October 8

October 8,2008
Hello everyone, hope all is well. Things are going pretty well over here in Africa. I have been in my village for over a month now and things are going pretty well. I have started working, even though it is not very much. I have furniture in my house as you can see from my pictures and my house is slowly starting to feel like home and not just some place I come to, to sleep.
For work so far I have been working with sole hanidcaped childredn trying to help rehabilitate them. We these strange chairs at our office, one is for sitting the other is for standing, that help children learn how to sit and stand correctly. Most of the children that we use the chairs on either can’t sit up my themselves or can’t stand/walk. I play games with them while they sit in these chiars, such as put the shape in the right place and memory games. I have also started looking into this ONG called Mercyship. It is like a cruise ship that has been converted into a traveling hospital. The docotrs who volunteer with the ONG travel around to different countries giving free surgeries and things to that nature. I have a lot of children in my area that are in need of surgery and I am really hopeing, they ship is coming here in February, that I can get some of kids the surgeries that they need. I can’t do much yet because I don’t know much but once I do if I can at least get one child a surgery it would be amazing. My friend Aaron who told me about it said something like that could make your whole Peace Corps experience worth it and mean something. He is completely right and I really want to help these kids. That would just be amazing if it could work out. I am not going to get my hopes up though because many of the things that we try to do here just don’t work a lot of the time do to many factors, which is ok, but you have to learn not to get to excited about stuff because you don’t want to get let down.
On that note I was let down pretty bad today by some of my neighbors. I had been missing some money here and there lately, nothing substantial, but it had always been after I had, had people in my house and I was starting to get suspiscious. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions and I really wanted to believe in the best in people so I decided that I probably just lost the money. Well today I had two of the neighbor girls in my house, who were my friends until today, and I went back into my room to grab something and when I came back that were kind of hovering in the area of my backpack. Well I told them I wanted to take a nap and they left and as soon as they did I went over to by backpack, found it open and my coin purse was open and empty. It really upset me. I said something to them to the effect of “ I know one of you took my money and I am very upset about it” however there really isn’t much you can do about so I let it go from there. It just means that now I really can’t let people into my house anymore. I talked to one of my friends here about it and she told me when she was living with ther host family one of her sisters was taking money from. We talked about how it really does hurt your feelins and you feel used because for all the good stuff you do for these people, such as giving them food and candy which I did almost on a daily basis, it feels like that didn’t even matter to them and they went and stabed you in the back. You also have to think about like this though, they want nice things and see you with nice things and think that the money they take really won’t be a big deal to you and that you probably won’t even notice. Well I did notice but I am going to try and be understanding about it, I am however not going to be very nice to the two girls as I was but I will still try to keep decent relations with them.
So that was my day today. And tomorrow will be another day, and I will start again fresh with a new day and hopefully things will be good tomorrow. That is usually how I take things here because some days can be just shit, excuse my French lol, and other days can be the best days ever so you really just have to take in one day at a time. I am at the moment really looking forward to my regional meeting that we are having at the end of October. I get to go stay in Bohicon with some of my friends for a night and hang out so that will be a lot of fun. I also got to talk to a couple of my friend who are up north last weekend and that was really nice. One of them I hadn’t heard from at all because he deosn’t have service in his area so if was nice to here that he was alive and kicking.
I was reading somewhere the other day about race in Africa, actually I think it was mentioned a couple of places, and they all kind of consistently said the same thing and that is that there really isn’t a concept about skin color, the concept that we have in America, over here. I think that when many Africans leave Africa and go to America they are very lost because for some reason people group all people with black skin in the same category in America. ( I know this statement is obvious but it needed to be said). And over here your are categorized by you ethinicity, such as Fulani or Yaruba. It also made me think about other things over here that I find interesting. Such as the fact that there are so many different religions in Benin and everyone is so tolerant of one another. People don’t make it an issue over here. To them is as simple as this, you believe what you believe and why would I care that it is different from me. I like that thought process over here, I also think that it has to do with the fact that there are a lot bigger things to worry about over here, such as food. Americans and many other countries are too sheltered. We have to much time on our hands to think about stuff. And I am not saying this is a bad thing, it is just a fact, we have too much time to think. I definitely have a lot of time to think over here and that is probably why I am I rambling on and on right now haha.
So I think Ill end this blog with a good quote from the song I am listening to write now,
“How many years must some people exist before there allowed to be free
and how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see, the answer my friend is blowing in the wind , the answer is blowing in the wind.”
Joan Beaz