My mom's a preschool teacher, and from time to time she's asked me to come in to show me off to her coworkers, but under the pretense that I'm there to present something to the kids. Usually this involves me bringing in a box turtle or something, but for weeks now she's been really excited to have me come into her class wearing my Beninese pajama clothes to talk about Africa. The kids are pretty excited as well -- I gather the class has been practicing counting down the days to my arrival.

But lately I've been trying to make a wager: that before I can come talk, one of the parents will try to withdraw their kid or tell them not to let me come talk, for fear of ebola. So far nobody will take the bet; they're all certain it will happen.

Another PCV is going home for a wedding. Or, she was. Now she's just going home. The family of the bride and half of the wedding party said they wouldn't come if she was there, because they were afraid of ebola.

There is no Ebola in Benin. As of now, there is no Ebola in any country bordering Benin, nor in any country bordering any of those countries. But evidently we terrify people.

10/20/2014 5:56:40 AM

I'm going to place an anonymous call to the TSA while you're flying back to America and tell them there's a big white guy with a fever flying in from Africa.

10/20/2014 6:35:33 AM

The shitshow in Burkina Faso adds a certain excitement to our lives. First, we sympathize with the PC folks there -- the country director was our logistics chief until earlier this year. Second, there's a good chance something similar will happen here next year. The whole thing in BF started when the president tried to change the constitution so he could stay in power. It is widely believe that the president of Benin wants to do exactly the same thing. People are so sure of it that there have already been two assassination attempts to prevent him from doing so.

One hopes that the good President Doctor Yayi Boni will take a lesson from the fate of the Burkina guy, currently in exile in Cote D'Ivoire while his country squabbles over who gets to be in charge. I dunno, though. The signs lately have not been good.

First of all, literally, there are signs. All over town there are a bunch of new signs and billboards proclaiming Boni's accomplishments. These are modest enough, usually along the lines of "built a convention center." The kind of shit mayors run on, not presidents or even governors. Why trumpet your accomplishments if you're not trying to run for office?

There was also a protest last week -- supposedly 30,000 people turned out, though I missed it. The purpose: just to tell Boni not to try to hang around. But the government arranged its own counter-protest. Again, an odd thing to do if you plan to step down and go into retirement.

I don't want anything truly bad to happen in Benin, but I wouldn't mind a quickie coup (the kind Benin does best). For example, Boni tries to change the constitution, the military surrounds his house, the army HQ, state TV, and the National Assembly. He hems and haws, then steps down. The army steps in until the March 2016 election, and life goes on. I could get behind that because it would mean I got to use my code phrases.

There are different levels of security in Peace Corps -- All Clear, Stand Fast, Consolidate, Evacuation, etc. If those were to ever change (they haven't, in my time here), realistically we'd just get a call from someone on the phone tree. But the safety and security team entertains this overly dramatic fantasy where maybe the phone tree won't work, and they'll have to broadcast to us over the radio. They don't want to be obvious about it, in case PCVs are a target, so they gave us a list of code phrases. If we need to move to our consolidation points, for example, the radio might say, "Peace Corps would like to inform its volunteers that bicycle maintenance training has been moved to next month."

This is ridiculous, of course, but the idea of battening down the hatches while trading secret codes is exciting even when it's completely unnecessary.

11/3/2014 3:12:23 AM

Seems normal enough. We all liked decoder rings and invisible ink as kids.

11/3/2014 3:20:23 AM

"Peace Corps would like to inform its volunteers to drink their Ovaltine."

11/3/2014 8:24:18 AM

Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!

11/3/2014 11:03:48 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/congo-crowd-kills-man-eats-him-militant-massacres-160235263.html

They are stoning, burning, and eating motherfuckers down the road in Congo.





[Edited on November 4, 2014 at 12:08 AM. Reason : ]

11/4/2014 12:01:50 AM

He couldn't speak Swahili? Must have taken an AFAM course

11/4/2014 12:42:12 AM

You could tell me pretty much any horrible thing about the DRC and I would believe it. That place has been fucked ever since the Berlin Conference decided to give it to the Belgians, and it got more fucked when we decided to let the CIA have a free hand in it, and it's become super-fucked since 1994. I like interesting, even dangerous places, but you couldn't convince me to go to the DRC for love nor money.

11/4/2014 3:01:35 AM

11/4/2014 11:08:58 AM

How was the Ebola conference?

