- Stop Post: May. I'm not sure why, but the mail system here seems to have gotten way worse as of this calendar year- there are at least two packages that have been in the mail since January and still aren't here (that's 3 whole months). As such, I'm issuing my Stop Sending Me Presents announcement for the beginning of May. After May 1st, don't send me packages anymore, because I'm not positive I'd get them before leaving. Letters will still be fine though, and much appreciated! :)
- Visitors Galore. In this past week, I've had three visitors. Two of them came because they were bored of Cotonou and/or had nothing to do at post until Monday, and then Vicky came to do a condom demonstration for girls' club (more on that in a sec). It's so much fun to show off your village to people, to kind of see it through their eyes. It makes me proud when I can walk from one end of village to the other and every baby and every group of mamans, knows my name and waves at me.* And when men driving by on motos now call me "Madame" and smile instead of leering and yelling "Mademoiselle, cherie!" or "La Blanche!".
Those are changes that I've made, just by being here and being patient, and by explaining nicely what I want from village friends. It's fun to show off projects, too -- the world map is always an attention-getter -- but the things I'm happiest to show fellow volunteers are the social interactions that I'm lucky enough to have. I am, at least to some extent, an accepted part of my village, and I'm so proud of that.
- FANtastic. Pun...sorry. My fan works! One of my visitors, Andrea, started tinkering with my fan, and now it kinda works! I have to stand in front of it and manually spin the wing things for 5-10 minutes before the motor kicks in, but still. Yay! Fan! Also, it rained twice this week, which seems promising (and cooler).
- Condoms, Condoms, Condoms! In continuing with my sex ed theme in girls' club, I brought my friend Victoria in to talk about safe sex and how to use condoms correctly. In America, I'm really against abstinence-only education, and even though I think pushing abstinence makes more sense here to some extent: in this culture and with their age level, it's really tough for me to believe that most girls are making an informed, uncoerced decision to become sexually active, whereas in America, most 7th grade girls are dating peers, not 32-year-olds or teachers.
That said, I still think it's super important to teach how to have sex safely, because some of them are going to decide to give it a go. I don't want any of my girls to be the next pregnant drop-out. Melanie was heartbreaking, and if it was a girls' club girl... Anyway.
So Victoria came and talked about why condoms are a good choice, and then she pulled out a wooden phallus and showed them how they work. Last year, the girls were timid and didn't want to even watch, but this year, everyone grabbed a condom and followed along -- so awesome. They volunteered to do the demo themselves and cheered when their fellow girls got it right...we made such a commotion that Vicky ended up doing a second talk for a group of 4eme girls that overheard and really wanted to learn how condoms should be used. We also did myth busting to start the girls thinking about how to argue when their boyfriend tells them that condoms break (they don't use them correctly), or they're too small (we stretched them over our arms to disprove that fact, and the girls thought that was hilarious).
Overall, a very positive and informative meeting, and a huge thanks to Vicky. Next club (after our 2-week spring break): negotiating techniques for saying no or not now to sex. Stay tuned!
- Time for Classes? Devoirs are this week, so we don't teach. The next week starts our 2 week spring break. I will teach one week in April, two in May, and one in June. Ridiculous.
- Director REALLY Wants Cat Poop. But cat now basically refuses to poop inside (thank god, it smells) since he's outside most of the time. Once I locked him inside for 3 days and he STILL didn't poop. I hate locking him in because the house starts smelling like his pee, but the director keeps demanding his poo and sending other profs to do the same. I keep telling him that he can borrow my cat for a week, but he refuses. Why do I have to do the smelly work? He should just buy a cat already. I guess I'll just have to tie poor Popsicle up outside... :(
*Once this week, though, I was walking with a visitor when one of the village folles ("crazies", not my term) walked up, wrapped her arm around me, and started babbling in Gun about money. She wanted it. I shook her off, but she (topless, of course) followed us for the whole length of the village (like 2k) pretending to understand our conversation, laughing when we laughed, and continuing to ask for money: "Give me 100 francs. Or give me a million francs." You know, whichever I preferred. She'd stop when we stopped, pulling up a chair when we stopped to buy bread. Everyone thought it was hilarious -- the folle following the yovo! -- and would try to help us, but she wouldn't leave. Finally a teenage girl chased her off with a broom... Oh my. My life. On the upside, that's definitely a story, and my visitor was a great sport. :)
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