Week 8 Comé, Cotonou, Grand Popo
Trip Start
Sep 22, 2003
1
11
62
Trip End
Dec 13, 2005
Comé,
Benin
Sunday, November 23, 2003
Well another week has passed and it was really nice.
Jason was able to get to visit one of his fellow environmental PCV sites and it was amazing. The site that this girl will be working at is a totally self-sustaining, completely organic farm. The site was in the very beautiful tropical part of Benin and there were green lush forests everywhere. The farm is self-sustainable because after it starts working there are no outside pesticides, fertilizers or seeds needed. So there are tons of banana, pineapple, corn, eggplant, tomatoes, green and red and hot peppers, rice, and several other vegitables that are all part of the local cuisine. These crops are sold to the local women at whole sale prices and they then either eat them or sell whats left to in the local markets at higher prices. The by-products from the plants are either fed to the escargot (French snails that you eat) or milled and fed to the fish in the fish farm. the runoff from the fields when it rains feeds a series of ponds that were dug and are used to grow talapia and catfish which are also sold to the locals for food and income. The water from the ponds is connected to a series of rice patties and is also used to fertilize all the other crops. Some rice and fish are ground up and fed to the rabbit and quail farms. They are just getting ready to start bee keeping and I think my friend will be working on getting the moringa tree added as well. The farm is run by this one man who uses it as a working school. Young men who are interested in farming and agriculture work, live and take classes there. Most of these guys are sponsered by their respective villages and once they finish their program they will return to their village to start-up a similar system there. The owner also is planning on handing off the farm in a couple of years to the local community and starting up a brand new farm in a nother part of Benin. It was just such a cool place to see working and how well thoughtout every part was so hopefully we'll get to visit Melissa when she's at her post and get to work on the farm some during our tour.
Rebecca had a really fun session where she got to make enriched bouille (pronounced bwee) which is a porridge that you eat for breakfast. The enriched part of it is the fact that its made with soy powder, as well as the usual corn or millet powder. We also added moringa powder to it and just grew younger as we ate it. :) This task was very fun because we had to use a coal stove like the locals do every day, and it was quite difficult getting the fire going and keeping it warm. Just picture my group partner and I squatting by the coal fire with a reed-woven fan, fanning the fire as fast as we can, sweat dripping from our foreheads, and the Beninoise facilitators telling us what to do next. It makes me appreciate all the hard work one meal for the 15 people living in our host family takes, since theres usually at least 3 fires going at once. Other groups made soy milk, yam porrige, rice with moringa sauce, and beingets (fried dough made from bean paste). These were all things that are helpful for curing malnutrition. We akso learned all about how to grow soy and harvest it, etc. So now I'm prepared to keep Jason and me healthy while we're at post. I'm excited to grow moringa trees, soy, and other fresh veggies and make these very tasty and healthy meals.
This weekend we ventured down to Cotonou and purchased fabric for our swear in ceremony. Its tradition that each program wear the same fabric. The place where we bought it was an amawingly big wearhouse with never ending piles of brightly colored fabric. Its definately a tailors dream come true. We also stopped by the ice-cream shop and savored the truely great flavors. After this we went to Grand Popo for the night and following day. Grand Popo is the local beach resort not too far from Comé and it was really nice to get away from the city for just a little bit. Last night the stars on the beach were amazing and we slept out on the beach under a pyote (grass umbrella) safely inside our mosquito net. It was nice because several people spent the night there and we just got to hang out and talk. Today we had a really nice lunch and then visited with the rest of the people who came down from all of the training sites.
Some one asked about how we were getting along with making friends with fellow PCV as well as the facilitators. Both groups (health and environment) get along as a group really well considering how big of a group it is. 12 for health and 8 for env. So we can pretty much consider everyone as a close friend. The facilitators are also great, Jason has a really nice language teacher who just likes talking about politics, world issues, culturual differences and it makes the language sessions really interesting as well as good practice for future discussions at post.
Well we hope everyone has a wonderful Turkeyday!!!
Congratulations to Rebeccas cousin Beth, who got married yesterday
Congratulations to Jasons cousins Hillary and Brian for their new baby girl (thanks for the pictures!!)
Love,
Rebecca and Jason
