Rice hates me, which is bad, or maybe it’s the tomatoes

We’ll get to the title later, but I think it’s rather self explanatory.

For now, ‘A Typical Day in the Life of Trainee Josh’

Some random hour in the night – Depending on a variety of factors, run to the bathroom.

05:30 – Well good morning 500 chickens 20 feet away from my room, I will eat you all someday. Deep fried, grilled, baked, sauteed, or raw if I have to. But mark my words, I will have my revenge. /go back to sleep.

06:30 – Wake up again to my alarm (I have been ignoring the chickens and roosters). Still tired, don’t hear too much activity around me, and its a little cold in the rainy season w/o sheets. My solution? Go back to sleep.

06:50 – Ok, my family is awake and I need to be too if I want breakfast. Push aside mosquito net, clothes, toiletries, breakfast, etc, etc.

*Side note, breakfast every day without fail is this: Lipton tea, a hard-boiled egg, a baguette, and 2 cubes of sugar for the tea. Though considering that if left to my own devices I wouldn’t eat any breakfast at all, this is awesome.

07:45 – Ride my velo (bike) a few kilometers to a fellow volunteer’s house for class (every forth day it’s at mine). This is how I wake up, cause all they have here is Nescafe (insert trademark here) for coffee. I could take a Zemi, but that adds up when you make as little as a volunteer trainee (about $3/day).

***Sometimes we replace class with a trainee wide meeting at Project Songhai for medical, admin, culture, and diversity training. It’s basically an excuse to round us all up so they can shoot us full of chemicals (this week it was Rabies!). But don’t mis-interpret this; I love my vaccines almost as much as I love not having Rabies (or Yellow Fever, or Hep A, or any of the other wonderful viruses and bacteria that are prevalent in the world).

08:00 – Start class with my facilitator Masso and three other students who are way better at French than me (both a curse and a blessing)

10:30 – About now my brain is ready to explode, so we take a break for 15 to 20 minutes. We all speak English while Masso continuously reminds us that “Anglais est mort, parle Francais!”

12:30 – Break again for lunch. Time to put that French to use! I have three choices every day; Rice, Pate, or if I’m lucky, Spaghetti. I don’t really choose pate very often, paying for it seems . . . wrong, you can’t understand why until you try it.  They like to put fish on everything in the south, but I’m not a big fan, so I’ll take the bread and sauce tomate instead.

13:30 – Continue avec le francais! Tell Masso what happened at lunch en francais.

For example, try translating this:

We all wanted rice for lunch, and we found a place who said they had rice. Once we sat down (chairs are not expected here by the way) they asked if we wanted avocado. I assumed they meant with the rice and three of us said yes. Then I said I want bread with mine. When the food was served one person got rice, two people got a salad (with avocado, and one with an omelet but not the other) and I got a piece of bread (no rice, no avocado, just bread).

Isn’t speaking remedial French fun?!?

15:30 – My brain has shut down. I’m smiling, nodding, and have ‘repute si vous plait’ engrained in my vocabulary. Unfortunately at this point I’m spent, but at least I get a quick break to recover and finish off the school day.

17:00 – Officially in zombie mode. My brain is mush, I operate on basic motor functions to get home and eat a snack my papa has gotten me. This food is normally great; homemade tapioca, yovo doughnut holes, Kluis Kluis (a spicy peanut green bean looking thing), corn based pudding, fried sweet potatoes, etc. This is one of my favorite parts of the day.

17:30 – Start French homework, bang head against wall, study verbs I didn’t remember in class, bang head against wall, practice oral comprehension with my family, bang head against wall

20:30 – Dinner time! I help if I can, but I’m normally only allowed to watch, so yea. Wash hands in a series of bowls, eat traditional (with your right hand) or western depending on the food, and enjoy fruit for dessert (always an orange before today, yay mini bananas).

Quick side note about fruit: Banana in French is banane. Pineapple in French is ananas. Try saying Banane ananas five times fast . . . I’ll wait. Longue langue is another one (long tongue). Yay tongue twisters.

21:00 – Take a bucket bath/shower. This is my second favorite part of the day; it’s HOT at night so semi-cool well water feels like a polar swim back in Colorado. Write a quick paragraph or two for this blog (I have to do it all in advance and upload it at a cyber café), boil and filter water for the next day, sweep/clean my room, finish any lingering French homework or practice.

22:30 – Go to sleep. I have not had a bed time for over 14 years, but this one is self enforced. The Beninese seemingly never sleep cause they stay up later than me without fail, and are awake before me every day (is country-wide insomnia a thing?).

Back to the Rice (or tomatoes)

So I got sick for the first of, an expected, many times a few days ago. I blame food poisoning, which is probably a safe bet here with some of the street venders. I know how to look for a safe one, but sometimes you just pull the short straw.

The vendors are comparable to hot dog venders in the states, but instead of a cart, they have a table, and instead of a grill, they have covered (if you are smart) coolers. And I’m decently sure that you don’t need a license here to sell food. So when I say I know what to look for, I mean that I look for the vendor (normally women trying to contribute to the family) who covers her food, cooks in front of you if possible, and has something of a permanent set up. This usually (but not this time) works.

In any case after puking and running to the latrine every two hours like clockwork, I decided I wasn’t going to class the next day and called medical. It was a bit confusing cause I called at 6 in the morning, but that’s what on-call is for (French is difficult, but Franglish with a drowsy accent is indecipherable). After around 6 phone calls and poor phone reception, I decided to just sleep it off rather than go to the medical unit in Cotonou. I’m all better now, but I have nightmares about rice and sauce tomate. It’s just on a plate not doing anything, but I know that it’s just bidding its time, waiting for its next opportunity.

My end result; Healthy with a few extra bacteria running around in my system waiting for friends (otherwise known as reinforcements). 

Final 3

I tried to upload some pictures, but it's proving to be a futile effort. Sorry.

I also updated my contact info with accurate shipping info, and how to call/text me.

I (will try to) update a list of things on the sidepanel which if you send me, buy my love for the period of time it takes me to consume them/it.