Noah's Peace Corps Blog

“Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.” James Baldwin When walking or biking around village most people call me Noé , a name that is no more than the French equivalent of Noah. I like the name. It's basically the same as Noah but still different, a kind of metaphor for who I feel I am in Benin. Other people in village and just about everyone outside of it call me something else: yovo . Many Beninese, especially in the south, use this label for foreigners, particularly those of a foreign race. Yovo becomes my name away from village, how strangers greet me, and the punctuation of shouts in my general direction. Generations have even passed down a song, often sung by children, with lyrics to greet and attract the attention of yovos: “Yovo, yovo, bonsoir! Ça va bien? Merci!” The label has often frustrated me. Some people in my own neighborhood still call me yovo instead of Noé eve...

The month of May heralds the beginning of the rainy season throughout Benin. Farmers prepare their fields, and temperatures fall. While everyone welcomes these advantages to rain, the ambitious rise of puddles and filling catchments (even those unintended) can create breeding grounds for the world's least favorite buzzer, the mosquito. Mosquitoes make for annoying and itchy evening in the United States, but in Benin the Anopheles mosquito can transmit malaria. Malaria is a disease most everyone recognizes but knows little about. It's caused by a parasite with symptoms of fever, chills, head and body aches, and even anemia and respiratory distress. It resembles and is treated like the flu, but even mild cases can take their turn for the worse and become fatal if not diagnosed and treated within 24 hours. Diagnoses confirm cases through blood samples, and oral medication for a few days can treat even the worst cases. That makes malaria preventable. Avoid mosquitoes by sl...

In 2013 the Government of Benin appropriated funds for two large projects designed to increase the quality of life for all citizens. First, the routinely underfunded educational system received adequate finances so that all public primary schools could provide all-day kindergarten, or é cole maternelle in French. As a result, the youngest students of poor suburbs and rural villages would not be left out when local schools lack funds. Second, the Ministry of Communication and Technology managed the massive expansion of broadband internet access across the entire country. Previously, private internet providers only operated in major cities, but public investment paid for grid expansion and subsidized prices for poorer, far-off, and rural communities. The Ministry has promoted their project as bringing every Beninese student, farmer, and businessperson to global markets and information no matter their home community. What do you think of these policies? They sound like huge...

The US Embassy in Cotonou visited my site and made a promotional video on the work I do with CRIPADD ONG and other community partners. Beware that the whole video is in French. For those sans savoir, I discuss our work in gardening extension, tree planting, nutrition, environmental education, and tomato conservation. Enjoy!

It isn’t news, but I have to say that volunteering with Peace Corps is no walk in the park. Every day poses a myriad of social miscues, slow work, and feelings of isolation. I often take comfort and encouragement in messages from friends and family who appreciate my service. They remind me of the reasons why I chose this job, that I easily overlook the advantages of service, and why service outshines the entry-level office alternative I could have chosen. These messages -and the comments I received from strangers while on home leave- often emphasize the “do-gooder” nature of Peace Corps service. People imagine Volunteers as examples, paragons even, of virtue and self-sacrifice in the humanitarian struggle for a better tomorrow. We are imagined teaching earth-shattering lessons, feeding the hungry, and kissing the babies we vaccinate. Thinking of Volunteers as perfect do-gooders poses several problems. First, life is much muddier and the details of service more boring than people i...

The lion stood no more than twenty yards from the car. Pardon the expression, but the massive male West African lion froze in the middle of the trail and stared like a deer in the headlights. It crept into the bushes as we approached, quickly creating space between it and us until it stopped, assessed us, and relaxed. We watched it for several minutes until it sauntered away. It was then we spotted two other lions further down the trail. For about a half an hour we rolled the car back and forth along the trail to catch better glimpses of these rare West African lions. They prowled through the bushes, laid around, and even chased each other, much to the delight of us smartphone-wielding Volunteers. It hadn’t occurred to me how dangerous such a large, strong, and ferocious cat could be until it came within 15 yards of our vehicle. Then I was happy to be behind metal bars in a big, scary thing called the automobile. I was on a three-day safari with five other Volunteers in Pendjari N...

I took a quick trip my first weekend back to the northern city of Parakou The flight back to Benin was delayed one day. I did not know when the airline instigated the change, but it evaded my attention up until I checked my bags in at Minneapolis-Saint Paul Int'l Airport to their new “final destination” of Paris. Then, out of artful negotiation, corporate responsibility, or sheer dumb luck, the airline put me up in a hotel for the 30-hour layover. The result? My first visit to Europe and the sites of Paris. This auspicious woopsie-daisy capped off a restful and joyous three weeks’ leave home in Minnesota. There, many of my preoccupations from my last blog post where dampened or managed with the help of loving family and friends.  Now, I’m back in Benin and have been for the last three weeks. I’m back to eating boiled dough with fish, rice and beans, and cassava porridge. It didn’t take long to dream again of takeout, but these dreams keep themselves working the nig...

In a few days I will celebrate one year at my work site. That's the first of hopefully two years of service with my community for improved agricultural production, community-wide nutrition, income generation and management, and gender equality. Also in a few days, the next generation of Volunteers will take their oaths of office and anxiously head to their work sites. I'm proud of my year's work at site and in helping train these new Volunteers, but I will unfortunately be absent from celebrating either of these accomplishments. That's because tonight, I'm traveling home. Etoile Rouge, a central point in Cotonou I will be in Minnesota (with a brief stay in Wisconsin) for three weeks to celebrate the holidays with family and friends. I will miss the charms of living and working with my community, from daily gardening and leading trainings to afternoons stripping corn and visiting with neighbors. An infinitely long series of joys, jokes, and connections h...

Over the last few months my host organization and I have been working diligently on developing a new organic gardening training center. Funded with the help of European partners and the labors of community members, this training center will one day teach intensive, organic gardening methods to interested gardeners. Its features are many: a water tower pumps water into an irrigation system of sprinklers and drip tubes; two composting stations facilitate the monthly churning of decaying organic matter into rich soil amendment; and three tanks house 100 catfish each that munch on moringa leaves and furnish untold gallons of nutrient-rich crap water that, when joined with fresh bovine poop, make for excellent fertilizer. Beyond the rows of irrigated vegetables in the northwest corner of the site sits a small garden promoting a long list of Peace Corps organic gardening methods. Here is grown kale, spinach, garlic, okra, cucumber, carrots, moringa, lemongrass, papaya, pineapple...

A major misconception many Americans have of the global poor (and poor Americans for that matter) is that they are listless, lazy, and lacking creativity. The reality is that the poor often work long hours -as they do in the United States,-or work many jobs and play many roles -as they do here in Benin. Nothing highlights this point more than my recent observations and work at site. I'll start with the corn harvest. Farmers sowed corn back in April/May and now hustle home every night with the day's worth of harvest. They promptly strip the ears and thump their thumbs at the kernels, which are then sifted, dried, and stored before milling. Corn is the primary food crop of Lac Ah ém é as it is eaten at nearly every meal in the form of boiled dough, or p â te (which I wrote about in an earlier post ). Nearly every household has its small 1-2 hectare field somewhere within walking distance of their home, and chances are they grow at least a little -if not a lot of- corn. Each ...