Hold on while I remember how to type.

I’m in Parakou, a city about 50 miles north of Kemon, at one of four Peace Corps workstations in the country. After spending nearly a month without leaving my village, I’m a bit taken aback by things like computers and toilets. And Americans. There’s only one computer here, so this will have to be a short post.

The rainy season has ended, or so the villagers say despite the downpours every few days. Now everyone spends the evenings sitting outside under the stars and talking to their neighbors. I amuse myself by lying on top of the concrete half-wall surrounding my veranda, looking at the stars, and saying random things in Nagot to unsuspecting villagers who walk by.

There are lightning storms every night. You see them on the horizon, the distant tall clouds and the silent flashing that lights up half the sky. One particularly dramatic night, there were four storms circling the horizon and it was a new moon.

In my neighbors’ eyes, lightning is a weapon used by Voodoo sorcerers to kill criminals. If someone is killed by lightning, everyone assumes that they had it coming; conversely, if you haven’t committed a crime, it’s perfectly safe to stand under a tree on top of a hill during a lightning storm.

I don’t miss electricity or running water much any more. After a while, the ability to turn on a sink or to flip a light switch just wasn’t on my radar. I do miss the food, though. There is a very limited selection of foods available and none of them are particularly appetizing. Let’s just say there’s a reason I’ve never seen a West African restaurant in the States.

I’ve been teaching for a few weeks now. I like teaching itself, but the conditions aren’t ideal here. I have between 40-60 students in each of four classes. I teach with a chalkboard; the students have notebooks. That’s the extent of materials available. You have to write everything on the board and the students copy it down, and that’s their textbook. But because it’s a new language, they often misspell things in their notes, so they study the wrong thing. They often buy quick-reference pamphlets of English grammar and vocabulary that are printed locally, but those are full of errors. I try not to think too much about the kinds of resources available to teachers and students in America.

That’s all for now. My life in village is settling into what I can expect, more or less, for two years — lots of students, lots of reading, lots of yams. I tried to upload some pictures of the village but the internet did not cooperate. Maybe next time.