Counterpart Workshop and My First Days at Site!

Connais-tu mon beau village,

Qui se mire au clair ruisseau ?

Encadré dans le feuillage,

On dirait un nid d’oiseau.

Ma maison, parmi l’ombrage,

Me sourit comme un berceau.

Connais-tu mon beau village,

Qui se mire au clair ruisseau?...

“Mon Beau Village” -Frédéric Bataille

This is a poem that many Beninese elementary students learn at my new site. “Do you know my beautiful village?”

I’ve been at site in the Collines for less than 24 hours, but I am utterly enamored. This department is called the Collines—the hills—for a reason! The natural beauty is stunning.

There’s more to my new home than just the beauty, though. I’ve been spending time with my supervisor (my principal), my counterpart (another English teacher), la censeur (vice-principal, also my future language tutor), my resource family here at site, and every single person has reiterated that if I need something, I need only ask. They tell me to be at ease, to not be afraid or have shame. “This is your home,” my resource father told me. “If something isn’t right, you tell us right away.” This is something I already love about Benin. Every person that I’ve been connected to for support has laid down incredible compassion before I even get the chance to ask.

This has been a good, albeit very challenging, week. It was last week that training switched to full-immersion French. It was surprising but thrilling to realize that if I applied my full attention, I could generally keep up with the sessions! We dove into hours of diversity and intercultural competency training, reviewed the goals of our service with our new partners, and the cohort processed how very real our service is becoming. I came home every day even more tired than the weeks before, which I didn’t know was possible.

Cultural differences extend to areas I hadn’t fully considered, like interpretations of financial status. In Benin, one stereotype we as Peace Corps affiliates are faced with is the idea that all Americans are rich. Dear reader, we both know this is not the case. I get paid a salary that is essentially enough to feed me and cover necessities. 

There’s also the aspect that the cost of goods and services are proportionally quite low if one converts West African CFA francs to US Dollars. I pay 300 CFA, or 50 cents for a full baguette-sized avocado sandwich. It’s reasonable to convert CFA to USD in my head, because that’s the sense of scale I’ve always thought by, but this week, I was challenged to consider the scale that many Beninese citizens live by. For every “dollar” that I spend, the Beninese view it at 17x the value I interpret it as. What I perceived as a cheaper cost is actually reasonably priced or even overly expensive to members of the community. That cheap avocado sandwich placed in context is more like $5. The 2,000 CFA I pay to go to the pool on Sundays is closer to $50. I had perceived my pay as low because, in USD, it is low, but I’m not living in the States, I’m living in Benin. I’m grateful to better understand this critical context.

This week was Aurial’s 18th birthday! I love this kid. He gets me breakfast in the mornings, he has strong opinions about the Kardashians, he teases me every chance he gets. He is incessantly kind to others. My host family in the Mono department greatly inspires me to become a kinder person. I have been stunned by the generosity I’ve received from them, which is the generosity they share with their community as well. My host family has reminded me through words, but especially through action, that people deserve our kindest thoughts and intentions even if that’s not what we feel we have received from them. There’s a phrase that keeps coming up in pre-service training: “on est ensemble.” “We are together.” It’s simple, but that’s where the power lies. My host family operates with this sentiment as the base of everything they do and inspires me to do the same. I’ve always been a relationship-oriented person, but here, I’m being challenged to defray time and money further. Time is for people. That means I stop and greet everyone I know with enthusiasm even if I’m in a hurry. It means that even if someone didn’t ask after me when I hurt my foot, I should still ask after them when they are hurt. I can’t believe I only have a little over a month left to stay with them, but I’m not really worried about losing touch. Even this week while I’m traveling, they check in on me every morning and night. “Have you eaten? Are you settling in well?”

In the Collines, things have been action-packed from the start. I’ve met the mayor and the president of the Parent Teacher Association. Yesterday, I went by the royal palace to greet the king! Everyone around me has been eager to help me learn Mahi. “Oun fon gondjia? Oun fon gondji.” / “How are you? I am well.” “Sink supuo.” / That’s a lot of water.” Please note that all spellings and translations are approximations (especially since others are translating Mahi to French and then I must translate from French to English). Since Benin is a more oral culture, this means that Mahi is typically not written, so I have yet to encounter this language in print. I tried to Google these phrases to make sure I was doing them justice, and Google couldn’t help me. I’m excited to learn more to be able to better relay this new language!

The content of this blog post is mine alone and does not reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Benin Government.