The Life of a Yovo

REE!!!! How the fuck is everyone?! Ugh I miss everyone and our college days when we used to run wild and be drunk all the time hahahaa. My life here is ridiculous, you're literally a two-year old baby all over again. You don't know how to feed yourself, how to wash your own clothes, how to use a latrine. I'm pretty sure any African I've come in contact with thinks I'm the world's biggest ditz, which I totally am! Peace Corps is a blast, and I'm very happy here. Basically Peace Corps is like a small college, all over again.

So right now I’m hanging out at the Peace Corps workstation in Parakou, a big city in the middle of Benin. There are three workstations in Benin, and basically they’re hostels for volunteers with 25 beds, TV room, library, kitchen, SHOWERS, and very slow and unreliable internet access. It’s awesome! Basically a college dorm all over again and we can stay here whenever we want. It’s also where we have Thanksgiving and things like that.

This weekend I left Porto-Novo for site visits to the village I’ll be living at for the next two years! My village is called Biro, and it’s a tiny village in the countryside. I’ll be teaching at the school in Biro. So, we met our school directors or our bosses, and he took us up to our villages. OMG you guys. Hahahah what the fuck to say about Biro.
The road leading to Biro is not paved, all dirt road!
It is an itty-bitty village right in the middle of the countryside
I don’t have a postmate! I’m the only white person in the village!
Its in the middle of the goddamn jungle. I am not kidding. Lush, green forest as far as the eye can see, hills, and mist!
It’s so freaking beautiful it would seriously move you to tears!

Anyway, so literally imagine ME, Nora E. Kaitis, in an African village. With no running water, that means bucket showers (which really isn’t that bad) and barely any electricity. Hahahah can you imagine how retarded I am there? Luckily there’s a Catholic Mission across the street from me so I’m hoping to become friends with them and use their electricity and showers hahahah.

So I stayed in the village with my neighbors, who is this really cute young couple and their adorable baby daughter. This is roughing it people! Latrine, no running water, minimal electricity, bucket showers! My host dad in the village, Soule, is apparently a big deal in the region, and he took me to his cow farm that he owns. Um the strangest experience of my life. He takes me to his cow farm deep in the jungle on his motorcycle where I’m greeted by about 25 Africans, wildly talking in Bariba, the native language. They grab a seat for me and I sit down, and basically I had about 25 Africans staring at me and screaming in a foreign language while I’m sitting at this cow farm in the middle of Africa. Hahahaha so fucking weird! Two babies immediately burst into tears at the sight of me, because I am one of the only white people that have ever seen, if not the only white person. As the people are wildly speaking Bariba and smiling at me, a little girl gets pushed to the front by her mom. She must have gone to school so she was able to say a few words to me in French, but she was mortified. Hahaha It was truly the strangest experience of my life.

Anyway, my village though is so freaking beautiful I can’t even describe it. We’re talking lush, green jungle and hills with mist! The are millions of trails of red dirt, so I can’t wait to take my mountain bike out and go around! There’s also goats, chickens and anorexic cows everywhere. Naked black babies run through the streets and there are girls selling stuff piled on their heads. At night, every star in the sky is out and it’s so cool! The people are really sweet. They stop and stare at you but if you smile at a kid, I swear you’ve made them the happiest in the world.

I don’t have a postmate (I am the only white person in my village), but my closest volunteer is about 16 miles away in the bigger city of Nikki. I’ve met him once, his name is Ryan and he’s this total hippy from Colorado. He has long blond hair and a shaggy beard. He works in the business sector, helping the women’s groups produce shea butter. Do you guys know shea butter? It’s a really good lotion used in a lot of cosmetics, and they produce it here. However, like most things in Africa, its too time-consuming to produce to actually be profitable. Anyway, there are a lot of companies, like L’Oreal, that will use shea butter from West Africa for their philanthropic products. So anyway, he works with the women and the shea butter, and I can’t wait to get involved with that!
There’s also another American near me- he was a volunteer ten years ago that decided never to leave. He adopted two orphans and fluently speaks Bariba. Anyway, apparently he’s a great guy to know and I’ll definitely be doing projects with him.

In case you’re worried for my safety, the Akandes called me three times and texted me twice. Hahaha I know if I’m ever in trouble, Papa Akande would be on the first bus up here to raise hell! My sister, Diana, who is drop-dead gorgeous, was in a beauty pageant this weekend! I’m so upset I couldn’t go because I was on post visit! Anyway, she won second place!

Hope all is well with everyone. I hear pics of the Messiah twins come out on Sunday! Ree! Keep me updated!

-Nora