Moto lesson #1

Hi guys,

I can't believe it's december... There's now a Christmas Village thingy near my office, but there's really nothing Christmas-y about Benin! Making Christmas cookies on Sunday with the wind blowing through the palm trees was definitely a little weird. I miss snow.

My exciting news for today is that I finally had my first moto-driving lesson last night! It was quite exciting. I drove around the sand in my courtyard and managed to only tip over my moto once right at the beginning (it got stuck in the sand, and I forgot how heavy it is...) So all and all quite successful! Zemle, my instructor/neighbour, said that I was better than the last girl he taught, which was very nice to hear. Tonight we're supposed to drive around the neighbourhood, but I'm not sure that'll happen because I have to go to a going-away party for a colleague who is moving to Mauritania on Saturday. So we'll see. I'm very excited to be able to get around on my own, though! Hopefully by next week I'll be able to at least get myself to work and back - it's not far, don't worry - and then by the week after I should be competent enough to go a little further afield. Woo! It's very nice to have some independence.

The other exciting thing is that I'm going to a wedding in Burkina Faso in two weeks! A colleague's daughter is getting married. It should be super fun, but I have eighty million things to do first. A visa, some clothes to wear (apparently at the traditional ceremony on Sunday everyone wears the traditional outfit - big shirt thingy, wrap skirt, and a 'booboo' on your head), a wedding gift, etc. If anyone has any ideas on Burkinabe weddings, I'd love to hear them. My project for today is to go to the tailor near here and see what he can do for me between now and then. I think I'll get two dresses that I can wear while there, but I'll see if he can make them so that they might be something I'd wear at home too... We'll see. I will report back :)

Work is also going well. Lots of things are going on this week! Monday I finished captions for this photo exhibit and met with an artist for a brochure, Tuesday I read about logical frameworks, and yesterday I went to Camp to meet with my group. Today there are lots of small things with the brochure to finish up, as well as working out the last details for our World AIDS Day event on Saturday. This will make the third Saturday out of six that I've worked here! Yuck. I might try to take a day off next week just so that I can go to town and do some grocery shopping, etc. I don't mind working a lot, but I don't have a cook/maid/house "girl" so it's hard to get everything done in the evenings/Sundays. My boss was quite amazed that I do my own laundry and cooking, and told me that I just HAD to hire someone to help. I politely explained that since they don't pay me here, I don't have enough money to hire someone. Urgh.

Anyway, I should go work on my logical framework. I find it confusing and it's much more complicated that mine will end up being (since I'm planning very simple things). Sigh.

I hope everything is going well at home! I'll put up more pictures soon, because I've actually been taking them :)

love Katie

Pictures!

Ok, I'm hoping this works this time...  So far I haven't found internet that's fast enough to upload!  

Hmm, ok, nope.  This blog seems to reeeeeally not like pictures!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2269121&l=e7a97&id=13602253

I've put them on facebook instead, and I think everyone can look.  I've taken more pictures since, but I haven't put them on my computer yet.  But soon, I promise!

What else should I update you on?  Work is picking up quite nicely, which is awesome.  I have about 50 million things to do next week, including writing a proposal for a good chunk of money and figuring out what a Logical Framework is (any ideas?).  And my weekend is looking good too!  Tonight my neighbours are coming for dinner again - there's some plan to cook a German dish that sounds something like 'kanoooooodle'.  I"m skeptical, but I'll try anything!  Tomorrow I have to work, as we have a gender-based violence event, and then there's softball in the afternoon.  In the evening I'm going to a concert by this very popular Congolese artist, and I'm ridiculously excited!  Sunday I'll probably have to work from home a bit, and then we're making German Christmas cookies and then yoga.  Many things!

And last night I went to this huge and awesome American Thanksgiving Dinner.  I ate a ridiculous amount of food, but it was wonderful!  I don't know where they found orange sweet potatoes here, or broccoli, but it was quite exciting.  And cheesecake!  I've never seen cream cheese either...  

So that's what's going on here.  I'm hugely hungry now so I think it's time to go home and eat dinner...  Weird German dinner.  Please send emails - I love reading about what's going on at home!

love Katie

Some pictures (I hope)

Hi all!

I've finally taken some pictures of Cotonou, and I'm hoping I'll be able to put them up on here. It'll be my mission for today at the office!

Things here are going pretty well. Work is still slow, but maybe picking up. I'm trying to make up my own projects, but it's difficult because there's not much budget and everyone here doesn't really have time to think about new things. I guess we'll see how things work out... Right now I'm reading about the Project Planning Cycle because I have to make a proposal for the projects I want to do next year!

