Post Assignments!

My post for the next two (!) years of my life will be (drumroll please…) Daagbe!


Daagbe is a small town (I think – I don’t know a whole lot about it) just outside of Porto Novo, maybe 45 minutes from here. We’re in the Oueme Plateau region, and I’m going to learn to speak Goun (“goon”) as my local language… hah.


I’ll have electricity, and there’s running water in my village – not sure if it’s in my house or if I have to walk to it – and I’m the first volunteer to ever live there. I’m pretty nervous and not excited about that part… I was really hoping to have furniture and cooking supplies already there.


The Peace Corps gives me a small amount of money to get set up, so I’ll have to use that to buy furniture and plates and things. I’ll also have to set up the idea of a PCVolunteer for the people there – they’ll expect me to have lots of money, probably, and I’ll have to set some important boundaries (like “I’m not going to marry you just because you tell me I’m pretty” and “It is inappropriate to walk into my house unannounced”).

That said, there are definite positives to opening a post: no one will expect me to be like the last person who was there, and I have the chance to be that village’s first long-term experience with American culture. Plus, I can start whatever projects I want without having to carry out another person’s project when they leave.

So overall, I’m not quite sure how I feel about my post. My closest friends at stage are spread out across the country, and that’s both exciting (visiting = me seeing the entirety of Benin) and a little sad (I won’t get to see them all that often). I think most people here are a little meh about their posts, though, just because there’s no way to really understand what it’s like until you’re actually there living it.

Which brings me to next week: post visits for TEFLers! While the business, health, IT and environment people have to wait 4 more weeks until they visit their posts, the teachers all get to spend 5 days in our posts with a host family. We’ll meet the important people in our village (our boss, the mayor, the chief of the town, etc.), start meeting the locals, and get a feeling for our houses and schools. I’m taking my camera, so in a week or so, you’ll be able to see it, too... yay!