Noah's Peace Corps Blog

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...