something is starting....

I am excited. On Tuesday I will have my first meeting with a group of people who want to form a Village Savings and Loan Association. I visited with the group that the previous volunteer had started last week and they are still going strong. The groups last for 1 year from they day that they started saving. All loans are given internally from the money that they group has saved. They buy “shares” in the group and can buy up to 5 shares each week. The group decides how much each share will cost depending on how much the group thinks they will be able to consistently save. I am blessed to have a copy of the manual in French and English. I don’t have to go to my dictionary each time I don’t understand something and my counterpart for this project will be able to read and understand the manual too.

I received my armoire and bookshelf. They are pretty and the menusie/ carpenter did a good job. My peace corps friend in town didn’t have as good of luck. She was waiting a month for the work to be done and when she went there it looked like he hadn’t started. I got mine done in 2 weeks. She placed and order with my menusie on Monday and I am picking it up today (Friday). I asked my friend about this and he said that this is common, artisans, especially menusies will take the advance deposit and sit and think about it for awhile without any work actually being done. There are many people who I have found that do actually work hard though. The man who cleaned out and patched up my ceiling put up my mosquito net and put up my decounter (something that counts the electricity since my neighbor and I run off the same box). He is also a trained hair beautician (coiffeurse) and I recently discovered he fixes shoes and sells brooms. When I passed him last week he was planting something in a plot of land behind his house. All this to say people here have to work hard to make the dollar (or franc). They learn to diversify their skills if they want to do well. I feel like my friend is an anomaly.

I am becoming desensitized to the bugs. I have now killed 2 cockroaches and a large spider. There have been many more than that, but usually I will have the neighbor kids kill them. Unfortunately when it is really late at night I don’t want to wake them but I refuse to sleep with a miniature tarantula above my head. I find that as with many things in a new place, especially like Africa, you learn to adapt. Showering from a bucket, sweeping the dirt out every morning, drawing water for bathing and washing dishes every morning… Passing my language exam used to be my biggest prayer as I was preparing for this trip but now my prayers are focused towards working well with my work partners and becoming more a part of this community. I still pray for knowledge of the language but now it is Fon more than French. I am supposed to start lessons with a Fon teacher soon.

I love the next door neighbors. We have started giving each other food. I shared a watermelon with the concession and most of them didn’t know what it was. Sometimes she will send over yams or pate with sauce and I will send some of my stir fry. The kids are so cute. Sandra is a toddler and there are 2 twin newborns in the other concession (Elvie and Elvis). I am glad for the neighbor boys too. I think they are impressed by how hard I work, but they will help me when I am struggling. They will get my drinking water from the pump down the street and whenever I am working on something like pounding nails into my cement walls, and I cry out multiple times one of them will come help me.

Well I miss you all. Please send me letters or emails to let me know how things are going. You are loved and in my prayers. P.S. I am testing out another church this week. The first two weeks I went to the Catholic church because they spoke French, but I couldn’t take communion, and the last two weeks I went to weeks I went to a Pentecostal Church but they pray all at the same time, which is a little much for me on top of not speaking my language. I guess I can’t tell when they are speaking in tongues though because it all sounds like that to me. =) Well I am hoping the Baptist church is something like I am used to.