Exciting things I can do with Arabic in Cotonou:

• Read Koranic verses on the walls of my favorite Lebanese restaurants
• Greet the owners of my favorite Lebanese restaurants
• Figure out what they’re saying during call to prayer at 5:30 every morning
• Read arabic poetry (OK, not yet, but that’s the thing I’m most excited about!)

Can you think of anything else?

The alternative, which is staying in West Africa and continuing to grow our business, is pretty attractive too.

So life is good.

Much to the delight of everyone around me, this yovo pulled out her camera over the weekend and snapped some pictures of the lake I’m going to have to drive through on the way to work every day.

More pictures on flickr.

Yesterday, there was no tuna to be found. None had been brought in Sunday and frozen, and while there were still boats at see when I went to the market, the fish mongers didn’t expect to see any until later in the week. No problem. Now that I was at the fish market and had seen the fish debark from the boat, I was happy to settle for something else.

Bertrand and I went searching for good looking fish. Although we were hoping for some red carp, we were eventually convinced to buy Dorade. I only wanted one (they’re big!), but Bertrand wanted two. And since they’re sold in kilogram units, we bought three to bring the weight up to 2 kilos. 5 000 F CFA ($10!) for 2 kg of fish is a pretty good deal.

After paying for the fish, there are young women who are happy to scale and clean the fish for a hundred francs a kilo. Like all the women at the market, she was unwilling to have her picture taken. Next time, maybe. :)

Once home, I got online. What’s a dorade, and how do you cook one? Turns out, dorade is the French word for Mahi Mahi! We’d unknowingly brought home three enormous mahi mahis, something I definitely know how to cook.

Mmmmm. Dinner!

We’re getting to the “rains twice a day” part of the season. Soon it will be “rains all day every day”. And then, “doesn’t stop raining for a week straight”. And then finally, the light at the end of the tunnel. A brief one month stretch with scant rains and lots of sunshine. August, you can’t come soon enough!

This past weekend, PINK BENIN went up north to Parakou. We’ve been struggling to get out of Cotonou, and more importantly, get the message out to more women in order to a) start tracking breast cancer cases throughout the country and b) create a force strong enough to pressure the Beninese government into making cancer treatments more accessible to the rural pour.

We’re running the pilot with Peace Corps because they’re well integrated into their communities and are well placed to identify reliable partners. We invited 7 villages to send a Peace Corps Volunteer, a community health worker, and a community radio host to learn about breast cancer. The radio hosts will return to their communities and do short shows and PSAs talking about the importance of early testing. They’ll send the women to their community health workers, who will do a physical screaning and teach women how to self-exam. The Peace Corps Volunteer will act as a coordinator and will organize awareness raising sessions.

Arrival in Parakou

We had some fun on the way (see Escargot, Beninese style, on himynameistheresa for more details about the food), but once we showed up in Parakou, it was a fiasco. The hotel Bertrand had scoped out a week ago when he went to Parakou to finalize our reservations was a dirty disaster, and they hadn’t set up the rooms like they’d promised (two beds per room instead of one). Worse, when we called them on it, instead of promising to fix the problem, they told us they’d have to triple the price of the room in order to have two beds. Yikes. Don’t stay at La Princess in Parakou. They’re awful.

What were we to do? Everything had been advertised at the Princesse, but we couldn’t ask conference participants to share beds! Not to mention that the place really was filthy. We ended up switching hotels. I can’t praise COTEB, where we stayed, highly enough. They were accomodating, clean, and worked their tails off to make things work for us. The Princess refused to refund our deposit, so we just used their conference room on the second day.

Teaching about breast cancer

Because we’re targeting rural communities, it’s important that both radio hosts and health workers have a solid understanding of not only breast cancer and its treatment, but how to express it in local language. We alternated between lectures in French by doctors and groupwork in local language to figure out vocabulary. The afternoon was spent in small groups. Community health workers learned how to do phsyical screenings and teach women how to auto-examen. Radio hosts learned public health communication strategies and wrote practice scripts.

Screening women

We didn’t want the community health workers to go home without practicing how to examen women and teach women how to self-exam, so we organized a breast cancer screening for women in Parakou. For reasons beyond our control, the communique didn’t go out, but the doctors were able to organize an impromptu screening at a local maternity ward. It went swimmingly.

After the depistage, we had a Q&A with participants and doctors to clear up any last minute questions and misconceptions. It ran twice as long as it was supposed to, but that’s okay. The television crew showed up around 5:30, and we filmed our synthesis and certificate ceremony.

Things that could have gone better

The screening would have been less chaotic had it been in the hotel conference room instead of a maternity ward. Next time, we’ll have a backup communication plan if the radio falls through. We also needed more medical professionals to work with local language groups. Again, this wasn’t something that PINK had control over, but next time we’ll make sure that we have a medical professional or student for each language group, instead of just the large ones.

