Updates 8.8-8.17

• Addict. I'm getting several pretty American things made out of tissu before I leave: shorts, a dress, skirts... In related news, there's an excellent new song by the Nigerian artists P-Square and Akon called "Chop My Money" ("chop" = "spend" in Nigerian slang) that you should check out.
• Name in a Song! My Beninese friends have been playing this "Melissa" song on repeat for me lately.
• Return to Pakistan. I went back to the Pakistani missionaries' house with my friend Maman Jumeaux, and was treated to an in-depth explanation of what Ahmadiyyat Islam is (spoiler: it's not accepted by Pakistan's "regular" Muslims as real Islam) and given three books to read about the religion. I'd actually like to read one of them (a historical one), but might not have time before I leave and have to return the books... This makes at least three churches that have tried to convert me in two years. Fourth time's a charm?
• Cooking Conundrum. Exactly 15 days before I leave post, I ran out of cooking gas. Replacing it costs about $18, which is a lot of money for just two weeks of use, and which is also money that I definitely don't have right now (see first bullet point). Problem. I'm going to try to tough it out and survive on a PCV raw food diet: powdered manioc (gari) with milk powder and sugar, bread with peanut butter, bruschetta, packaged glucose biscuits, and whatever food I can find to buy on the street. The main issue left is what in H-E-double hockey sticks I'm going to do without my morning caffeine fix... Pray for me.
• Let It Snow. Y'all, it's so cold here. I keep waking up in the middle of the night to find another pagne to wrap up in, and stumbling out of bed in the morning wearing all the sheets until it warms up a little. Making myself take cold showers is an increasing struggle. And this whole no-hot-coffee thing... Not cool, Benin, not cool.
• Warm Fuzzies. People have started realizing that I'm actually leaving really soon, and they're being especially sweet. I'm getting lots of "We love you!"s and "Are you sure you can't stay another year?"s, and one of my old neighbors quite seriously asked if I could just move to his village four hours away and do a quick two years there... I could stay with his family if I wanted. No, but aww.
• SortSortSortSortSort. Turns out that even as a Peace Corps Volunteer, it is possible to accumulate a truly staggering amount of stuff within two years. This week's project is going through all of it and trying to separate it into give-away bags in such a way that everyone I know gets something and no one's mad about what they got. This is likely impossible, but my irrational belief in myself as an organizational superhero leads me to at least try. Onward!
• Best Wishes! I went to visit my work partner Epiphane's family for the first time this week, and while I think Epiphane told me at some point during the last two years, somehow I totally forgot that his dad is an Ifa (a voodoo fetish/spirit) priest. Really cool. Epiphane took me to see his father's personal fetishes,* which had their own building in the family compound, and then we took a walk around the area to see all of the other family fetishes. Back at the house, his father was happy to meet me, and he said he was going to pray for me. He then promised that he would pray especially so that by 2013, I would be pregnant with my husband's first son. I'm going to accept those prayers in a very figurative sense.
• Local Language Lesson #644. At the same meeting, I asked Epiphane's father (who looks like a mischievous little elf) how to say "cheers" in Nagot, his language. Epiphane translated the question, miming the clinking of glasses and the saying of some celebratory word. His father pauses to think, then lights up, gives a big, few-toothed smile, and says, "Hallelujah!" So there you have it: the word in Nagot for cheers, according to a local voodoo Ifa priest, is "hallelujah."

 

*This is a terrible sentence out of context.