11/14/2014 12:00:00 PM

Oh boy, that was...not heartening.

I've mentioned before that there are a lot of organizations involved in this ebola response planning, loosely coordinated by UNICEF. Those folks managed to keep some of the crap out (PSI, for example, wanted part of the messaged to be -- and I'm not kidding -- "Stop having sex until we tell you it is safe to have sex again.")

Other crap worked its way in. About a third of our training materials are on the dangers of bush meat. It's true that certain wild animals are a reservoir for Ebola, and that this outbreak likely started with people eating a fruit bat. But once an outbreak starts, the real danger is person-person transmission. There are people in this country who rely on bush meat for their livelihoods and many more who rely on it as a precious rare source of animal protein. Telling people to abandon it is absurd. Pigs and chickens are reservoirs for the flu, which kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people every god damned year, but the WHO isn't trying to shut down the pork or poultry industries.

I was the only white guy receiving the training (and it ended up being more a training than a conference), and it was interesting to see what some of the Africans in the group thought. They ranged from a couple of doctors to some of the lowest of the literate ranks. There was no mumbo-jumbo about witchcraft or a western conspiracy to infect people (although there was some ranting about how we haven't found a vaccine in the 40 years since Ebola was discovered), but there were some, ah, interesting ideas.

One guy put factual information together in a way that is not even remotely factual and would probably get people killed:

1) Washing with soap and water helps protect you from ebola
2) Ebola can only live outside bodily fluids for 25 minutes or so
Conclusion: If a person dies from ebola, you can put them in soapy water for half an hour and then they'll be safe to handle.

At one point we did some role-playing with the training materials. One person would be the trainer, and the rest would be the villagers receiving it. It was actually really funny, because everyone in the room had participated in dozens of these trainings and knew exactly what sort of nonsense to expect from the crowd, so they played it up. But it's also sort of sad, that these people are so used to someone coming in with a little picture book trying to teach them about basic things. It can't be good for the mentality of people on the receiving end of such a patronizing -- though effective -- barrage of lessons.

It was good to learn exactly what people should do in the event that someone in their community falls ill, and having learned it, it's easier to see why nobody does it. If your kid gets sick, you lock them in another room and call a special hotline. They send a team -- eventually -- to see if your kid has ebola. If they do, they get taken to what is probably a set of tents filled with other sick people, and at best you can stand outside of a perimeter and stare at them. Some of you have kids, and you're having a hard time wrapping your mind around this -- ignoring the suffering of your child while they're in another room, seeing guys in space suits take them away only to dump them in what looks like a squatter's camp with too much bleach, a camp from which you know only about half of people return.

11/17/2014 3:21:30 AM

Quote :

"It was good to learn exactly what people should do in the event that someone in their community falls ill, and having learned it, it's easier to see why nobody does it. If your kid gets sick, you lock them in another room and call a special hotline. They send a team -- eventually -- to see if your kid has ebola. If they do, they get taken to what is probably a set of tents filled with other sick people, and at best you can stand outside of a perimeter and stare at them. Some of you have kids, and you're having a hard time wrapping your mind around this -- ignoring the suffering of your child while they're in another room, seeing guys in space suits take them away only to dump them in what looks like a squatter's camp with too much bleach, a camp from which you know only about half of people return. "

This procedure is what a large part of Americans want to happen too, at least if you look at the mandatory quarantines in slum-tents the majority of Americans support in the recent issue with the Maine health worker.

11/17/2014 10:14:10 AM

^get out of here with that shit

[Edited on November 17, 2014 at 11:03 AM. Reason : -]

11/17/2014 10:54:32 AM

Apparently being on the "ebola commission" means I get instant updates every time there is any suspicious disease. Last night about half an hour after I turned in, the phone blew up with an e-mail about a bunch of dead nurses at a pediatric hospital up north. I was ready to shit my pants until, at the very end of the page-long e-mail, the commissioner said, "They've all tested negative for ebola but, you know, just wanted to keep everyone informed." What the fuck.

I've pretty much completely checked out at this point. Fly out of here Saturday night, land in Greensboro Sunday evening. All that's left to do is buy a bottle of sodabi for people to try and pack my bag.

11/18/2014 9:07:34 AM

welcome back to marginally less crazy civilization, friend

11/18/2014 9:53:34 AM

How much sodabi can you bring back? are you bringing other stuff back? are you excited? any word from the preschool?