Things that went superbly

PINK is well organized, motivated, and hard working. That meant that even though the hotel was a fiasco, we were able to quickly get our act together and find a new place to sleep. We also have a great working relationship with our doctors, who helped us immensely when the first screening fell through. Both community health workers and radio hosts really enjoyed being able to practice their new skills before returning to their communities. Only time will tell if they’re actually able to incite women to self-examen.

What now?

Follow-up. Follow-up. Follow-up. Are community radios actually talking about breast cancer? When they do, are women actually visiting community health workers? Are community health workers really screening women for free? Are they doing their paperwork?

We want to implement a messaging system with FrontlineSMS:Medic, but as of yet, we don’t have a copy of the plugin. Hopefully that’ll change soon, and we’ll be able to make record keeping even easier for community health workers and doctors. Wish us luck!

We’ve had a lot of visitors lately, new to Benin and/or to Africa, who are afraid of food poisoning. I’m going to be really honest here: if you leave Cotonou, have any middle class Beninese friends, eat street food, or do anything but eat at ritzy expat restaurants and prepare your own (vegetarian) food, you’re gonna get food poisoning eventually.

Fish goes bad. Chicken sits out. Beef sits in the hot sun at a market all day. Someone forgets to wash their hands. Flies are everywhere during cooking. A couple of examples:

The family hosting the wedding you’re attending killed the goats three days ago, rented space in a public freezer for the meat, and the power went out. The meat started to spoil, but the freezer owner refused to reimburse the money. Hundreds of dollars have been potentially wested. Instead of throwing the meet away, the family spends a few hours rinsing the meat in vinegar and lemon juice to reduce the smell, then cooks and servers it anyway.

Your host family fries fish and then leaves it out unrefrigerated for several days. In the evenings, they just reheat that night’s portions in whatever sauce is being served.

The power goes out at your favorite shwarma joint between midnight and 7am. Because they close at 11 and open at 8, the outage goes unnoticed, although any refrigerated meat has certainly suffered. Imagine that this happens several times during the week, and suddenly Falafal sounds like a safer bet than that delicious smelling schwarma viande.

You go to a party where a friend is grilling delicious salted goat. It’s mouth watering, and instead of waiting like a smart yovo, you take one of the first slices off the grill, instead of holding off until everything’s throughly cooked. Oops. You’re the only one who got sick, and it was your own dumb fault.

It happens. It’s normal. And it’s usually nothing to worry about, especially since you’re a rich Westerner with access to medicine (Cipro and Pepto Bismal, you are my best friends), you know how to whip up quick oral rehydration salts using ingredients easy to find in the market (water + salt + sugar + lemon), and, in the worst case scenario, you can take Immodium and get the work you need to get done before taking a day or two off to recover.

The point is, almost all of my friends here are Beninese. And my Beninese friends love to party. And my sensitive Western stomach gets upset at their parties all the time. And there are many many many times when I look at a plate and I know that I’m going to regret it later.

And I eat it anyway.*

Because a bout or two of mild food poisoning is nothing compared to the good times I’ve had eating with my friends and family, and all the good will and good memories generated by sharing a plate in good company.

The moral of the story is, be smart, but don’t be afraid of mild food poisoning. It’s unavoidable, so you might as well embrace it. Don’t give up on an opportunity to have a amazing time because you might get sick afterwards.**

* Not recommended for the pregnant, immune-compromised, or the faint of heart. I know some MPH is going to read this and FREAK OUT but seriously, don’t be afraid of food poisoning. It happens to everyone eventually.

** Next post: coping techniques for those times when you really really don’t want to get sick afterwards. ;)

• We have a freezer.
• We have a cat.
• I own a pair of sneakers.
• The rainy season has started.
• I kind of like working for The Man.

So big changes. Especially the cat. Bertrand and I spend a lot of time standing around saying, “Where the fuck is that noise coming from?!?!”

Working for the government is great. I wish working part time meant that I really only worked that many hours a week, but what it really means is that after putting in half a day in an air conditioned office (hellsyeah!), I come home, take a short nap (hellsyeah!), and then get to work coding (hellsyeah!) or organizing for Pink (hellsyeah!). My days are full of awesome, but also exhausting.

Other than cat blogging, I’m hoping to launch a few new projects this month. It’s been great designing and coding again. The last few weeks have been nothing but admin and client meetings, and while that’s nice once in a while, I’m happiest when creating.

Anyway, the only reason I finally got off my ass and started blogging again is because a coworker was all like “Oh, I have a blog” and I was like WHAT NO OTHER BLOGGERS IN COTONOU EVER I NEED TO GET BACK TO BLOGGING YOU EVIL USURPERS. Anyway, check out Carolyn’s archives. She’s got pictures of all the stuff I’m always like, “Damn, I need to get a picture of that,” but never do.

Needless to say, that’s why I haven’t been tweeting, blogging, translating, or emailing. Even logging into Google Reader to check my RSS feed is intimidating. Yikes. This is all normal for me. I approach new projects with frightening intensity, then eventually relax and adapt to life’s new rhythms. Just takes a week or so.

Work is awesome. The people are great. Air conditioning is wonderful. And I’ll try to be much more present as I learn how to manage this new time commitment in my life.