Ups and Downs

Sunday, 5 May 2013

Today I came back to Kérou. I think this is the most excited I’ve ever been to be back. And that is quite remarkable, since I’ve actually had a pretty incredible last three weeks. I got to see a lot of fellow Peace Corps volunteers, and partied a lot. I spent two weekends in a row going out dancing in Cotonou; then one weekend in Nati, plus some pool time. Pretty relaxing. Plus, I only got stuck in the medical unit for one week; so that’s a record escape time! But as I mentioned, it did give me the chance to party a little more in the big city and meet some cool people there; so I’m really okay with that.

The point is, however, that despite all this good stuff happening elsewhere, I was still really happy to get back to Kérou. It is my current home after all. It was almost comforting to be back. Of course, I also had my kitty to greet me. Luna was terribly annoying, refusing to leave my side, and biting me if I stopped petting her for even one second. It felt nice to be loved/missed. My neighbors, too, were happy to see me back. And then I walked into town, greeted by the usual chorus of “BATOORI MA SOEUR”, but to my everlasting delight, these children were actually told off, and chased away by this old man. I finally feel like I might be fitting in. Well, no, not fitting in. But just becoming more part of the community. People know me; remember me; notice when I’m gone, and have started listening when I say I don’t like being called “white person”, etc. I also have plenty of work looking up at me, so I’m really ready for all of that.

Then, to top it all off, I discovered that MY FRIDGE WORKS. No need to think about how many times I’m going to call Hubert or the Mayor’s accountant or the electrician. Nope. It’s just done. Set and ready to go!!!!!!!!!!!!! And tomorrow is market day, so I can go fill up on whatever veggies I can manage to find and not worry about if they’re going to go bad tomorrow. And I can have cold water. AND MAKE SWEET TEA. Oh my goodness, my life is wonderful.

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

Well let’s just say the lord giveth and the lord taketh away. (no, it’s not my fridge). Last night I finally had my proper greeting to the north in the form of intense intestinal malfunction. Let’s just say that I didn’t make it to the bathroom, and as I’m cleaning up after myself, I just started crying, wondering what the heck I am doing here. My body must hate me for all the sickness and infections and just general. And often I feel like such a failure because I suck at going out and making friends, connections, etc. I’m scared to talk to people. I procrastinate so much at the thought of having to actually put myself out there. How can I actually say I’m a good volunteer? So I start thinking this, and then thinking about everything else that ever went wrong in my life (especially about my father), and eventually find myself bawling my eyes out into my pillow, praying that my neighbors can’t hear me. Although they probably can. They hear me when I talk to myself (don’t judge me!), how could they miss me absolutely wailing. Then I reasoned that in movies, people use pillows as silencers for guns, so the pillow has to have drowned out my cries. I really, really hope so. I also finished by writing this inspiring piece:

LOW POINT

You’re supposed to get over your grief in a damn time, a moment of reconciliation with reality. BUT you don’t. It lingers there. Even past the anniversary when you pretend you’re over it. You pretend that you’re not shocked. It’s been three years. You pretend you’ve moved on. But ever still it lingers, until you’re crying yourself to sleep in a concrete box in Africa. Saying he still would’ve wanted you to be here. Which he would. But damn, why does it have to be so hard? WHY is it that it’s the first time, three years later, when I realize that this is the first time I’ve really let myself cry? For real. The first time I haven’t been trying so hard to hide it from people around me. No, I let loose. GRANTED into a pillow. A pillow to suffocate my despair. At least I hope it did. Otherwise, it’ll be awkward in the morning with the neighbors.

But a pillow. Three years and some odd days later. God knows I have not been counting the days like I used to.

WOULD I GIVE IT UP? I look at my life, and for a moment I think “YES!” But then I remember that this has also in a way brought me closer to my father: the man, the farmer, the accountant.

I realize now, I’ve been working a lot only on those last two, or at least things related to them. Okay, neither of those are easy. But being the man that he was; that’s the hard part. Can I just talk to people; listen and learn? To not mind being stranded or lost on the road or in a crowd. To bring in clients after a few chats and make friends with ease.

But can I ever be like that? I’m scared. To talk to people. To have them judge me. But maybe I’m like my Mother. Just scared of my potential.

WHO KNOWS?