11/18/2014 12:54:40 PM

The issue with sodabi isn't so much "how much" as "what kind" can I bring back. The real stuff, the village stuff, the stuff that I have drank more than I care to admit -- you can't really get that out of the country because, even in checked bags, they don't like open containers of liquid. You buy village stuff by bringing a plastic bottle and money to the guy, and he fills your bottle. Moonshiners rarely have bottling facilities.

Of course there's Sodabi Jake and the fancy stuff he makes, but that stuff has been flavored so much that it's hardly the "real thing" anymore. I want my friends to know what I drank, not the fancy expensive shit I couldn't afford or even find outside of Cotonou.

Fortunately I have stumbled across a third option, an unattenuated village-style sodabi that is, if anything, even harsher than the stuff I drank. It is properly bottled and should make it out of the country fine. I expect I'll bring a liter. Not much point bringing more, nobody will want more than a taste.

---

As far as other stuff, buying gifts here is hard because there's frankly not a lot anybody would want. There's always the tourist sites with their ridiculous masks and outfits that no Beninese would be caught dead in, of course, and I guess drums, but those are really bulky. So I decided to focus my gift buying in two areas.

For men: Fulani daggers. The Fulani herders carry distinctive swords/knives/daggers. They're inexpensive, genuine, and manly.

For women: Cloth and cloth purses. Buying fancy was tissue is the number one pastime for lady PCVs, and sure enough my mom and female friends have expressed a lot of interest in the designs, so I bought some in spite of my personal aversion to fabric shopping (no joke, when I was little my mom's top disciplinary threat was, "If you boys don't be quiet I'll take you to the fabric store," which is the most boring place on Earth to a boy). It also costs $2 to get a decent little purse made out of said cloth, so I had several of those done.

For kids: More cloth, mostly, for my mom to make them outfits with. And one kid got a stuffed giraffe made out of the cloth.

---

Am I excited? Does a bear shit in the woods? Does a zangbeto actually have a guy inside? Yes, I'm excited. By my count I will have spent 880 consecutive days in country -- more than anybody in Peace Corps by a healthy margin, since all of the other third-year kids have taken trips abroad by now. I've even got a bigger chunk of Benin time than the American staff or, now that I think about it, any American I know. It's time to go the fuck home.

---

As far as I know the preschool is still on, and so is my high school.

11/19/2014 2:55:29 AM

You need to record your preschool and high school talks.

11/19/2014 3:11:42 AM

Welcome to America!

let us know when you're out of quarantine ;-)

11/24/2014 3:23:48 AM

Welcome back! Yes, please record the talks!

11/24/2014 4:10:26 AM

Have you come to America to sow your royal oats?

11/24/2014 8:57:06 AM

RECORD THE TALKS

OR ELSE

11/24/2014 3:43:55 PM

Funny how you post more from Africa than you do from North Carolina...

11/24/2014 5:57:46 PM

He actually has productive shit to do here.

11/24/2014 8:31:40 PM

Not exactly, but let's try to bear in mind that I only landed in NC at 6:30 on Sunday. I went to sleep almost immediately after I got home. Between that and eating and mandatory family activities there hasn't been a lot of time to post.

I will jump in now with the latest drama, which is that about half of the usual Thanksgiving crowd isn't going to attend this year because Thanksgiving falls within the 21 day incubation period. They're afraid I brought ebola. From Benin, which does not have it, to America, which does.

11/25/2014 1:06:56 AM

So how does it feel to be back? Anything substantially weirder or different than you remember?

[Edited on November 25, 2014 at 1:46 AM. Reason : ]

11/25/2014 1:45:54 AM

^^that is so fucked up.

11/25/2014 1:52:46 AM

^^^

Ehh. Fuck 'em. Make sure everyone knows how foolish they are.

11/25/2014 2:04:07 AM

So far I haven't been out in the world enough to see the huge changes -- mostly stayed at home with my family. TV seems frighteningly similar to what I remember. Not a good thing.

11/25/2014 8:25:28 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/benin-says-lassa-fever-kills-9-no-ebola-081638470.html. This probably won't make them feel better.

11/26/2014 8:02:13 AM

so long as it doesn't show up on Fox News he's probably all good

11/26/2014 10:58:18 AM

welcome home dude.

