A Trip to the Collines

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  Kaboua, Benin
Friday, April 8, 2005

Hello Everyone,

We hope everyone is enjoying the spring weather and all the beautiful flowers that should be popping up everywhere across the pond. We are still suffering here in the heat but the good thing now is that the mangos are finally coming into season and that makes the heat a little more manageable. We can currently get a really good big mango for around 20 cents, but because we're cheap we go for the 3 tiny ones for a nickel. The small ones are not graphed and tend to be really stringy; the grafted ones are still a little too expensive (we usually wait till they are 10 cents) but have a lot more fruit on them and no stringiness whatsoever.

We have unfortunately been away from our post for the past week due to meetings down in Cotonou and this week we have another bunch in Parakou. The Cotonou meeting was the first ever Benin-wide "All volunteer conference". This is where all the PCVs in Benin came down to Cotonou and we had presentations on all sorts of topics for two days. Presentations were given on the different projects people are working on in each of the four sectors here in Benin (i.e. Health, Environment, English Teachers, and Small Business Development). These sessions are particularly helpful to get ideas for new projects and to just see what else is going on in Peace Corps Benin. It was also great to see everyone at once, so there was a lot of get-togethers and hanging out at restaurants and catching up with people we may not have seen for a while. So that was nice.

Between the 2 meetings there was a week of nothing so we went up to our friend Ginger's post in Kaboua. This small village is located on the east side of Benin (only 3 miles from Nigeria!) about a third of the way north from Cotonou. Ginger is a health volunteer that came in the same time we did, and so had training with Rebecca. So we got to know her village for about 4 days. Since we bought a bunch of vegetables in Cotonou before going, we did some gourmet cooking (i.e. a veggie lasanga with potato and eggplant layers instead of pasta, yummy sloppy-tofu-joes, a spinach quesadilla, minestrone). The way it ended up working out was that we had a really big lunch (see above dishes) and then for dinner we would make and finish off one of the following deserts: yellow birthday cake, pineapple pie, and stewed green mangoes (they taste like a mix of baked apples and pears) on top of bread pudding. Not too bad considering she doesn't even have access to tomatoes now (as you can tell eating is an extremely important event each and every day and we try to make it as memorable as we can; especially when visiting or having other PCVs visit).

Kaboua is located in an area called the "Collines" or hills. It's surrounded by random granite rock formations that are about 500 feet tall. So there's a hill outside of Kaboua that we climbed. Hiking here is a little different because there is no trail; you just pick the best way with the least amount of obstacles. We just walked right up that hill, all the while thanking our Chocas (our sandals) for their great grip/traction. At the top there was a great view of the village and the surrounding area. It was a great way to get out of the village and see some of the local birds and plants. We looked for monkeys, but were not lucky enough to see any. We observed a beautiful brown hornbill, while at the same time he studied us. We found a baobab tree and enjoyed a snack break by eating the insides of it's fruit. The baobab has a these pods that are about the size of a small football. To open them you have to step on it to crack the hard outer shell, and its insides have a white chalky powder that tastes surprisingly sweet and tart at the same time. Rebecca's health book says that it is abundant in vitamine C and other good stuff. It was really nice to just sit down out in the middle of nowhere and just munch on baobab fruit and spit out the seeds. When we crested on part of the hill we could to look down on a Fulani camp (the nomadic people that herd cattle, they live throughout West Africa) of small mud huts.
Other activities while in Kaboua included helping Ginger do the first volleyball lessons with a girls and a boys teams. This was a lot of fun, helping the high school age kids learn a sport they've never played before. The guys, who are used to risking life and limb on the soccer field immediately took to diving for balls. The girls were a little less reckless and both groups made a lot of progress in just the couple of hours we played.

The Project Panter meeting was next on our itinerary. This was in Parakou. We met our AIDS team there and had a meeting with all the other AIDS teams working throughout Benin (we are 8) and discussed our experiences and got great ideas for the next 6 months of the project. We practiced our presentations skills and learned a few more games to play with villagers to get the information across. So it was successful and great spednding time with our AIDS team, who are also friends in village, outside of Materi, in the big city.

So our travels have gone well and now we're ready to get back to Materi and spend a few more weeks there before Jason's dad and his wife come to visit. We have a grand tour of Benin planned for them, so it will be a great adventure for them as weel as us.

Ok, we hope everyone's doing well and we'll update you again soon.

Love,
Rebecca and Jason

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