And I've moved! I don't know if I already wrote about this... Probably. My roommate is very nice, though, and the house is pretty comfortable. The only problem with it is that there are fairly frequent water shortages... Yesterday it'd been 3 days with no water and all of our buckets were empty so I went to a freind's to take a shower. Benin is just to hot not to have running water!

I don't know what else to report on... I'll try to figure out how to put up pictures I think.

Hmm, no luck on the pictures. The internet isn't good enough here. I'll try on the weekend!

Love Katie

A(nother) new home

So I've finally found a permanent home! A German woman has an apartement with an extra room, and she's willing to rent it out to me! It's not too expensive, and not too far from work either. The two not-so-great things are that a) she'll be in Germany for December and January so I'll be there by myself, and b) to get to the second bedroom you have to walk through the first. She seems very quiet and serious, so I think I'll try to take the first bedroom so that I don't bother her too much. Not that there's really anything to do at night in Cotonou, so I probably won't be out late very often, but I'm the one imposing myself on her...

What other news do I have? Last week was a pretty good week. On Thursday I went to one of the two refugee camps here (Agamé) to try to start up my support group for people living with HIV. Unfortunately my boss was sick so I had to go alone (I wasn't so worried about this but the other UNHCR people thought I wouldn't be very well received, and they were probably right). The meeting went ok but I found it a little frustrating because it seems that what people want most is money, and I don't think I can help them with that. I was thinking more along the lines of dealing with stigma/discrimination and education, but they seem to want to keep the group a secret and just be given a little extra money. I guess we'll see how it goes!

I also had a really good weekend! An Italian girl was staying at the German house (she works in Abomey and comes here for the weekend sometimes) so I spent a lot of time with her, and I went to church twice! On Saturday I had to go with work people to Djeffe, which is a town outside of Cotonou, to go to a mass that was in celebration of the 50th birthday of one of our partner organisations. It was long and hot, but definitely much more interesting than church in Canada! On Sunday my Italian friend was going to church with a Beninois girl she knows, so I decided to tag along (I wanted to meet this Beninois friend since I don't actually really know anyone from here yet). It was again long and hot :) But the friend was really nice, and I've been invited to go travelling with them in January! I'll have to see if I can get a couple of weeks off work, but it would be really fun. They're planning on going to Burkina Faso and Niger. I'd love to go to Mali too, but we'll have to see. I'm super happy I met both of them - I can go visit the Italian in Abomey, and I have a friend in Cotonou now!

Also, I promise I won't come back Catholic. There really is nothing else to do on Sundays, though...

This week of work looks like it's going to be pretty dull... I had worked out a work-plan with my boss which was to be submitted to the Regional Rep, and she decided that there was too much in it! So now I have even less to do! I asked if it could stay the same, since I much prefer to be busy as opposed to bored, but apparently what the Regional Rep says goes. Urgh. Maybe I'll see if I can go talk to her and explain that I have nothing to do? Otherwise I think I'll go crazy!! I think I already am going crazy... Our internet at the office stopped working for a while this morning and I nearly died.

Anyway, things here are essentially good. I'm very happy about the house, although a little nervous, but frustrated with work. The project that got cancelled was the one where I actually had scope to be creative and do my own thing! I might see if I can talk to the Rep and convince her that I work better when busy...

One last thing - I have a mailing address! So if you want to send me things, please do. It is:

UNHCR Cotonou
08 BP 1066
Patte d'Oie
Cotonou, Bénin

Apparently mail is pretty reliable, so I'll most likely get whatever you send.

I hope you're all doing well! I've gotten a number of requests for pictures, but so far I think I've taken two... I"ll work on that this week and hopefully post them this weekend.

love Katie

Work is...

Work is frustrating! I'm having a hard time finding the balance between pushiness and push-over-ness - I don't want to push my own agenda too much, as I'm sure there are things here I could be working on that need immediate attention, but at the same time no one seems to be giving me very much direction. Urgh. Tomorrow some women are coming to discuss gender-based violence activities for the White Ribbon Campaign, so maybe that'll give me something to start with? I have all of these very broad subjects I'm supposed to be working on (ie HIV, gender-based violence, income-generating activities, etc.), but nowhere to start on anything!

There's my complaining for the week.

My other project of the week is to find a new home. My German friend is leaving the German house soon, and it has made me realize that I need to find somewhere permanent. There are two women I met on the weekend that I'll ask (even though I feel very awkward asking outright), and then I don't know... Someone at work suggested I live with a man who works here, but I'm not sure it's the best idea. I don't really know him and while he seems very nice, I think it would just be a little awkward. So I think I'll try these two girls, and then ask this German girl I met the other day about her neighbourhood. She lives in La Cité Houeyiho, which is about a 10 minute drive from the office and more middle-class than where I live now.

