New Photos! Tuesday, Jun 24 2008
Uncategorized 12:31 pm
Ghana / LSAT Monday, Jun 23 2008
Uncategorized 9:49 am
Just back from Ghana and taking the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) at the American Embassy there. Good to know our US Embassy and LSAT staff are organized – there were two people booked for the same room, and our admission ticket had the wrong address printed on it!
Anyway, I didn’t get out of Accra, and it turns out there isn’t much to see in Accra. I took in the Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Memorial and wandered around a bit. Got some great American-style Chinese food, which is I guess what big cities are good for. Met some nice PCVs, saw their bureau, and stayed chez eux. All in all, fairly unexciting.
Next stop, however: Cairo, Egypt!
Now We’re Cooking with … Paper? Monday, Jun 9 2008
Uncategorized 11:38 am
The world is running out of fossil fuels, and so is the Guevin-Benin household.
Saturday, we started to prepare dinner by boiling a couple potatoes. As I finished chopping some onions, in preparation for frying up some hamburger I bought in Cotonou the other day (payday!), I noticed the butane flame starting to flag. Tried sparking the flame under the frying pan – no dice.
Phoebe, incredulous, went out and turned on the stove.
“It works, you see?” As she said it, I knew it couldn’t last, and it didn’t. She turned back to see the flame die away. “Aw, and I just put the burger in!” said she.
Well, now what do we do?
I may have mentioned how Beninese dispose of most of their garbage by burning it (if I haven’t, look for a blog on the subject at some point). Not wanting to physically pollute our environment, and not wanting our waste to be sorted through and scrutinized, we burn a lot of paper and plastic, in the form of receipts, candy wrappers, Kleenex packaging, plastic bags, etc. Unlike the Beninese, however, we bought a little “chiminea,” normally used for cooking pâte & stuff in a big cauldron over an open flame.
Taking this as our cue to be ingenious, we fired that puppy up with packing envelopes and scrap paper, and voila! Dinner!
(See the pictures on my PicasaWeb site.)
Plea Thursday, Jun 5 2008
Uncategorized 1:44 pm
If anyone wants to send me 6.5″ trouser zippers, please do! I can get pants made, but the zippers are crap!
The Three “R”s Thursday, Jun 5 2008
Uncategorized 1:20 pm
We’re told that to save the Earth, we should Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. You’ve probably heard environmentalists, politicians, and philosophers all opining that if we all reduced consumption, global climate change and other disastrous (to people) man-made consequences of the industrial era could be mitigated or eliminated.
Few Americans, though, really do it. The reason is probably primarily economic necessity – or the lack thereof. Some of you may have heard about your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents who, during the Depression, had to reuse everything they could and even into their 80s and 90s would do such things as wash and reuse Zip-Loc bags.
Here, however, the environmentalists’ Three “R”s are practiced daily due to economic necessity and the fact that most things – even the shoddy imports from China – are packaged less than they are in the US.
The other day, for example, I watched a friend build a bench out of scrap wood, cardboard, and mylar wrapping paper. The only purchased materials were nails and some packing tape. His tools consisted of a broken razor blade, a machete with no handle, a metal piece-of-something, and a chunk of tree. Talk about ingenuity!
It’s also a well-known fact that the 1970s – yes seventies – Peugeots are routinely repaired with tomato-can carburetors and pieces of other, less-fortunate cars. In fact, no bush taxi here is probably later than a 1990 vintage, which certainly doesn’t do much for fuel efficiency, but it also doesn’t add the pollution all the foreign NGOs’ brand-new Landcruisers do.
Ever wonder where that T-shirt you donated to the church poor-box last Thanksgiving went? That (traitor) Johnny Damon Red Sox jersey you couldn’t wait to get rid of a couple years ago? All those Patriots Superbowl Champion tees from the 2008 edition?
They’re all here!
That’s right. Here. It appears that donations bound for Africa often get offloaded in Cotonou, where they become the property of middlemen. They’re then re-sold any number of times to various middle-people till they end up where? In our marché. Yes, in the Marché de Houègbo and most other bigger marchés in the country, you can find such sought-after labels as Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren / Polo, and LaCoste, for prices as low as 50¢. Not fifty dollars. Fifty cents.
They call the used-clothes marchés “dead yovo” (and hence, so do we) because it’s assumed that no-one would get rid of good clothes like these unless they were dead. I’m pretty sure even I’ll stop looking to get stuff shipped here and start buying clothes au marché soon enough.
Dead yovo isn’t so good for local tailors and couturières, and it’s certainly not helping the tisserandes (weavers), but I guess it fills an economic void. Most of the fabric these days comes from China, anyway (a sin, really, when you think that Benin produces cotton and could probably produce more fabric). In fact, most stuff comes from China. And, no matter where you go, it’s like you’ve got a God-given right to a plastic bag to take away your purchase in (though, these, too, are sometimes recycled into woven bags and mats).
Though we’d like to eat local, too, our spaghetti comes from Italy, as does the canned tomato paste, a lot of produce, and even rice (another thing you’d think West Africa could be producing). There’s even a brand of rice called something like “Africa Queen”: it comes from Viet Nam, I think.
So, clearly, there’s room for improvement here, too. But, the point remains: the Three “R”s are alive and well in the poor parts of the world, or at least this one.
(Getting off my pedestal now…)
Bits & Pieces Thursday, Jun 5 2008
Uncategorized 1:17 pm
So, it’s been a while since I blogged last. Uninspired, I guess. The quotidian has gained the upper hand; assimilation is as complete as it will ever be. Which is not to say, of course, that we’re at all assimilated.
When Will It END?
The school year’s coming to a close; though, no-one knows exactly when, as the government keeps changing the date. This has been frustrating, especially as we plan to do Camp GLOW, a Peace Corps leadership camp for high-school girls in June, and take a vacation in early July (Cairo, Egypt).
“Moov”-ing On
Cell phones, often a blessing, have recently turned into a curse. Service is not partout, as we thought it would be, and it’s been getting worse in those places that have it. We get “full bars,” yet can’t hear a thing. Or, even more fun, text messages are received once, twice, thrice, even more times: the same message, over and over. You get hopeful that, “Ooh! Somebody loves me!” But, no. It’s simply Moov (the cell phone provider) repeating a text sent 36 hours and five repeats ago or offering you a deal so you don’t go and get a different provider.
Well, enough. One of these days, we’re making the switch. That, at least, is easier than in the States: just buy a new SIM card, pop it in, and you’re done. (Time is bought as credit at shops or on the street.)
“La Barbe Pousse”
As you may or may not have realized from the photos, the guys in my sector in Stage all grew beards for swear-in. Once sworn in, most of us, including me, lost ‘em. Lately, however, because of laziness and the mere fact that I can, I’ve let grow what Phoebe’s started calling a “Mountain Man” beard. Why is this interesting, you say? Well, in a country where Catholic missionaries have largely been European, nearly all of the Catholic iconography is French/European: no Black Jesuses here. That means, in short, that I look like Jesus. This has been the subject of much chatter in bush taxis, while getting my visa photos, etc. Between the Christic associations and the curtsying that kids and even adults occasionally do as a matter of respect, I’m trying to avoid getting a messiah complex.
I will keep you posted as the beard continues “to push.”
