Mornings

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 Yom (the local language at my site). As I cross the street outside my concession, I start my salué tour (basically saying hi to anyone who makes eye contact with you). 

*tiss (pronounced tish) is short for tissu which literally means fabric in French but is the material of almost all clothing made in Benin. Tissu is colorful and patterned and ranges in quality, from 500 cfa (less than a dollar per meter) up to 10,000 cfa (a little less than $20 per meter). Once you have tissu, you visit a tailor who makes you a custom outfit based on your measurements. 

What’s cool about Benin is the diversity. In my small village, there are four main ethnic groups: the Yom, the Lopa, the Dendi, and the Peuhl. Since the Yom are in the majority, the majority of my village speaks Yom. Since starting language classes two months ago, I really have only mastered salutations in Yom. However, I use those salutations all day everyday in village. As I make my way through my village, I yell “In-nang-nung” (good morning) across fields to women and children outside of their houses preparing breakfast. I nod and greet every passing motorcycle similarly (if they make eye contact). With certain friends I stop and continue the greeting, saying “mauho-sé?” (and your work?), “sahra-sé?” (and your house/family?), to which you respond “alafia” (ça va/it’s good). Unfortunately if the conversation moves too far past that, I have to retreat to French. Maybe with time I’ll be able to speak entirely in Yom, but we’ll see. 

What’s also cool about my village is there are several Nigerian shop owners in town which I have befriended due to their ability to speak English. So as I’m walking through town, I speak three different languages. A little French, majority Yom, and even some English when I see my Nigerian friends. Every morning I think how cool it is that I have the opportunity to speak three languages in the span of a 20 minute walk, but then I remember that absolutely everyone in town speaks at minimum two languages, often as many as four or five. And they can say a lot more than salutations. It’s a humbling, and it’s awesome. 

This is me and my neighbor's dog named Bipo, he's the sweetest puppy and one of my best friends. Fun fact: someone stole him from my neighbors a few weeks ago and marked him with charcoal which is why he has the black line down his nose, but they got him back thank goodness!

My homologue Tychique sitting on my couch. He's dressed in his best tiss outfit because he was about to go to Mosque. In village, all of your furniture is hand made by a local carpenter. I just got my couch, a chair, and a table the other day and now all I need are the cushions!

I turned 24 on Oct. 26th so my friends and I went to Djougou, a nearby town bigger than our villages, to go out to lunch. This is me and my friend Brandon, he's an english teacher from Missouri. 

Normally I eat oatmeal for breakfast, but this last weekend I found margarine which changed the cooking game. So I toasted some sweet bread with margarine, melted some Laughing Cow cheese on some scrambled eggs and drizzled Siracha on top, 10/10 recommend.