Bugs

How To Not Fall Asleep While Teaching

Teaching gets boring sometimes. Not that I’m an old pro or anything, but when you have to go over the conjugations of “to be” 18 times in an hour, your mind starts to wander. To combat boredom, I’ve come up with a number of ways to keep myself entertained.


First, I write my own exercises. This allows me to, a), correct all of the mistakes in the official teaching document we have, and b), put in funnier names. I’ve used celebrities, Disney characters, entertaining Beninese names (Fati being my current favorite), and, of course, friends’ names. See below.

Next, I do my best to call on kids with funny names. This is maybe unfair, but really, when a child’s name is Aude (“odd”), Parfait, or Abiodoun… how can you resist? Related: when grading 5,000 quizzes and homeworks this weekend, I made it a point to look for entertaining sentences that kids had accidentally written. My favorite (4):

Third, I make my own visual aids. Kids find my drawings hilarious, and even when my art skills confuse them terribly (it took me 5 minutes to explain that my picture of “boy” was not, in fact, a newborn baby. It had pants, okay?), it’s fun to draw vocabulary words. Plus, it’s doubly fun to make them copy my awful drawings into their copybooks… Muahahahah.

Finally, and most importantly, I talk to myself. Kids who speak no English and very little French can’t decipher swear words spoken in whisper, so I can say pretty much anything I want when I’m writing on the board. I can also start singing for absolutely no reason (example: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song), and they shut up and all pay rapt attention to me. Does Will Smith have anything to do with simple present tense? Probably not. Does he keep me from falling asleep while teaching it? Yes ma’am.

Friends, Fajitas, and Fantastic Conversations

Any day with fajitas is a good day. Any day with great conversation and company is also a good day. Thus, Saturday (11.13) was absolutely fantastic. (See that word math I did there?)


I didn’t really know the girls in my region all that well – I’d seen them around during stage, but because most of them are health and environment volunteers, I didn’t get to hang out much with them. A week or so ago, though, Becky texted me to schedule a let’s-cook-something-delicious dinner, and eventually we ended up inviting three other girls (Victoria, Emily, Katie) to join – party!


Spent Saturday morning cleaning, then headed into Porto Novo and met up with the girls for ingredients shopping. You take a taxi back to my village, and since there were 5 of us, we just hired a whole car for ourselves. The guy driving us tried to jack up the price, but Victoria flirt-discutered it down to the normal price, and then we had a singalong party all the way back, which we think made it worth his while. “Waving Flag” and Shakira’s Africa song figured prominently into the selection, and the driver thought we were crazy, and life was good.


Came back to my house, then headed out to the buvette (bar) down the road, where we downed a couple of beers, christened ourselves the Southern Belles, and launched into an incredible, unexpected conversation. Sometimes, when you have the vocabulary of a three year old in French, you forget what it’s like to talk about real things. These girls are smart and funny and opinionated, and we had a great discussion: cultural sensitivity vs. women’s rights/health issues (FGM), foreign aid and what’s wrong with just giving people money, African and American takes on volunteer work… everything about what we’re doing here and how we fit in. My mind was spinning happily, and it wasn’t just from the beer.


Came back to the house and made vegetarian fajitas (meat’s expensive and we were lazy) with pico and beans and fresh tortillas. Soooo good. Swoon. Conversation continued, then we watched an episode of House, set out the Thermarest, and went to sleep.


All in all, an incredible day – cheers for big thoughts, great dinners, and fantastic company.

Weekend Update: 11/12/10

I was about to start this post by saying that nothing really happened this week, but then I realized that it did.  Things just surprise me less now, I guess.  Highlights of this past week:

