Rita’s PeaceCorps Stories

Hey all, I thought I'd update everyone on what I've been doing work wise for my first five months at site. I know that I've said multiple times that my work during the first three months is integration, and that's true, but that being said I've also done some other things. For example, the major (head nurse and my supervisor at the Health Center) decided to do a string of sensibilisations (health talks) in the surrounding villages of our larger village. My homologue Tychique acted as the translator for us, while the major and I talked about different basic health topics. The relais communautaires (volunteer health workers) from those surrounding villages would make a schedule with me each month and name their topic. For example, we talked about malaria prevention, treatment, and symptoms; nutrition and the three main food groups that should be in every meal for all members of the family; hygiene, for example the 5 essential times you need to wash your hands

Happy holidays everyone! Here are some thoughts that I wrote when I was at site on Dec. 10, 2019.  I left Anchorage to start my journey with the Peace Corps on June 9th, 2019, six months ago yesterday. It feels like it was much longer than that but at the same time it feels like yesterday. Time is moving quickly, just as everyone told me it would.   One of the difficulties volunteers often face is the daunting nature of our jobs. There is so much work to be done and so many people to work with, but where do you start? How are you going to be the most effective volunteer possible? Is the work we are doing actually making an impact?   It’s easy to fall into the jaded mindset that we’re not really helping anyone, that we’re not qualified to provide real help, that the problems are structural and therefore out of our control. Something that really stuck with me during PST (pre-service training) is the metaphor that Peace Corps Volunteers are like drops of water in a r

Just your monthly update from Benin! I thought I'd tell you all a little bit about my mornings here in La Donga.  Days at site are so different one to the next, but at the same time they seem to blurr together. During the week, I get up around 7:30, make myself some oatmeal with peanut butter and Love Crunch Granola (my mom sent me a care package, thank you mom!) and of course some English Breakfast tea. If I’m feeling motivated that morning, I’ll do a short sun salutation and some body weight exercises. After I’ve broken my first sweat of the day, I get dressed into one of my modest tiss* outfits and am out the door by 8:40. My walk to the health center is 0.91 miles as measured by the health app on my phone. I live in la brousse (the bush) as my neighbors like to say, but I’ve come to really appreciate this morning walk (if it’s not too hot that morning). I walk outside my door and greet my neighboring maman in French since she is from the Atacora region and does not speak Y

Salut from la Donga! I have officially been at site for one month! And as promised I am giving you a quick monthly update. My site has been absolutely amazing so far. I got really lucky with my site placement because I am not only surrounded by an incredibly generous and welcoming community in my village, but I also have a fantastic Volunteer support system super close to my site. My site mate Laura and I make dinners together a few times a week. One night I made ramen with eggs and some soy sauce for us, another night she made fried rice! My close mates Jacquelyn (RCH) and Brandon (TEFL) have met up with Laura and I to go to Parakou and Djougou (nearby cities) as we attempt to furnish our new houses. Our houses are coming along little by little, and I promise to share before and after pictures when I'm all done with mine, though that may not be for a few months. My work at site for the first few months as an RCH volunteer is to integrate into my community. To do that, I have b

Hey all! I apologize for the tardiness for those who have been wondering what I’ve been up to, but finally now that I have officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Benin volunteer, I have some time to sit down and write a little update. The first three months of service in the Peace Corps is called Pre-Service Training (PST). My PST took place in a larger town in the South of Benin called Lokossa. During those three months I lived with an amazing, generous, unbelievably hilarious host family which I described in my last post. We had training everyday in Lokossa, save for a two week site visit where we got to go live with another host family in our real sites all over the country. The last four weeks of PST were all technical training. Since I am a rural community health volunteer, I learned about specific health practices promoted by the Minister of Health of Benin which I will pass on to my community throughout my two years of service here. I won’t go into detail about everything we l

Bonjour tout le monde! We left off with our arrival in the Lokossa Training Center Wednesday June 12, 2019. All three sectors, TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language), SAS (sustainable agricultural systems), and RCH (rural community health) stayed in the Training Center for the next three nights. On Saturday, June 15, 2019, we were separated into language classes within our respective sectors based on our French level coming into the program. SAS and RCH were then assigned host families (famille d’accueil) in villages outside of Lokossa and TEFL was assigned host families in Lokossa. I was put in a language class with five other women in RCH and we were all assigned host families in a village called Koudo, about 20 minutes away from the training center. We were also assigned a Language and Cultural Facilitator (LCF) named Raymond who lives (for the time being) in Koudo with us and teaches our language classes. My host family has never had a volunteer before, which is fairly u