But is that a cop-out? Maybe I’m just actually lazy and lying that being scared is my excuse. But how can I say I’m lazy? Okay, sometimes when I’m actually in village, people tell me I work too hard. They joke that I can’t stand NOT to be working. But that doesn’t account for the hours I spend at the bar, or watching shows on my computer, or surfing the internet. Sure I need time for myself, but I need to spend way more time making that effort. But I do try. EVERY DAY. I’m not sure if that makes me a good volunteer or not. But does it matter? Who am I here for? Me? Then I’m probably doing a shitty job. Because my body is deteriorating from the inside and out, and it seem like my mental state suffers from extremes as well. On the other hand, I’m growing. Am I here for the Beninese? It’s so hard to see if I’m actually doing something useful. For my future career? Not if my future employer ever reads this blog…

In the end, I hope to make a difference; of sorts. Hey, it’s Peace Corps in Africa. I can’t have to high of expectations; except of myself.

Anyway, those were my thoughts at their rawest, slightly incoherent form. Sometimes, it just helps me to write things out, and I did try to conclude on a somewhat uplifting note. Anyway, I hope you don’t mind this unpleasantness of my entry, but to quote Marilyn Monroe, “…if you can’t take me at my worst, then you certainly don’t deserve me at my best.”

I once told someone that Peace Corps is just a journey of extreme ups, and extreme downs, with A LOT of waiting in between. I’m just here, trying to help people, but it also requires that I make sense of my own life here; my own presence and purpose. It’s so easy to be conquered by your own demons when you are sitting in the dark surrounded by concrete and dirt, with an angry stomach, and far from anyone you know. Luckily, things such as cell phones exist, so I was able to talk to a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, just so she could make me laugh and what not. Later I talked to my mom as well. We both suffer from a lot of the same insecurities and roadblocks, but it’s good to talk to each other. We know where are faults are; but we often need someone else just to say, “GET OVER IT, and just do what you need to do!!!”

Every day is a struggle. I don’t mean just me, here, in Africa. But I know that every person struggles with their own problems, their own failures, their own needs daily. And everyone’s is different. And I would never want to insinuate that my problems are worse. You just have to read about them, because, well, it’s MY blog.

There are so many ways in which I disappoint myself. I tell myself that “I exist to serve” and I strive for that, yet in so many ways I just sit around and serve my only gluttony and sloth. I tell myself I’m the nice person, yet I see myself doing wrong to others. So I must work every day to change. Every day to use these depressing thoughts, and these LOW POINTS in my life to push myself to do better, do what I need to do for my happiness, as well as the happiness of those I wish to serve. Every day, work to be a better person. And to make the world a better place just by doing that.

Sunday, 12 May 2013

You’ll be happy to know that my life did improve over the next few days. Wednesday morning, I went and talked to my tailor, who called out my extremely swollen eyes, but then blamed it on my moto ride back to Kérou. I didn’t bother to correct him that the ride was days ago.

I also went to talk with an artisan who in charge of Ben Club’s new accounting notebook that I set up. He had been collecting the information, such as who paid their weekly fees, but didn’t want to enter it all in the final ledger, since he’s still not entirely sure of what he’s doing. I’m trying really hard to explain it in the way that he understands WHY he has to do certain things, etc, instead of just “Do this! Do that!” It’s frustrating for both of us, because I think he just wants to have me tell him what to do, and this way it goes a little slower. But this is the only way that he will still be able to do this after I’m gone, no matter what situations arise.

After doing this, I went to see a man named Ibe, who has his own garden right beside this swamp area. He apparently been around and friends with westerners for a while, and was friends with a French volunteer who worked at the Catholic Mission at the time that Ben (of the Ben Club) was here. Anyway, Anna was there the other day, and he asked her to help him do financial planning, so she referred him to me, and we set up a little meeting to talk about his current state of finances, and then go from there. It was really interesting showing him the calculations. He knows, for example, how much he made from gardening last year, and approximately how much his wife makes selling things at the market. But he’s never sat down and calculated it all out. Although when I showed him that his wife makes about twice as much as he does a year, he just kind of accepted that. “Yes, I kind of figured that. The women, they can make so much money just selling things at market!” The problem, he notes, is that almost all of the money his wife does make just goes to sending money or gifts, etc to people who are celebrating a major life event, whether it be a birth, death, or marriage, etc. One thing that did shock him was the idea that you need to take out all the expenses of your business (in this case, his garden) from the gross income to find the profit. “I’ve never thought of that before…” he says. Something that seems so obvious to me, but I guess that’s the advantage of being raised by accountants. Anyway, I’ve told him to start writing down each transaction (income and expenses) for his household, then soon I’ll sit down with him and show him how to put it all in categories, so he can see if he’s following his budget.