• I taught my first full week!  It was exhausting.  I gave and graded two quizzes -- my 6eme M1 class did amazingly, and my 5eme class pretty much all failed... 37/41 got 10 out of 20 or lower.  Awesome.  That was particularly frustrating because it was review from last year, I used activities we'd done in class, and it was fairly obvious that no one had studied.  I was genuinely pissed, so I made Thursday's lesson a lecture on study skills, I brought out evil Madame M (my teaching alter ego), and I gave them a really long make-up assignment.  Monday, I'm assigning a new seating chart... let's see how they like my class if they can't chat with their friends all the time. 
• Pauline, my neighbor, was in a motorcycle accident.  At midnight last Tuesday, after I was very asleep, she showed up pounding on my door, face and leg covered in blood, and announced that she was sleeping in my house that night.  I didn't really have a choice (she'd left her keys out in Porto Novo), so I patched her up with my med kit, gave her a snack and a pillow, and tried to go back to sleep (she's fine now).
• A little down this week.  Spent most of it inside my house because of some raging digestive issues (I'm doing tests in the med unit today), and I think that made me feel more isolated than usual.  Am hoping that once I'm fully into work, that'll get better.  Plus, after next week is PSW -- a whole week with the other TEFL volunteers in Parakou.  Yaaaay!
• Awesome moment in parents' meeting.  The director introduced me in front of a meeting of all of the school's parents, and I greeted them in Gun.  They looooved it -- everyone started cheering and grinning and clapping, and one guy even made a little speech about how much it meant to them that I was trying to learn local language.  Felt good, and made me (sort of) want to study. : )
• Fellow teacher trouble.  So I was doing well with the other teachers -- I finally convinced most of them that I'm married, awkward inquiries as to whether they can visit me stopped, and I'm starting to have professor friends... actually, one of them (Gabriel, also my Gun tutor; his awesome wife Florence is going to help me with French) found my blog the other day -- uh oh.  Anyway, so there was this one female teacher who absolutely refused to call me Madame -- she'd call me mademoiselle, I'd ask her to call me madame, and she'd say loudly, "MADEMOISELLE."  One of the other profs said it was because she wanted me to marry her brother.  I told her I was already married.  She said I should take a Beninese husband, too, Mademoiselle.  Yesterday I got really pissed and whipped out a picture, and I think she might stop now... which is good, because it's really, really frustrating.  You kind of expect it from the men here, but to have that whole thing coming from a fellow professional woman... Frustrating.
• Observed the head of the English department teach classes.  He's really, really good -- I'm not actually sure I can help him with much more than pronunciation.  I can help with that, though.  During class, one of his kids stood up and, responding to a question, said, "Yes, this bish is beautiful."  I think he meant beach, but I had to fake cough to keep from laughing at him.
• Am having people over to my house tomorrow!  Some of the girls in the south are visiting to slumber party and make fajitas.  I don't know where to get most of the stuff for fajitas... but whatever.  Details.

K, that's all I've got for now -- love yall!

This Week: APCD Visit

Not much happened this week, except my boss from Peace Corps (the APCD) visited. My boss Taibatou is kind of fantastically glamorous, a Beninese woman in charge, and I love it. My other boss, Cyprien, who oversaw my training, was also there… he’s been an English teacher for years, knows everything about education ever, and is incredibly nice when I call him freaking out about my house/school/living-with-the-director situation.

Anyway. So she visited today and observed my 6eme M1 class, which I had seen exactly two times before. We had a couple of rough patches chatting-wise, and it took (not exaggerating) about 20 minutes to explain the sentence “Create a dialogue with a partner” using my entire Franglais and FreMiming vocabulary. But we got there, that’s the important part.


I also decided that I did not want to be bored during this lesson, so I taught my kids a song. A classic, one that fit the topic (Introductions/Greetings) perfectly. I taught them the following:


A: Yo! My name is--
B: --What?!
A: My name is--
B: --Who?!
A: My name’s--
B: Chicka chicka!
A: (enter student’s name)


Please picture me plus my class of 47 students chanting this in front of my bosses. Then add the Beninese English accent (“May name ees watt! my name ees ho!) and my students’ fantastic names (Sunday, Abiodoun, Pelagie, Aude, etc.). I don’t love teaching just yet, but if I get to teach a hilarious rap every day, I can definitely get there.

List: Weird Things I Cook For Myself

I blame this on several factors: lack of ingredients, lack of tools, and just plain laziness.


- Spaghetti with a lump of peanut butter on it
- Rice with powdered milk and cinnamon
- Rice with sweetened condensed milk. There’s a pattern here somewhere…
- Boiled onions, topped with a little sugar. (Try it.)
- Broth. Just broth.
- Dry spaghetti. Not technically cooking, but current favorite snack.
- Mayonnaise sandwich. Ew, I can’t believe I ate that… but it was so good.
- …and that’s enough for now. I’ll let you know if I made anything else that’s spectacularly strange.

Notes on Hygiene, Part 3: I Am A Genius, and Primping

I am a genius. After I wrote the last post, I created what is maybe the most important invention of my life: the Hot Water Bucket Bath (HWBB). I imagine that other people (like, most of the PCV population) has been doing this since before I was born, but I intend to take any and all credit for my groundbreaking creation.

The HWBB is a careful concoction of boiling water (a medium-sized pot) plus faucet water to taste (or feel, whatever). Normally a running shower is preferable to a bucket bath because it’s less work – no carrying the water-filled bucket from faucet to shower, no trying to douse yourself bit-by-bit using a small bowl or cup. Bucket baths take more time and thus increase exposure time to mosquitoes.


However. With the introduction of the HWBB to my life, I’m a convert. I can’t say enough about the joys of pouring a perfectly warm bowl of water over your hair, slowly waking up to the sweet feeling of soap-scented steam curling around your feet. It’s a PCV’s version of a hot bubble bath, and it’s pure bliss.


