Tuesday, November 29, 2005 Whew, Thanksgiving is finally over. It was a good time, but it's caused me to be more than delinquent in updating. I've been really busy, and am finally pretty well installed in my new office. I found a way to extract a working JRE from a Gallery Remote install I had lying around. That made me happy, because it was proving to be more than a pain in the ass to actually download a Java installer.

Really though, I'd just like to tell a few stories.

First, I'd like to submit to the jury evidence that I can now die and be considered to have been a successful man. Why this sudden conclusing you ask? Well, many have pondered exactly what makes a man what he is, but I would say that there are indeed a few inarguable tasks that, when completed, undoubtedly prove your worth. For example, flatulence so vile it causes someone to vomit would be sufficient proof of merit. Yet not so many cases are clear cut; some would argue the consumption of massive quantities of alcohol might relieve any doubt, but I myself am not convinced. I would like to posit though that my particular experience might indeed aleviate any lingering doubts about my manly worth. How you might ask? Well my friends, I am proud to say that I peed on a mosquito. Yes, it's true. Incredible, but true nevertheless. Being a constant source of standing water, mosquitos have been known to hang out in my toilet bowl from time to time. This particular occasion was one such time, and upon lifting the seat and beginning my purge a malaria ridden mosquito flew up. While our antimalarials are excellent, I knew (from my excellent PC medical training) that avoiding mosquito bites ought to be avoided. How though could I ward off this foul, parasite ridden beast? My hands were, naturally, full at the time so I did as the Peace Corps might want and used the resources available to me. My aim was true and the beast was felled in a warm stream of salts, ammonia and water. That's one point for humans!

More seriously though, for Lisa's birthday I thought it might be fun to go down and see her. Naturally that wouldn't be enough for me, so I thought I'd take my bike. By that I mean ride my bike... for 55K. Whew, that's a long ride! Actually, I was surprised at how it wasn't really as long as I thought it would be. I left before sunrise at about 6am, and got to Lisa's at about 9:15. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. It was totally fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing how far I can go. I plan at some point in visiting all my surrounding volunteers, and hope to someday make a 2 day trip as far down south (and en brousse) as Carrie. Actually, there are volunteers here that have in the works an awesome 2 week (?) bike ride in the north where we'll stop in each town and do AIDS education. I'm 100% planning on going, it should be a blast.

So after a day of rest at Lisa's (and blueberry yogurt!) we taxied back up to Parakou to begin the insanity. Oh and insanity it was. We continued our preparations of desserts and things, although truthfully I was a bit more occupied with the prepration for the dinner which occured on Thanksgiving day. Earlier in the week a volunteer received a shipment of hot sauce packets (Which was awesome! Send me some Taco Bell lovin'!), which inspired the conversation that we ought to do another Mexican night. That means cooking refried beans, making tortillas, salsa, meat, and a last minute Spanishy rice (which turned out pretty badly IMO... maybe I should have let wiser heads take charge in that one). It was delicious, and I'm really going to start making tortillas more often. They are actually really easy, and man they are delicious.

Friday started all too early, as we decided that rather than cooking a turkey a day early and storing it... we'd do both birds at the same time. One in the oven, and one in a pit. So, we had to get charcoal, start the charcoal (which is hard here... not so much lighter fluid and we're short on those nifty charcoal starters) prepare the bird and toss it in. Actually, as far as interaction goes it was some of the easier cooking. Katherine did all the research, and it really paid off. The pit turkey turned out amazing, the meat literally was falling off the bone. Actually, everything was amazing. It was an amazing thing to see come together, everyone helped out a ton; if not with cooking with cleaning out an area, setting things up, running errands, fronting 30.000 CFA for beer (Thanks Carrie!). I'm truly amazed at how smoothly things went.

Then of course Marchés Kilombo and Tchaketi-bahm (okay, I have no idea how to spell the last one... I can't even say it right yet... but in my defense there are about 20 different pronunciations for it here). Tchukin' is still pretty much the coolest thing in the world. I even got elected Mayor of Kilombo on Sunday. I really can't say enough about how cool and fun these markets are, so I'll just leave it.

It's now Monday, and I'm 100% broke. Unfortunately true, but we get paid soon. Ironically this won't be posted until after I get paid (as I don't have enough money to go to the cyber), but I'll certainly be eating a lot of rice and things that can be made with flour in the next day or so. Should be fun!

