After swearing in as an official volunteer I am now living in my village! It is in the north of the Oueme department in Benin.
I live close to the capitol city Porto Novo. This is where I buy most of my goods that are not as available on village. Like per say a queen mattress.
I have been living in my house for 4 days and decided now is the best time to get me a mattress! The only place I can get one is Porto Novo. I was trying to find a vehicle to get there but none were passing by the road since it had rained earlier (fyi if it is raining no one does anything) and I was getting quite a few helpers. I learned if you just stand there someone will probably come to help. In this case I had 3 mamas near me waving down cars and keeping me away from the street. One of them speaks a little English and helps me a lot. It's very nice to have people take their time to help me with something, it is a new concept and they want nothing on return. I am a part of the community.
So I ended up taking a zemijan which is a motorcycle taxi to Porto Novo and it's about an hour, by butt was killing me and it was really cold and rainy but I made it with almost zero scares of dying. Almost. Don't take roads that are wet. One big semi was a little close for comfort.
I entered the big city and walked around waiting for my Peace Corps friend to meet me for lunch. I ended up getting a pizza witch chicken (ahh chicken). How I have missed meats, haven't had any meat at my site yet. It was delicious. When my friend David arrived we went to ask someone to help us find a mattress. David has been here for a year already so I trust his judgemet with anything. We found a nice looking police officer and asked him where to find a good mattress.
First off, Benin is pretty conservative so I was shopping for a mattress with a male friend and already the conversation was instantly in a context I didn't think about. I also was going to buy a queen mattress, deux place and instantly the officer was like OHHH wink. It was very funny and I didn't imagine how it looked until it was pointed out. The officer was fun to talk to and definitely the right choice.
The officer brought a man over on his motorcycle and he took us to the shop where I found the perfect Chanel mattress. Definitely vrai Chanel. I got it for about $140 my first big purchase !! Now I was sitting there at the mattress store thinking, how will I get this back to my village one hour away? Well we asked the shop owner of there was any way to transport it and he found us a guy ready to go ASAP! But I didn't want to go asap so I said I still need to buy some things on my list before I go home. The owner of the mattress store and the zem driver took me and David around to 3 different stores where they knew someone and got us the good stuff for a good price. All while taking a little tour around the city!
After buying my table to cook on, an extension cord, and some cups I was ready to go. Now it was me on a zemijan and one zemijan with all my things. You wouldnt think a mattress would fit but it does and it did.
The way back was so quick my driver zoomed through all the potholes and my legs were only slightly numb when I arrived. They helped me load it into my house and my adventure for the day ended there!
So far I have taken two showers in the rain, washed my dishes in rain water, reheated beans to eat 3 times, ate questionable food, drank water that was probably from the river, ate only fried manioc for dinner, killed a few spiders, killed a cricket, had conversations in Weme when I don't understand Weme, and I think that's it so far.
A tout a l'heure