Thursday I went with Pierre to Fétékou. It was actually a very disheartening trip. Apparently, due to the very early and hard rains we’ve been having, their garden, which of course is located in what is usually a lake, has mostly flooded. Usually this happens about a month later, so they had planted thinking that. Now, their plants were not ready, but are underwater, except for a few plots that were on higher ground. Many women are very discouraged, because they were really planning on the later crops, such as tomatoes to be the real money plants, and where they would make the extra money to put into the savings that I’m helping them with. I did some looking around as to what might be done for next year, so this situation could be avoided. The best—but most expensive—thing to do would be to build some smaller dams up from the gardening plot, so as to keep more of the water there, rather than letting it all flow into their gardening area. I am also by no means an engineer, so I don’t know how much advice I can really give. Time to do some researching…

The Fétékou garden. Or what's left of it, floating in the water.

That evening I went to Gouginnou, which is Hubert’s village. There is a gardening group there that the NGO FAFA gave a lot of money to (about $8,000), so they are one that I have to go to, and talk to three women, and fill out a notebook on their inputs and outputs. This is a most interesting story, because I asked the women about seeds, fertilizer, insecticide, etc, and their response is that the gardening group paid for everything. Which is to say Hubert bought everything—probably with FAFA’s money, even though that money was destined primarily for potatoes. Then, for the potatoes, Hubert actually planted all of them on his land, using his children as labor (the women don’t actually know how to plant potatoes, they’ve never done that before), and he (or his children, rather) watered them occasionally with his moto pump, and some complicated system of moving dirt around to direct the water flow. The women occasionally weeded, then helped harvest them, and Hubert gave them all potatoes to sell on their own. Some of them made up to $50 or so. Other than that, however, their garden was almost entirely a bust. I think that had to do with the poor quality of soil. It’s a new garden, and hasn’t really been prepped for having crops grow on it, so things just didn’t grow well. All they got out of it was perhaps a little for the family to eat, and for one women a goat ate all of that too. At least they didn’t put any money into it!

When they tell me how things are really working, though, I wonder if I should mention any of this to FAFA. I mean, they gave this group quite a significant amount of money, which Hubert just seems to be gifting out in an attempt to motivate the women, earn their favor, and maybe actually get the gardening group to function. But clearly, this experiment was utterly unsuccessful. The women sold nothing, except for what Hubert gave them, and really, how does that help them? They have a few extra francs, but no actual knowledge of how to grow potatoes, if they wanted to try on their own next year. Plus I utterly fail to see how some fertilizer, insecticide, and having someone come to build the gardening rows costs $8,000. And then I was talking to Hubert and he said, “You know, one problem this year was the water. FAFA promised to build us a cistern, but they didn’t!” And I’m just staring at him like, “Well maybe you could have used some of the $8,000????” But then again, I don’t know the inner dealings between Hubert and FAFA, and where this money has all gone, but given the previous rumors around Hubert…I just can’t believe that he’s all innocent and not on the take.

But then I ask the women if they are happy with this situation. They’re response is that “Well, it’s not bad.” They get free stuff, get to hope that maybe next year they can actually sell the things they grow. In their view, Hubert is just trying to help them. Even if it means they have to lie and say that they really did work with the potatoes, etc. If Hubert weren’t around in the first place, they wouldn’t have any of this. So Hubert gets to skim off a lot of money just because he knows how to make the right people happy. Politics. Sigh.

So the weekend was filled with artisans meetings, as usual. Plus I had a meeting to see who was interested in participating in the “Second Ben Club”. Hopefully this will help more people get involved, as well as those disheartened by the current political climate in the first Ben Club. Unfortunately, the only people that showed up were Mechanics, who had the advantage of having their own meeting RIGHT before the one I organized. But there have been more people who have expressed interest in getting involved, so I will spend this week going around to them and reminding them to come to the next meeting.

