Week one: Settling in and Aggeugge

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  Porto Novo, Benin
Friday, February 16, 2007

So as a group and individually we are all starting to find our place within the organization and fit into our families. We have finally started to do some 'real' work in different areas above and beyond the youth forum coming up next week. Taking part in other activities has helped us feel more productive and fill up our days with things to do. Personlly for me it had been a little hard waiting around trying to figure out what to do or wait for someone to return from a visit. Some of the things I worked on this week is delivering letters to the Principals of the schools and inform them about the upcoming forum so they could recruit students to attend. On Valentines day Dana and I helped the children at the 'Childrens Centre' to make Valentines day cards for their mothers from materials donated from the group. As well, we have started to help plan and coordinate things for the upcoming AIDS/HIV Awareness Conference.

What I've learned so far this week is tons of patience! Its so incredibly hard coming fom a fast pace world like ours to what is in place here. If I accomplish or do just one thing a day here its success, a very different concept to what I've generally expected from myself back home. As well, I've noticed motivation for change is what is lacking in this community. In the NGO I see the few who care for change and try to make a difference but it seems that those they work with may not always welome this change or care to put energy into suggestions/solutions they may have for them.

A house in the stilt village 'Aggeugge'

The work they do is difficult and I'm developing a great deal of respect for the few educated people working in this NGO who care enough about others to stay and work for people as opposed to leave the country to Nigeria/Europe to improve thier own life.

This past weekend we visted a village built on stilts called 'Aggeugge'. To visit it we had to go on a thin wooden boat called a 'pirogue'. It was definitly an interesting expereince full of curiosity and culture shock to ride on a pirogue, visit the village and interacting with the children. It was incredible to me how big the village was. I expected it would be just a few villagers who lived side by side over the water but it was a huge village. The living conditions left much to be desired but hope for improvment and development was visible. All over the village their were 3-4 stalls of washrooms that were setup and donated by Japan. It was interesting to see how other countries financial aid was benefiting others. Interacting with the children was two fold, at first they were thrilled to see us and cheered us on as we rowed on to village on the pirogue. We too were happy to interact with them and answer all there questions but about 30-40 minutes into our visit things changed. There were swarms of children around us and asking us to give them things, money, water, our helmets, bags. They started touching, pulling....they were unhappy we weren't giving them our things and we were getting congested, frustrated at being pulled and called everywhich way. We left the village exahusted, very impressioned by the poverty we just witnessed and very aware of the color of our skin. We were white, we are Yovos!

Cindy

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Fisherman at work in Aggeugge

Valentines Day at the Childrens Centre

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