The one exciting thing about all of this is that if I move far away from the office, I might have to buy a used motorcycle! It's the only way to get around here, and taking a motorcycle-taxi everyday to work would be expensive and really suck. I'd also probably be a better driver than many of the zem drivers here... Apparently a lot of them have drinking problems, which makes me nervous!

Back to work now... I'm trying to find contact info for all the groups I'm supposed to talk to/meet with. Somehow no one seems to know who the contacts are!

love Katie

A happy weekend!

Hi guys!

I thought I'd report on my weekend, because it was rather excellent. Friday I stayed late at work to meet these two girls who are in the Peace Corps and will be teaching English classes at the Refugee Community Centre. They were nice, and after their meeting with Florence we adventured to the Community Centre to figure out where it was, what supplies it had, etc. I then went home and did some laundry (which in itself is exciting because everything gets dirty so quickly here). I met up with them again later for dinner, and ate remarkably tasty pad thai! I think it was actually better than I've ever eaten in Canada, or maybe I was just so hungry and bored with food that it seemed particularly good. At any rate it was awesome.

Saturday morning I went back to the Community Centre to help the girls with their class. So many people were there! We only had a small room available to us and it was jam-packed full of people. It made the teaching a bit hard, since there was no space to write properly and everyone was talking over each other, but I think it was a good start! I sadly wasn't very helpful, as I have no idea how to teach English while the other girls do, but it was interesting and fun. I think I"ll be there most Saturday mornings (which sadly means no sleeping in, but that's ok).

After the English class I went to play softball with these people the American girl who used to work at the HCR knows. It was kind of an odd bunch of people, but I met a couple of very nice American women! After a very hot and sweaty game (we played from noon to 2pm with no shade), I went to a market with the two girls and got fun things. The market was kind of awesome. There's one really superly big market in Cotonou called Dantokpa, and then a few smaller ones. This was one of the smaller ones, and was entirely manageable in size while still having lots of fun things. I bought some tomatoes, an eggplant, some tv series on DVD (for $2 each and including the Latin American telenovela we watched daily in Kenya!), and some red hibiscus flowers. The flowers are my favourite purchase - you boil them in lots of water with mint, then add sugar, and you have this awesome dark-purple drink called bissap. It looks very ominous due to its colour, but it's super tasty!

Saturday night I met up with the Peace Corps girls again and went out for dinner (again). Most of them are from very rural areas and so when they come into town they eat all sorts of Western food. So we went to this restaurant called Berlin and ate remarkably tasty pizza! After food we went back to one girl's house and hung around for a bit. They were all going out to a bar at a hotel after, but I decided I'd head home because it was already late. It's quite sketchy to take zems (motorcycle-taxis) late at night, but I went back to the house with my German friend (who came along with all the Peace Corps girls) so it was ok.

Sunday was quiet - it was super hot so all I did was cook (tasty pasta with my tomatoes and eggplant), read, and make my bissap. And no-bake cookies for the office. They turned out super sticky so I had to freeze them, but they were tasty! At night, I went to yoga at some woman's house. While kind of weird (because I only knew (sort of) one of the people), it was quite nice!

So all in all a pretty good weekend!! I think I'm just going to have to keep going to these somewhat weird activities to meet people :) I'm a lot happier here with things to do.

Anyway, I think it's lunchtime. I never know whether there's lunch at work or no... I think today is a no, so I guess I'll eat my peanuts. I'm going to have to start bringing food with me or I'll starve!

love Katie

A new home

I have a new home! Yesterday afternoon I moved from my grungy and somewhat-seedy hotel/conference centre to a 'maison de passage' run by the German development service. It's about a five minute walk from work, is full of other foreign people, has a kitchen, and is relatively clean! Very exciting! I'm not sure how long I'll be able to stay there, as preference is given to German development workers, but we'll see. So far the other people seem really nice (there's a Belgian boy working for some forestry service and a German student who's trying to work out an exchange with the university here), and I think that overall I'm quite happy to be there! My only complaint is that it's hot, but I think that will be an issue no matter where I am in the area...

I don't really have any other exciting news... My boss (Florence), along with the Representative, went to Togo yesterday to meet with recently-repatriated refugees (I think), so the office has been very quiet. It's a little weird working here because a) I have an incredibly difficult time following office conversations due to the mixture of French/Fon; b) people tease a huge amount, a lot of which is usually directed at me because I can't quite follow; and c) everyone's doors are always closed because of the air conditioning so I mostly sit by myself reading. I'm sure I'll start to follow conversations a little better soon, and that I'll get to know people better, but for now it's a little strange. Oh well. And I don't really know what I'll be working on, and subsequently where to focus my reading, so I feel a little lost. But I've only been here a week so I'm sure things will improve!

And now I should go read more... I'm painfully slow at reading in French!

love Katie