Tonight, I was supposed to have a meeting about the Reading & Writing class I organized for the Artisans. It was going fine, but then there was like one week that the teacher couldn’t make it, and after that, everyone stopped coming, even though I told them that it was back on. Then I was gone, and of course, nothing improved. So I want to organize a committee of people who will kind of manage the class, keep up the correspondence, etc. Of course, it rained, so the meeting didn’t happen. (No one wants to travel anywhere on their motos—or in my case, my bike—in the pouring down rain.) Guess we’ll have to see for next week. Constant informed me that he can’t have the classes this week anyway, since he is studying for an exam he must take if he wants to possibly become a director in the school.

Saturday, 18 May 2013

Another week gone by. And once again, all I have to say for myself is that I did a lot and absolutely nothing.

Monday, I spent the whole morning at the bank, well because nothing actually works fast in this country. It took an hour alone just for Pierre and I to make deposits into 7 different accounts. It’s actually really depressing though. Apparently, years ago, there used to be a CLCAM actually in Fétékou, but then one day the bosses decided that the more remote locations were costing more than they were making, and shut them down. This is reasonable, but then what happened was a bunch of these women had accounts there, still with money in them. But there was no longer a place near them where they could take their money out, so they just left it. Then each year, the CLCAM took out their fee, and now, after so many years, it’s all gone. Women lost anywhere between $1.40 to $20. For me it seems like a huge scam by the CLCAM, to go into these villages, take people’s money, and then just up and leave. Obviously, I don’t think they conspired to do this, in fact they probably had great aspirations to be able to serve the most remote people in Benin, and then realized it was a bad decision for their business. But on the other hand, maybe they could have thought, “well, we’ll make an exception for those people who were in villages where we shut the CLCAM’s down; we won’t charge fees.” But I guess that would be TOO much thinking outside the box.

On the other hand, I also realize that if a woman couldn’t bother to spend about $1 to come into Kérou to retrieve her $20 from the bank, maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m just not entirely sure that everyone understood exactly what happens to their money. I remember one artisan saying to me when I asked him if other artisans had personal savings accounts, something like, “Well, some people used to have accounts there, but then there was a rumor that the CLCAM took your money!” Umm…that’s what fees are.

Anyway, I would feel really guilty about encouraging the women to deposit their money, if it weren’t for the fact that the CLCAMs have decided to only charge fees for accounts that exceed $40. Most of the women wont have more than that, and if they are getting close I will at least encourage them to keep it at $39. Besides, if they are motivated to give now, hopefully they completely understand that they will have to go into Kérou and retrieve it. I just feel in some ways like the former Fétékou CLCAM: easy to deposit, hard to take out. On the other hand, a lot of the women are talking about how much they want to be able to take out loans (despite my exquisite drawings  and flawless presentation on how costly loans are, and how much better it is just to save), so they will have to come into Kérou at least once a month to pay that back. So anyway, I just hope that I’m actually doing something good here.

Plus Tuesday, I went back to Fétékou, and discovered that the entire garden has now been wiped out. Even those lucky women who had some access to their plants before have lost whatever was left. So I’m worried that if that were to happen again, then these women, to whom I’ve given help in getting credit, won’t be able to pay that credit back, will be strapped with debt… and so on.

But then I go to their new site, which is a field on the other side of town from their old garden. This, they will actually be able garden during the rainy season as well, because it’s not in the middle of a lake. Plus I think they are getting their water from a water tower near by, meaning they could set up a decent irrigation system. It was really incredible to see these women, who have just had their crops destroyed, right back at it. They were turning over all the earth, in what I feel could actually literally back-breaking work. All they have is some hoes, and they just lean over, hacking away at the earth. And some of these women are pretty old! I just don’t know how they do it. Both mentally and physically. To be so devastated by the loss of their plants, then just go the next day and labor away in the sun, getting ready to plant the next round.

The women working on their new gardening site

I talked with them about their dam, about their plans for this garden, their savings, etc. Then Pierre and I headed back. Oh, and on the way Pierre happens to see someone selling guinea fowl eggs (it’s apparently the season for these eggs, since guinea fowls start laying them when it rains. Which also means, that if you have some guinea fowls, and want them to give you eggs, apparently all you have to do is just literally water them with a watering can, and they’ll think the rainy season has started. I think that officially makes them dumber than chickens, and that’s saying a lot!). Anyway, we stop and buy them, and he gives them to me like, “Can you hold these for me.” A little bit later, we see someone selling a chicken, so he stops, and I tell him there is no way I am holding the chicken for him. He buys it anyway, and then just hangs it off the handle of his bike, all the way back to Kérou. Oh, Africa.