Wednesday, November 16, 2005 So, I have a computer. Sort of. It's a PowerBook G3, clocking in at 333MHz it's not exactly a speed demon. In fact right now I can't really get anything done on it, but I'm waiting for permission to get rid of it's old OS9 ways and convert it to Linux. Hopefully permission will be secured and I can start downloading rather quickly. We'll see. Beyond that much more of the same; reading.

Sunday, November 13, 2005 Okay, I lied. I did remember. I could modify the old post, but this is important enough that it warrants its own. The following is a solicitation.

A local NGO named Victory Way that we're working with here in Parakou is hosting a "Christmas for the Christmas-less" (it sounds cooler in French). They've gathered up around 80 disadvantaged students here in Parakou who've gone rather light in the past in the area of Christmas gifts (as in, they've never receieved one). No doubt with the holiday season coming up you'll be bombarded with causes, but do consider this one. I have a list of names of kids, all of which are under 12 years old, boys and girls. It goes like this, you pick a name and send a wrapped gift. They don't want money, just things like balls, coloring books, toy cars, dolls... pretty much anything fun for a kid. In return you'll get a picture of your kid receiving your gift (I'll even e-mail it to you as soon as they are ready) and the satisfaction of knowing ya done some good.

That's it, end of soliciatation. I will say this, while it isn't tax deductable... you do have my personal endoresment for this activity. While that might not be worth much, I'll be making sure you gift gets to the right place personally.

If you're interested, send me an e-mail and I'll get you all set up. Which if you are interested should be relatively soon, as we want your gift to arrive before Christmas... and we all know how fast the mail is here.

So yeah, that's really the end of the solicitation! Peace!

Holy crap! I'm alive!

Ha, actually I'm very much alive... and bored. Surprise.

Coming back from Cotonou was fun, we took Confort (yes, I spelled it right) Lines which runs daily from Parakou to Cotonou and in the opposite direction for a paltry 5500 CFA ($11). For that you get your own seat (a luxury in this country), a direct ride, and a sandwich and sack of water. The bus rocks. It does take a little bit longer than a taxi, but it's cheaper and more comfortable, or is it confortable?

Sara on the return from her Cotonou cat adventure and Glen coming back from VAC with me went to the chook marché for Glen's birthday and had the usual rioutous time. Pipi-nyagu man was there again (and just as funny... he was upset that Katie wasn't there since that was the planned day of their wedding) which was even more funny. Ly is in town this weekend and we're going today, so I'm hoping he'll be there yet again. That would be too good.

This past week was also package week. Praise God, the address I posted was correct for Parakou as I got two packages. In one from my mom among other things was a purple koosh ball. Oh my gosh. You haven't seen hilarity until you see a 6 year old boy poking it with a stick to verify it isn't alive. Let's back up. There is a kid that sometimes seems to live next door to me. Our relationship is pretty simple. He says "give me 25 francs" and I say "never". That's pretty much the extent of our interactions... but recently he's been more interested in the weird white guy that lives down the way. He poked his head in and was checking out my hobo-wine garden (yes, I finally started... pictures and descriptions to follow upon completion) and I thought it would be funny to throw the koosh ball at him. He practically jumped out of his skin when it landed near him. The wind was blowing slightly, so the koosh tendrils were swaying softly... and his eyes and face were the most hillarious thing ever. I wish I'd had the foresight to grab my camera. In any case, now he's assuredly not scared of it and likes nothing more than to come and ask to play with it.

In other news, I have a lot of pictures to post... but unfortunately bandwidth is limited by money. I'll do my best to come again this week and upload... but no promises. Eh, I think there was something else to talk about too.. but for the moment it's left me. Sorry!

Saturday, November 05, 2005 Allright. So on with the story, a few days late but just as good.

When we last left our heroe (okay, me) he was at the chook marche with Katie. We arrived in the usual zemi-driven state (wide-eyed and thankful for our lives) to see the splendor of the Marche Kilombo. It's really pretty, the marche itself is just outside the border of Parakou, and it's on the side of a hill. The marche occurs in the dwindling hours of light, so it's really pretty to look down on what all is down there. In any case we were quickly stopped by a guy who really wanted to tell us an awesome joke.

