there on the weekends. Mama is really nice and runs the household. The kids are really really well behaved. They race to the gate everyti,e when we arrive to greet us and to help us with our bikes. The food we are getting is wonderful!!! Mama and the oldest sister are in charge of cooking and they take extra special care to make sure everything we eat has been washed and cleaned very throughly. The strange thing here is that the families don't really eat together here, and we usually get a completely seperate meal than everyone else. We are reguarded as very special guests and we eat by ourselves at the table only used for special guests. If Mama is around she makes sure that none of the kids are around to disturb us. Although having a 2-3 course meal every night is nice we'd rather eat with everyone else. Usually we get a nice salad, then some chicken dish with either spegetti or french fries. This is followed up by desert of really good green or yellow bananas.
Our room is seperate from the family's house and is very nice. we have a 2 rooms, one is where we have our PC issued propane gas stove and water filters. This is where we boil our water and can study on the table if we need to. Our bedroom was equipped with a king size bed with two twin mattresses. It's really nice and we're glad we brought the queen size sheets with us from home. Yester day we played frizbee with the 3, 7, and 11 year old which was a lot of fun.
Yester day was also the start of our language and technical training. We are both really excited about the different projects we're going to be studying and working on. An example project is that we're probably going to build a feul efficient wood burning mud stove at our host families house. There is also a PC garden where we'll learn all sorts of things about the local vegatables and growing techniques.
Well our hour is almost up so we'd better go. thanks a bunhc for all of your emails. They are really encourageing.
Talk to you soon,
Jason and Rebecca