11/29/2014 3:21:07 PM

rip

1/1/2015 8:08:09 PM

1/1/2015 8:24:33 PM

The day TWW died

1/1/2015 9:36:25 PM

Alright, I fly back to Africa tomorrow and start work again on Monday. Work is much better suited to posting on TWW than vacation is.

As a bonus, on this trip I have a 7.5 hour layover in Brussels, which I'm told is more than enough time to zip into the city, eat a waffle, drink beer, and take some pictures. Finally get back to Cotonou on Saturday around 9:30 PM local time.

1/1/2015 9:52:28 PM

Back in Africa, jet lagged. Five years ago, jet lag wouldn't have been shit. The main difference between early 20s and late 20s is that my sleep schedule is no longer completely amorphous nor, for that matter, optional.

I spent a few hours in Brussels -- cold, wet hours that probably wouldn't have been chosen by the tourism board. Also it probably says something about the state of European economic decline that at 10:00 AM on a Saturday there were approximately 3 stores open in the city center, and they were all run by non-Europeans. Thus the Belgian waffle I had in Belgium was prepared by a Pakistani. Honestly, the waffle I had a Dame's Chicken and Waffles in Greensboro the week prior was way better.

Bea dog is alive but even skinnier than usual. The people she was staying with have their own dog, who apparently developed a taste for Bea's food ("Our dog loves kibble now!" I was told). The office is actually in something like work mode, trying to finalize this pineapple grant. The boss lady is even in DC hammering it out, which means I have minimal supervision.

I have to commend Africa for presenting me with a perfect moment of African-ness as soon as I stepped off the plane. It was a large, official sign in the sole airport terminal. Photography in the airport gets you sent to prison, so you'll have to trust me when I tell you that the sign said the following, in English:

"The Airport Manager is pleased to inform you
that you have NOTHING TO PAY
during the controls of
MOUTH EBOLA."

It was so simple, so elegant: in one little sign we have corruption, broken English, and official incompetence. (Sadly the French version next to it made a lot more sense, talking about "fievre d'ebola" rather than "mouth ebola," whatever the fuck that is)

1/6/2015 2:51:17 AM

Quote :

"Things like alcohol stoves and solar cookers are great, but the idea is to come up with sustainable things that they can keep doing by themselves after I'm gone, without outside help. (Of course, this doesn't always happen). This is one of the things I'm eager to hear about in training, and in the meantime keep me anxious -- I'd hate to get over there and have nothing to offer but "You should burn less wood." "

I am sure the discussions of how the American savior made fun of their airport (when he is supposed to be lecturing them about running their government) will keep them sustainably amused for years to come (regardless of how much wood they burn or if you ever give them a Foreman grill).




[Edited on January 6, 2015 at 3:07 AM. Reason : ]

1/6/2015 2:57:23 AM

I've read that post a half dozen times and I still have no idea what you're trying to say.

1/6/2015 5:50:44 AM

i'm glad your dog survived, sir

1/6/2015 8:23:37 AM

I bet Bea is happy you're back. Glad you made it and hope you enjoyed your vacation.

1/6/2015 10:33:15 AM

I have a story from just before my trip home. It's about my penis.

OK, now, bear with me on this one.

After exhausting all of my other dog-sitting options, I was forced to settle on my last choice. It was a couple; the girl had been a volunteer but quit to work at a hotel in Cotonou, which did not endear her to me. The guy was her Beninese boyfriend, who always struck me as being a bit shady -- that is, a little too interested in the green card potential, not interested enough in working. But nobody else could help me, so I was stuck.

But Grumpy, what does this have to do with your penis? Hold your horses, we'll get there.

They have a dog of their own, so before I agreed to let Bea stay with them for ~40 days, I wanted to make sure that they wouldn't kill each other. We set up a time after work for me to bring my dog over to test out the waters.

This play date turned into a shit show. They live in an obscure corner of town, far away from me, necessitating a long motorcycle ride holding a confused and terrified animal. The roads were usually bad, and when they were good, the ride got worse, because good roads permit motorcycle taxi drivers to go faster. Finally we arrive, and they aren't there. I can't get in touch with them. They end up being more than an hour late, then told me that they couldn't give me the promised car ride home because, well, it was late.

Finally I get home after another unpleasant dog-on-a-motorcycle experience. As volunteers in Africa usually do, I took all my clothes off the second I walked in the door, rinsed off, and stood around naked to cool off and air dry. As I was doing so, my stomach rumbled -- the good, hungry rumble, not the imminent diarrhea rumble. I went to the kitchen, which at this point was pretty bare because my trip was only a couple of days away.

