Noah's Peace Corps Blog

The other day I woke up with the immediate need for contemplation. I wasn’t sure why and to what end, so I brought the thought right back to what I was doing: waking up. By now I was standing at the window, peering over the setting of this recent act. Tin rooftops populated my foreground with the expanse of lake emerging beyond them. It was not quite light, but a large harvest moon lit a fisherman heading early to his acadja with oar in hand and feet solidly planted in his pirogue. Distant drums beat the tune that had woken me up for a few moments earlier in the morning. They no longer seemed a nuisance with the impending dawn so near. A glance at the grove of trees a few blocks over failed to find any of the monkeys I happened to spy the previous morning. I marveled at these details and thought back to where else and how I had woken up this year. In Benin, I most frequently wake up in a village not far from Lokossa, the site of our training center. Kids are already giggling ...

I have spent one month in Benin. It sounds trite, but it seems like ages since I left the United States. Many days have ticked by in biking to cross-culture classes, practicing French and Fon grammar, gardening in the hot sun, and goofing around with my toddler host siblings on the front steps of our house. Joys and monotonies sprinkle each day, but I have overall enjoyed and benefitted from my time in Pre-Service Training (PST). I will say that it has been a rather easy cultural transition, which I attribute to a semester in Senegal in both urban and rural areas there. So, word of advice to my younger peers interested in the Peace Corps: Study away serves as a great opportunity to test your meddle and interest in two years of service. Okay, I’ll end my stump speech there before I jump to too many conclusions. My favorite aspect about PST so far has been the host family experience, though teaching local primary school students about building hand washing stations or workshopping a co...

How do you eat an orange? You probably eat them in the way I always loathed. Step one: punch through either the top or the bottom. Step two: wedge your thumb sufficiently underneath the rind to prepare for the third step, which is continuing to leverage your thumb between the hard rind and the soft, easily puncturable flesh. It’s here that I would generally fail to gain enough momentum to peel the orange in large strips. Instead, my fingers would be drench and covered in the orange I was supposed to be eating already. By the time you’ve peeled the whole kit and caboodle, you must face the pile of rind bits and a pulverized heap of citrus. Step four: divide into manageable pieces without drenching your hands in orange juice again. And step five: avoid the seeds while eating. You’re probably thinking that I’m just a terrible orange peeler, and you’re correct. (No amount of time in Macalester admissions could fix that.) Many of the Beninese that I’ve met eat oranges differently. Optio...

The return from lunch had us energized and ready for an afternoon of gardening. We remained eager even as the sun beat down on us in the rear of the training center. You might expect as much from Sustainable Agricultural System (SAS) trainees. This SAS Squad wanted in on the action we had heard so much about earlier in the week. We spent more than an hour and a half preparing our garden with hoes and picks, pausing every once and a while to watch brief demonstrations from staff from current volunteers on digging berms, plant ecology, and mixing “garbage” dirt, charcoal, and dried chicken fecal matter. Most of the afternoon saw the swinging of hoes up and down like oil wells, but our game was infusion of organic matter, not extraction. Faces drenched with sweat glanced up at the darkening sky. Whispers of pluie began, and the swinging quickened… but to no avail. Water poured down, leaving each volunteer sopping as they persisted in their work. Most teams finished their work, and t...

A fɔn ganjià ? On Saturday, I woke up ( fɔn ) recovered ( gangi! ) from jet lag in a bustling Cotonou, ready to depart for our training center in a quieter city in the south. The ride brought us across plains of tropical savannah and lakes spotted with fisheries to the pleasantries of WiFi and ping pong at the Peace Corps Training Center. It’s here that instructors will push us on improving our French (so far so good!), learning the local language of Fon, and branching out in cross-cultural workshops and agricultural extension classes. I welcome the chance to walk around the city with my fellow trainees and chat with Beninois outside the cadre of our excellent facilitators. Training will, however, occur primarily in nearby villages where host families will facilitate immersion and instructors will live alongside us to conduct most of our lessons. Doing this in small groups of volunteers sprinkled across several villages provides a more personalized and interactive learning env...

I have spent the last day and a half in Washington, D.C. with preliminary orientation sessions. The cohort of agricultural extension and public health volunteers is 40 strong and on our way to Paris tomorrow and Cotonou, Benin sometime Wednesday. The members of my cohort come from across the nation and globe, each with their unique background in upbringing and education. Among us is an NCAA DI Championship-winning goalie, a former caretaker of over a dozen Broadway theater buildings, students right out of undergrad, couples, and mid-career professionals. Regardless of our differences, we share the position of Peace Corps Trainee with goals of service, cultural exchange, and human development. It's that kind of commonality of motivation that has occupied my mind when it's not tuned into the logistics of traveling over 5,000 miles from The United States to Benin (and that neglects our detour to Paris). In fact, it was not at the beginning but at the end of orientation that we...

Welcome to my blog! This is where I'll post updates, stories, and reflections from my 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin. I offer no promises on the frequency of posts or their general character, but I promise to write in ways that avoid minutiae and lecturing. The blog should be a good way for loved ones and those I know in the United States to feel connected with me. That being said, I know I'd enjoy a two-way street whenever possible. I don't expect you to create your own blog, but any updates you can share would be greatly appreciated  once I've begun volunteering . Who knows, I may figure out a way to coordinate a snail mail system for those interested in staying connected that way. Stay tuned! I still have 23 days before I go to Staging in DC, which will last two days before I fly out to Benin. I won't post anything until then, so in the meantime enjoy the rest of your summer! Cordially, Noah