Stories

I’ve spent over a month in site and I am happy, healthy, and learning something new every day. It’s about time I share some stories!

Work Success Story

I’ve continued building mud stoves with various women around town, but my pride and joy so far is this double-marmite stove for the farm. 

Farm friends, Laurent and Dede, helping me construct the stove!

After it dried, they taught me how to cook pâte rouge, the delicious national dish! A few days earlier, they had prepared me another Beninese delicacy – bush rat. They gave me the best parts: the claw and the heart. The former was too chewy for my tastes, but the latter was delicious! Gotta try anything once.

 I promise I don't dress like this much of a hippie everyday...

Work Struggle Story

Last weekend I started my own garden on the farm! Even though there is decent soil and climate here to grow a variety of things, people tend to stick with the “condiment crops” – tomatoes, onions, piment peppers, and garlic… All delicious, but it makes for a nutrient limited diet. So in effort to push my food security agenda, I’ve got lettuce, carrots, cabbage, onions, soybeans, dill, and cucumber (I’m totally going to make some pickles…) in the ground. 

Farm friends, Martiale and Rodrigue helping me start up my garden

It felt great to finally put it all together, but it was also a bit frustrating because everyone on the farm (and then everyone else in the community, once the word spread) was trying to tell me what and how to plant. After a college degree and months of training, I know that a lot of what my colleagues and community gardeners practice could be improved upon. But people are naturally resistant to new ideas and change, so it was a bit of a realization for me that the future of demonstration gardens and environmental sensibilisations might not be as easy or productive as I had hoped... I suppose my environmental agenda is difficult to push in the U.S., where I am already comfortable with the language, culture, and current practices – why the hell didn’t I think this would be harder?! Oh well. I know I will learn a lot and be a stronger person for it in the end.

Cultural Success Story

                I can now carry my own basin of water on my head for a whole 1.2 kilometers! Never mind that the children who help me are a quarter my age and carry twice the volume… I’m learning! Cultural hurdle #1 of ten billion: mastered.

Cultural Struggle Story

I thought it’d be frustrating to listen to a language I don’t understand all day long (and I was right!) But sometimes it can be even more frustrating to actually understand what’s being said to me… As it turns out, the phenomenon of mothers commenting on their daughter’s physique is not cultural, but rather a reality of womankind. And they don’t even have to be your real mother, for that matter. Yesterday I was sitting outside with the mama in my concession when she said “Michelle, you like Houeda, no?” I responded in the affirmative. “You’ve gotten fatter!” She added. Ugh. Now in Beninese culture, this is a compliment. Full cheeks and a full belly are desirable. But my American cultural standards are such that it was really hard to fake flattery and mutter a “merci…” And for the record, I have not gotten fatter. She was just being nice. 

More pictures here!