"Have you ever been to France?"
"Yeah"
"You know Lyon?"
"Uh, yeah"
"Well I'm the PANTHER"

Okay, so it turns out it wasn't awesome. Katie and I continued on. After a brief stop and some more classic chook moments, we returned in search of Seraphine. The same guy stopped us;

"Have you ever been to France?"
"Yeah"
"You know Lyon?"
"Uh, yeah"
"Well I'm the PANTHER"

I informed him that he'd told us the same joke not 5 minutes before, but it fell on deaf ears. He was now giving us calabashes of chook and launching into a hillarious tirade. It came out that;
- He is in fact white, his black skin was because of the African sun
- He would turn white again if he had "relations" with Katie "a few times" (mind you not once or twice)
- He is George Bush's cousin
- He is a Gyncologist
- Katie and I may not have "relations" as it turns out that I am on my period.

He also taught us a new song fragment, which we don't quite have the exact translation of... we think it means something along the lines of "penis-penis". In any case, if you have the urge to utter nonsense words in Africa... "pipi-nyagu" is probably something you don't want to say too often. It was pretty much the most hillarious thing ever.

One would think that would be a perfect cap for a weekend, but no... it got better. The next day after a spot of breakfast, I thought I'd pop in to work for a bit. When I arrived there was a ton of people with tree branches chanting and singing, beating on drums and the like. I though to myself "Oh, they started partying early for All Saints Day, cool." (Turns out like us, they don't actually party for All Saints Day) and headed upstairs. I asked on my friends at the Mairie what was going on...

"They're chanting the mayor is a thief"

Oh. Well, PC is very strictly non-political and has very strict rules regarding presence at political events and things like small riots. So, I went into my office (where there are no windows) and shut the door. It was nice and quiet in there, I thought I might be able to get some work done even. Nope! Within about 5 minutes we were evacuated and the gendarmes came. So, no work on Monday.

That being the case I decided I'd pop down to Challa-Ogoi (a very small village whose name I've probably mangled in spelling) for a litle Halloween party. All in all good times were had, and I safely returned to Parakou the following afternoon. A few short hours of rest, and on to the shuttle to Cotonou.

So here I am. I actually have a whole tirade about this trip to Cotonou, but that'll have to wait a little bit. Suffice to say, while Cotonou is still the land of the "bonnes choses", my perceptions of it have again changed after living in Parakou for near-on 6 weeks.

In other news, to shield me from political situations I've been given instructions to minimize my presence at the Mayor's office... which means I'm looking for a new place to work. This could be a boring couple of weeks.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005 Whew, where to start.

Oh I know. I don't have internet at work any more because they didn't pay the bill... so the ISP cut them off. Annoying, and actually detrimental to my work (as one might consider it would have the opposite effect). In any case, I'm now relegated to paying money for my internet time like the common volunteer. *tear*

This weekend was a blast, our first ICT meeting went off without a hitch, and surpisingly enough we actually got some things accomplished (and had a very interesting discussion regarding the role of ICT in development). Lots of good food was made, including a delicious pizza with hand-made (with my hands) dough. I was actually pretty impressed with how it turned out. Saturday marked the VAC meeting, where all the volunteers in the region get together to propose problems, suggest solutions and simply keep the tenuous flow of information going. It was also time to elect a new representative to go down to Cotonou each quarter and report on the goings on. That's me! Yup, Lyle Kozloff. VACR PCV Rev. Lyle Kozloff.

Post all that was the ever popular chook marché near the university. I can't reveal all the details, but I was offered two fifteen year old girls "for marriage, or just for the night". The only catch was I had to trap them by the wrists. It's a shame my friends were waiting for me... but there's always next week =P Theresa, Lisa and I capped the night with a visit to Seraphine's (my kick-ass secretary lady) restaurant. She is pretty much the funniest person alive, so that was an excellent time. She deserves a post of her own though. The important part of the evening was an invitation to the the Marché Kilombo (yes, we found out the proper spelling and pronunciation) for another round of chooking the following day. Naturally we accepted.

Sunday was fairly calm, but Kilombo was anything but. Quite possibly one of the funnest (and funniest) experiences so far 'a chookin'. Whew. I don't even know if I can type it. Actually I can't. I'm really, really tired right now (Lots of no sleep during the weekend) so I may just put a pause on it until tomorrow.

Sorry. It's cop out, but I'm lazy. Promise though, it'll be worth the wait.