Friday, 31 May 2013

So I’ve been really slack about writing lately, as you’ve probably noticed. I’ve been really down lately, and lacking in motivation, etc. Then the past few days I’ve been in Parakou, a large city in Benin. There were some other volunteers here, and they started discussing amongst themselves how they are all going throught their “mid-service crisis”. This is apparently something that all volunteers experience about a year into their service, where they seem to get depressed, upset, etc. I kind of realized that this is probably what I’ve been feeling lately, ever since the night I wrote the sad piece up above in italics. Then I felt mad, because that just means I’m normal. I think I mentioned at the beginning of my service that I didn’t feel like I needed some of the adjustment training, blah, blah, blah, because I want to believe that I’m stronger than that, and I’ll be just fine. Culture shock and mid-service crisis are not for me! I guess I’ve been proved wrong, but now that I’ve realized what was going on, I suddenly have this huge desire to NOT be like the common folk (although, honestly, it’s not right to call my fellow volunteers common. They all are really amazing, strong people, and it’s silly for me to feel like I’m any better. Actually some of them are way better at this thing than me, but still I have this reaction that I can’t help. I guess just the desire to feel special or something). I guess it’s a good thing though, because now I want to snap out of it. I want to prove that I’m still strong, that I won’t be pulled down by this depressing cycle.

So I’ve spent the last days at this training learning things, obviously, but also contemplating what I want to do when I get back to Kérou, for the next year, and then after that—whether it’s staying a year or doing something else. I kind of have a bunch of different things that I want to do, so we’ll see how it turns out.

Monday, 17 June 2013

So… still slacking at the writing thing, sorry. I guess the main problem is that there isn’t much to report. Gardening season is over, though the women at Fétékou are starting up their new rainy-season garden. But I’m not going there as much, and not at all to the other gardening groups. My artisans don’t really need me. I am trying with the new Village Savings and Loans group, but every week people miss it or it rains… sigh. The literacy classes are floundering. Oh, and after a whole month of waiting for the report to help me with chicken coop from the people in Nati, I get this photocopy of a diet regime for chickens, and the prices of some items like feeders scrawled out on a piece of paper. I am so mad, because these people promised me they would write out dimensions for the building I needed to build, how many feeders I would need—not just individual prices—and so much more. I’ve been putting off thinking about this project, because I figured I would jump so much on it when I finally got the report they promised me. But now I realized I’ve wasted a whole month for some last-minute crap. I hate people. Whatever, I guess I’ll just have to figure it out on my own, like I had originally planned.

Otherwise, I’ve been just plodding along. The rainy season is killing me, because I’ll spend one day twiddling my thumbs, then the next day, I might even have a full(ish) schedule that just gets ruined by the rains, and I’m stuck inside, twiddling my thumbs again.

I did have one successful thing, though. A local gardener, Ibe, had asked Anna to help him with financial stuff. So she passed along that task to me. I think I mentioned this before, as I had already started working on it with him, but the other day, we went and finished up. I also had to talk to his wife to know how much was spent on food, since she is more in charge of that. Based on the information he gave me, and my calculations, his yearly household income is about 925,000 Francs (that’s about $1850), but the family spends about 1,400,000F ($2800). But just think about that. His income is $5 a day to take care of himself, 2 wives, and I’ve met at least 5 children so far. Ibe was really sobered by the numbers I gave him, realizing he is living above his means. So we discussed his two options: either to raise his income or lower spending. But that’s kind of hard to do. His wife already works every 3 days out of 4 selling things at market, and that is their largest income source. Ibe’s garden helps (both monetarily, as well as contributing to family nourishment), but it’s hard to expand beyond what he’s already doing. And spending-wise, even buying minimal food (mostly just rice, occasionally beans, and then a tiny bit of seasoning), it still costs about $1,000 a year. The only excess is soft drinks he gets for his kids. But who is going to tell their sweet faces no more sodas? So we talked about cutting back here and there. Trying to spend less in every category (such as clothes, personal items, the soft drinks, etc).