But what good luck! I had some tortillas and just enough oil to turn those tortilla into chips. One meal was going to clear out the last of my foodstuffs. I put the oil in the pan and lit my gas stove.

Now, you think you know what about to happen, don't you? You think ol' Grumpy is going to get hot oil spattered on his junk. Well, you aren't as smart as you think, because that's not how it went down.

I stopped before putting the pan down and thought, well, exactly what you just thought. Standing directly in front of the stove, I thought "I should go put on some pants before I do this."

The word "this" had only just formed in my mind when I heard a "WHOOSH" and a jet of flame shot out of the dial on the front of the stove. The stove, which was directly aligned with my crotch. It was like someone had pointed a flamethrower directly at my penis.

Everything after that happened in slow motion. I jumped back, covered my dick, grabbed a towel, beat down the flames, and turned off the gas in what seemed like an hour but had to be about four seconds.

When the risk of fiery death had passed, I really began to freak out. I still hadn't looked at it. I couldn't bring myself to look. I was terrified. It's probably OK, it doesn't even hurt. The part of my brain that is optimistic is small.

Third degree burns don't hurt. They've burned through the nerves. The part of my brain that is pessimistic is large, and loud.

To delay having to actually inspect the damage, I smashed a block of ice, put it in a bowl, and then turned the bowl upside down on my crotch while I sat and prayed. I prayed hard that day. Please, God, if you're going to take my penis, let the wound somehow be fatal.

Of course, it turned out I was fine. I attribute my salvation from the fact that, due to some manscaping gone amok, I was smooth as an eggshell down there. Had there been hair, it could have caught and smoldered, and next thing you know my cock looks like the Hound from Game of Thrones.

I told this story to my parents when I was at home. Mom bought me an apron the next day, and Dad narrowly prevented her from writing "For Grumpy's Penis" on the front in sharpie.

1/7/2015 8:42:25 AM

Harmattan just arrived -- that'd be the annual wind that blows off of the Sahara and carries with it the dust from that desert. The past couple of years, I didn't even notice it was happening -- most of the dust falls in the north of the country. But this year for some reason it is a doozy.

Cotonou looks Martian. The sky is a pale yellow-orange, the sun is a pale white circle that you can look right at without wanting to squint. Visibility is limited. Everything that hasn't been washed has a film of fine desert sand covering it.

On the plus side, there's no humidity and the temperature is pleasant for once.

1/8/2015 2:43:16 AM

it's single digit wind chills here, you got out at a good time.

no sky sand though, so we have that going for us I suppose.

1/8/2015 8:09:02 AM

but he can make skysandcastles

1/8/2015 11:48:33 AM

Quote :

"To delay having to actually inspect the damage, I smashed a block of ice, put it in a bowl, and then turned the bowl upside down on my crotch while I sat and prayed. I prayed hard that day. Please, God, if you're going to take my penis, let the wound somehow be fatal."

this made me laugh out loud

<3

1/8/2015 2:20:39 PM

Any time you leave town to go anywhere, people ask you to bring them "Les bonnes choses de la bas," or "The good things from over there." Then when you get back, everybody -- from your coworkers and neighbors to the lady at your lunch cafeteria and the crazy guy on your street who keeps asking for your dog -- wants to know, "What did you bring me?" It's like having an entire country of six year old kids, I'm their dad, and I just got back on a business trip.

Faced with the prospect of having to either, a) Bring back gifts for the 70+ people I could expect to request them, or b) Bring back gifts for the important people and navigate the treacherous social waters of apologizing to the other 68, I chose option c) Lie. Everyone who asks me, I say, "It's terrible! I brought back a whole bag of gifts for everybody but they lost it." Very few of these people have ever flown but they all understand incompetence, poor customer service, and corruption, so this has served me relatively well. Of course, now I have to put up with "Have they found your bag yet?" almost every single day, but with a lie like this it is not difficult to keep the story consistent. "No."

1/12/2015 6:07:42 AM

One day be like "they finally returned my bag, but it was empty!"

1/12/2015 12:13:29 PM

^This. If you lose your bag in a third world country, forget about the contents when it's returned to you. I'd use this lie for sure to support your story--quite legit!

1/13/2015 9:01:46 AM