Hey everyone. Before I start writing I want to wish everyone a happy holiday season. I will miss you all but I will be celebrating over here, Africa is not that far away lol. Things have been super busy here recently. I have had several meetings to go to for peace corps and I also visited some friends for thansgiving. First right now I am in Porto Novo again for a two week workshop. We are learning about HIV/AIDS education and how to start malnutrition programs in our community. The guy I am working with from my village and I are very excited to go back and start working because we found many things that we can do in my village. This is going to take me off topic but I must discuss something before I tell you all of my work plans for my village.

Over here in Africa many of the charties dont work very well. I am talking about charties such as Christian Childrens Fund (which actually is a decent one), and many religious organizations. First one of the reasons that many of these charities dont work is that they are corrupt. The people that run them over here keep the money they get for themselves and only help people of there choosing. Also many of them dont help the poorest people who actually need the help. Let me give you an example. In my town there is an ONG much like CCF, that opperates from France. People adopt a family and send money to help them. Well first of all for the families to be chosen they cant be polygamist, which is highly prevelent over here and is a stupid reason not to help poor children; and they also have to have some money because they have to go to the health center and get examinations and shots. I think this is absolutley rediculous. The people who need the help are the ones that cant go to the health center for shots and can barely feed themselves; Now I am not saying the ones that can pay for this dont need the help to, but the ones that really need it are turned down. These are the people I am going to to try and help though because no one is telling them the things they need to know to stay healthy and feed there children well. There are a lot of them though and it is going to be hard but I hope I can make some sort of difference. When I am older maybe I can start a charity that doesnt discriminate due to religious prefrenences and helps the people who cant afford things instead of the ones that can. That is just my opinion
Oh and also many of the World organizations are corrupt as well. For example the World Health Organization donates food to people all over the world. Well how they do this is to have a person in a community that they communicate with and they give all of the food for one community to that person. Well as you can imagine many of these people dont give the food out for free like they are suppose to but keep it for themselves and then sell it at the same price as everything else. It really floors me that the WOLRD HEALTH ORGANIZATION cant get their shit together and have a better system of checks and balances. Also a lot of times the world health organzatin has to pull food out of countries and stop helping them. Then the people that had come to rely on the food, because they just gave it to them instead of trying to start a stustainable food project, starve to death. Ugh it is just so damn frusterating because so many things over here dont work like everybody believes.
Sorry I just ranted on for ever but being over here has changed many of my views on things and really opened my eyes to the corrupt and ignorant giants of the world.
On a lighter note as I stated above I have found lots of work that I think I can do in my community that I am very excited about. So hopefully I can at least help one person while I am over here.
I have been hanging out with my friend for about a week now. We have had lots of fun going out and just takling english together lol. Oh and I kind of have a boyfriend over here. He is Nigerian and very sweet to me so far but it is not going to be serious anytime soon because I am over here to work and not to play. Well that is all I know for now I should be able to write again soon because I have internet for the next week. KODO BADA