The end of Stag and my first week of being an official Volunteer

Oh, the things I’ve seen… but before I get into that, let me preface this post with my latest news:
Stag (training) ended a week ago and now everyone is at their respective posts. I even tested out at an Intermediate High level of French, but I think I really probably should have landed at Advanced Low. Those last couple of weeks of stag were hard, and everyone was just about ready to rip each others heads off, but we all survived without anymore casualties…. My group of 59 stagiers (trainees) did lose 6 people for one reason or another, but I have to say that their reasons for going home are respectable. No one left because of personal illness or anything like that though.
My good old friend Montezuma has finally decided that he’s dished out enough revenge to last me a while, so I’m back to feeling healthy and normal…. You can’t believe how much easier life feels here when you are healthy. When I was sick all I could think about was air conditioning and Cambell’s soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and Scooby Doo…. No worries though; my sanity has found me again, and so now I’m back to dreaming of the Arby’s Corn Beef Reuben with curly fries and a frosty… or maybe even just chicken McNuggets with that yummy barbecue sauce…. But really, lets not talk about food.
So now I’ve been at post for a week and I’ve decided that Boukoumbé is amazing. It is all that you could want from a ville/village. It’s not big, but it’s not the smallest either, for the most part people speak French here along with the local Betamarribé, and the people here have an amazing, strong, and beautiful culture.
I realize you are probably curious to know more about Boukoumbé, both physically and socially, so I’ll start off with the physical description:
What is Boukoumbé like physically? Well, there’s one main dirt/gravel road that runs through town, and the town stretches out for 2km (3/4 of a mile) along this. There is a post office here, a regional mayor and his office, a Maison de Jeune (Translation: House of the young… it’s like a community center. Most bigger towns have one), a couple of schools, a health center, an orphanage, a couple of religious buildings sporting the two local flavors; Christianity and Islam (Voodoo is practiced at home… there aren’t any official temples in Boukoumbé).
For food, there is also the usual outdoor marché (market) here which goes all day every 5th day, and most importantly, there are 2 boutiques here that sell some more western products like powdered milk and canned foods and occasionally forks and spoons and dustpans, and other things like that. There are also 4 or 5 restaurants in town, and one of them is actually AMAZINGLY good. A lady owns it named Pascalline… and hence, the restaurant is called Chez-Pascalline. She sells more traditional foods such as rice and red sauce, black and white paté (a hot, moist paste made of your local carbohydrates) with sauce, viande (meat, usually chicken or pintard), beans, and the wonderful fromage (cheese, but not like what you find at home. The cheese here reminds me of Spongebob Squarepants… it looks more like an edible sponge then cheese, but it’s good!). Pascalline is a great cook, and her restaurant has even made it into Lonely Planet multiple times, along with most other guide books.
Boukoumbé is actually the place of the seat of government of this region… Using the word ‘capital’ would be using the word fairly liberally in this case... county seat might be a better term for it. I believe there are approximately 70ish regions in Benin, and Benin is about the size of Pennsylvania in total… so really, Boukoumbé is probably on a 3rd tier in size, with the 1st tier being the hugely huge Cotonou, and the 2nd tier being towns like Abomey, Lokossa, Nattitingou, Dassa, Malanville, Parakou, Djougou, and N’Dali which seem to usually be about the size of Guthrie, Oklahoma (maybe a bit bigger).
Now I’ll get into the social aspects of Boukoumbé:
Where do I begin with this…. Lately, I’ve seen a lot of things that I have never seen before and experienced the real reality of another culture a little bit. Maybe I’ll just list them off as I think of them:
I’ve seen kids soo hungry that their hair had turned blonde from malnutrition… little African kids with ‘Dennis Rodman Blonde’ hair.
I’ve spent the night (with my postmate, Paige) next to a tata somba where chickens are sacrificed on a regular basis on the doorstep, and where they drip the blood into these tall mounds of cemented dirt that stand to represent the members of their family
I have seen the hunters of Boukoumbé gather with their bows and arrows, and some wearing not much more then a loin clothe, in order to go to the Gendarmerie (police station) and find and begin the initiation process of two young men of the community who have been chosen to become hunters as well.
I have seen a man with polio crawl the whole 2km of Boukoumbé by scooting along on his hands and rear…. And he does this everyday, multiple times in search of tchouk (local alcoholic beer… like cider).
I’ve seen women and children work the day away while men sit around and get drunk.
I’ve seen the head magic man of a village, not Boukoumbé, who has worn a loin clothe (and only that) maid of monkeys skin ever since he was chosen to become the head magic man… he hasn’t taken it off since then. He was 63 years old. He was also smoking a long traditional pipe, and he only spoke the local language. This was in Tanikoko, Benin.
Also in Tanikoko, I saw the grotto and the path leading up to the grotto, wear numerous voodoo ceremonies are preformed, such as the place where the magic man takes a man and a woman who wish to get pregnant. He sacrifices a white chicken in this sacred spot, and if the chicken falls on it’s stomach then they will have a child within 3 months, and if it falls on its back then they will not have a child. All the sacrifices that are done in the grotto are done to appease the spirits who rest there… and they only sacrifice animals as far as I know.
I have learned the basic greetings of the Betamariiba people who occupy Boukoumbé. “Aboo” is “how’s it going?”, “Aboo tete” is “It’s going well”, “Denaati” is “it’s going extremely well”, and “iyoo” is “it’s okay”. You also bow to a person when you first encounter them to show respect.
I have had probably 50 marriage offers since I arrived, and I’ve been told multiple times that I would make good children.
I have sat around a giant bucket of tchouk and drank out of dried gourd shells and talked with the locals… it’s just what you do here. There are tchouk stands all along the road in Boukoumbé… probably 10 to 20 stands total.
In the marché half of the bins are reserved for tchouk vendors, and I think the story goes that each vendor is the wife of the local chief, and so the people who sit at each stand are usually from that village/group of people as well… but almost all (93%) are Betamariiba.
I have seen SOOO many kids with worms. This means that they will grow up with a malnutrition problem because the worms eat any nutritional food they might get, and they are also destined to become anemic and underdeveloped. The sad thing is that just a few pills will cure this problem, and they aren’t even terribly expensive.
There are so many things here to see, to understand, and to process… I can’t even begin to list them all now. I wish I could remember all the things that have just dumbstruck me the past week, but these are the only that occur to me now. Well, this is all I really have right now.
As always, I hope everything is wonderful where ever all of you find yourselves. If it's not going well, well, I really don't have any advice... Actually, my best advice would be this: Never eat with your left hand, be ready to have people knocking at your door at 7am just to saluate you, and never forget; a goat's cry sounds oddly similar to a human baby's. My advice isn't terribly relevant, is it? Haha.
Till the next time.

Sarah