But I think the best accomplishment was that I gave him a notebook where he can help organize his expenses. One part is writing down every time he spends money, and then at the end of each week he adds up the totals for each category. He kept talking about how before he knew money came in and money went out, but had no way of tracking it or analyzing his spending patterns. And it’s especially hard when so much of his income and spending is irregular (harvest time vs. school payments, etc). Now I’ve broken the process down for him, and I’ll come back to help him analyze it. Hopefully this will help him get his spending under control. He was really, really grateful for my help, and I was glad to be able to give him that.

A part from this, I also randomly spent some time with his neice, but I did not know she was his niece at the time. I had met her once before, and she had been friends with a former volunteer. Mimi—that’s her name—happens to have an aunt who lives near me, so she saw, and came over to my house and chatted. Then she took me around. I met her aunt, who happens to make “chook”, which is homemade beer. We hung out there for a while, then she took me to her grandmother’s house. Her grandmother has a black cat (the first one I’ve seen in Benin)—which fits, as Mimi tells me she’s a sorceress and can see the future. We then went to her mom’s house, who also makes chook. There I met a man who seemed to be quite drunk on chook, and we had a conversation that went like this:

Man: “You’re from America!? I love America! It has 52 states.”

Me: “I’m sorry, what? How many states?”

Man: “52.”

Me: “No, it’s 50. There are 50 states.”

Man: “No it’s definitely 52. I know this. I’m a teacher.”

Me: “Well, but it’s my country. I know my country, and I know there are only 50 states.”

Man: “But I’m a teacher, I learned this, and there are 52.”

Me: (starting to worry more than ever for the school system in Benin) “No there is not. There are only 50. There are 50 stars on our flag, one for each state. 50 states.”

Man: “Your flag was made a long time ago.”

Me: “Yes, but it changes every time we add a new state.”

Man: “Well maybe it’s changed now, and you just didn’t know.”

Me: “I’m pretty sure I would know. It’s my country, and that would be a big deal.”

Man: “Maybe you’ve forgotten one.”

Me: “Like what?”

Man: “The one up above. With all the fish.”

Me: (trying to think of all of the costal states) “Okay, up above. Like Alaska?”

Man: “No, below that.”

Me: “Hawaii?”

Man: “No, lower.”

Me: (taking the leap to territories) “Guam? Puerto Rico? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Man: “There are 52 states.”

Me: “NO THERE’S NOT.”

At this point Mimi kicks my foot, and gives me this look to stop talking. She tells the man in English that she hates him (I assume because he was being rude to her guest), and then he insists that he speaks english better than her. That was a lie. Mimi speaks better English than him and can only say things like “I love you” “I hate you” “It’s my baby!” “I speak English small-small”. Eventually we both ignore him, and after a while he goes away. 5 minutes later, he returns, apparently attempting to impress this American with his faulty knowledge about her own country.

Man: “What state are you from?”

Me: “Maryland.” (which apparently sounded like ‘America’ to him)

Man: “Yes, I know you are from America, but what state?”

Me: “Maryland. MARYland. Merry-land. La terre de Mariam.”

Man: “Where is that?”

Me: “Near Washington.”

Man: “No it’s not. I know America very well, and your state cannot be near Washington. I know the states around Washington.”

Me: “HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY SAY THAT YOU KNOW MY COUNTRY???? YOU JUST TOLD ME THAT THERE ARE 52 STATES, THEN THAT MY STATE IS NOT WHERE IT IS. YOU’RE REALLY DUMB. PLEASE GO AWAY.”

We return to silence, and he pesters me for a while longer, then finally asks if he can leave. I reply “Yes, PLEASE LEAVE.” Then he just stares at me for a while, and asks again if he can leave. “YES, PLEASE LEAVE.” This goes on for a while, until one of his friends—who by the way, kept signaling to me behind his back that the man was obliterated and silently apologizing—finally managed to drag him away.

So, all in all an interesting night. I could do without the annoying man and his man-splaining, but, hey, it makes a good story. And while I was rude to him, I went out of my way to be extra pleasant to everyone else there. I didn’t let him ruin my night, and I think most people were sympathetic to me. Plus Mimi was a good friend, backing me up. I hope I get to see her more.

In other news, Anna has left Kérou. She is leaving earlier than some other volunteers, because she starts grad school a little over a week after she gets home. It sounds really stressful, but I’m sure she’ll figure it out. We had a little party for her, which was a huge success. Then spent some time just hanging out and saying goodbye. Kérou just won’t be the same without her.

And here are some pics just for fun:

Me and Maria

Luna and her bunny