Noah's Peace Corps Blog

I have spent a little over a month at site, something that amounts to about 5 percent of my total service. I thought it was about time I updated you all back home on my actual work situation. I work with a local nongovernmental organization (NGO) called CRIPADD (Cercle de Recherche pour l’Identification et la Promotion des Alternatives du Développement Durable). Our partnership was orchestrated by the Peace Corps and is meant to provide mutual support for our respective missions on food security, environmental protection, and community economic development. My host organization supports agricultural development and environmental protection in a chain of villages on the east shore of Lac Ahémé. My work so far has been to support CRIPADD’s extension work among a few women’s garden groups. They grow local leafy greens for sale at the nearby market or to pre-order customers. Each group has a plot of land that they manage year-round but focus on during the dry season (December-May). Then

I was leaving the office of my host organization when I overheard neighbors mention that the neighboring community was experiencing a visit from Egungun , the Revenant. Egungun , as far as I know, is not one spirit from the great beyond in particular -like your great-grandpa or a deceased friend- but more or less an awakened, vile spirit returned to us briefly from the Undiscovered Country. I raced over and, against the concerned pleas of neighborhood children, proceeded to watch the Egungun as it haunted the attending crowd. At first, I was a member of the large mass of young men pursuing the spirit only to be chased away, but soon found it much more entertaining, informative, and safe to stand on the sidelines with a large group of women, children, and a handful of men. Each time the Egungun retreated it received taunts from the crowd it just chased, which seemed a little counter-intuitive to me at first until I inferred that doing so was part of the fun and spirit of it all. Not on