Enough on that (euphoric, heaven-sent) subject, we have more important things to talk about: primping. Primping, or “spending time making minor adjustments to (one’s hair, makeup, or clothes),”* is difficult here, both because supplies need to be rationed and because it’s difficult to motivate yourself when no one in village really cares. My observations:


Shaving – I can’t stand underarm hair (just the prickly feeling of it, ew), so that’s shaved every day. Legs… well, I made a solemn promise to myself and the world that I would shave my legs at least once a week, so I shave once a week. Usually Tuesdays. If I’m going to Cotonou or somewhere else I’m likely to see Americans, I always before (it’s a patriotic thing, really), but otherwise, it’s once a week. No more, no less.

Eyebrows– This is a good time burner and feel-good-ifier, so my brows are pretty well maintained so far... Since I don’t look in the mirror every day any more, it’s often difficult to tell when they’re getting unruly, but hey, I try.

Deodorant – Every day, religiously. Sometimes more than once. I will not compromise on this topic.


Other scent-related issues – I should have brought more perfume samples, although I’ve found a reasonable substitute: bug spray. I spritz a little DEET on the back of your neck and you can’t really smell anything else.


Makeup – Hah. In the States, I love makeup, and I like looking pretty. Here, it’s so humid and hot that it takes about 30 minutes for most of it to melt off (except for waterproof mascara, which God makes with his own hands as a gift to cosmetically-minded women in sweltering countries). Makeup follows a similar rule to leg-shaving: If I need to feel pretty, I’ll dust on a little powder and mascara, and if I’m seeing fellow PCVs I’ll spend a whole 15 minutes applying creams and liners to my face. On a regular day in village, though, forget it.


There you have it, my personal, no-detail-withheld account of a PCV’s hygiene in Benin. Ta-da! (Please still be my friend?)

*According to whatever dictionary comes with this computer.

Notes on Hygiene, Part 2: Showering

Showering – I shower every day. That said, showering here is different: I have running water (I’m spoiled), but it’s cold only, and at 6am when it’s still dark outside, a blast of ice water to the naked flesh is not something you really want to withstand for very long. I’ve developed the dunk-scrub-splash-dash method in response.


Step 1 (Dunk): Take deep breath, turn on faucet. Edge toward water, put one arm in. Lean head in. Remember that this is not the Hokey Pokey, step under running water. Count to 10 (okay, 5), jump back out of cold water. Turn off faucet.


Step 2 (Scrub): Soap up, concentrating effort on Potential Odor Zones (POZs). I’m going to let you figure out what those are.


Step 3 (Splash): Turn on faucet, stare at it apprehensively until you get the guts to step in (minimum 15 seconds, maximum 2 minutes). Realize that you cannot actually rinse off if you keep leaning away from the cold water. Splash furiously at POZs. Consider self clean, turn off faucet.

Step 4 (Dash): Grab pagne, towel self off as you sprint inside away from swarming mosquitos. Congratulate self on expended effort.

You’ll notice that there’s no mention of shampoo there. I now wash my hair every 3 days. This was difficult to get used to at first (and kinda gross), but a couple of factors have made it easier: First, shampoo adds at least a minute to cold-water shower time. Second, I have a lot of hair, and since I keep it in a bun most of the time, it doesn’t seem worth it to keep it all sparkly clean. Third, it takes my hair a day and a half to dry (thank you, humidity), so washing it more than every 2 days seems like a waste. (Does hair mold?)

Fourth and most importantly, every Beninese woman or child who plays with my hair tries to make it into a helmet. By this I mean she combs it, then uses her hands to plaster it as flat as she can onto my scalp. If it’s clean, strands escape, and she’ll spend 20 minutes explaining to me that I need to buy pomade and/or glue. When my hair has a healthy oil slick going on, it sticks in place, and nothing makes a Beninese woman happier than a completely immobile hair style.


That’s about all I can say on showering without scaring the small children (an army of whom, I’m sure, are reading my blog). Oh, except cold-water showers in the middle of the day are awesome, especially after biking home from school. Stay tuned for further updates.

Notes on Hygiene, Part 1: Introduction

I’ve thought long and hard about writing this post, and I’ve decided that you will probably still love me afterward. Thus, hygiene.

*MOST IMPORTANT NOTE: I STILL SHOWER EVERY DAY. AND WEAR DEODORANT.*

So Beninese hygiene is different than American hygiene: We tend to think they’re dirty because there’s lots of body odor and significantly less deodorant. They tend to think we’re dirty because we shower only once a day and don’t sweep our houses as well as they do. That last part really does factor in as personal hygiene.


While I try to stay as America-clean as I can, it’s tough to be as scrubbed and primped as is normal when you have hot, indoor showers and unlimited access to mirrors. As much as I’d like to lie and say I’m a powder-fresh princess over here, some things have slid a little, and since I’m dedicated to being as disgustingly honest as I can be on this blog… here we go.

List: Top 15 Countries To Visit

In no particular order… make your list, let’s compare!

1. Thailand
2. India
3. Indonesia
4. New Zealand
5. Iran*
6. Turkey
7. Israel
8. Argentina
9. Brazil
10. Kenya
11. Madagascar
12. Morocco
13. Egypt
14. Holland
15. Switzerland


*Potentially impossible.