The African Fable of Paul the fly

Once upon a time, a momma fly landed on a pile of poop. She stayed there for about 2 seconds and laid some eggs. These eggs, like many others, she didn’t even realize that they were there. She has a very experienced mother, being that she had had about 1,235 other babies in her lifetime, and she was young. So, like every other time, she just flew away. These babies would hatch, already know how to fly, and find their own way in the world without ever knowing their mother or for most that they even had a mother. This is how Paul was brought into the world. He, along with all of his many other brothers and sisters, hatched and flew around trying to get a bearing on their new living situation. Actually this is not far from how I feel now. After 9 weeks of training, I left for my post and flew around trying desperately to get my bearing on the city that I live in. Paul the fly flew around and realized that he was in a deep hole. He saw many of his brothers and sister get trapped in the webs of spiders and stuck in the dark liquid at the bottom. But he was smart he avoided those things and lived a conservative life only landing to eat and when he was tired. Paul lived many hours and for most flies this was a good life, until there was a disturbance in the hole, which he had known for his whole life. It sounded like a waterfall from above. He had never been out of the whole. Why would he? He was everything that he needs here in hole, and he had seen many a fly flew out of the hole and never to return to the hole they called home. But now there was this disturbance un-like anything he had known. He knew that it went against everything in his character, but he just had to know. So, he flew up. Past the cockroaches and past the metal pipe that jutted out from the wall. He flew out of the hole the whole time wondering what was causing this flow of liquid to fall down into the mysterious dark pool at the bottom of the hole. But what he saw at the top was huge. It was a monstrous creature that was throwing its appendages all over the place. Apparently it was annoyed at Paul’s presence outside of the hole. He had to fly all over the place just to not get hit. He had never bobbed and weaved so fast. In the middle of an upward spiral he saw a safe heaven away from the creature, where the light that was imitating from its hand was not. He flew there more tired and worn out then ever in his life. It was there that Paul the fly was going to die. He knew it when he landed two inches before he planned on actually landing. He knew right away what had happened because it had happened to so many other flies. He was in a spider’s web. Doomed to die a death that almost all of his brothers and sisters had suffered already. Paul the fly lived a total of 5 hours and died in the web of a spider after annoying the crap out of a human being. That human was me and you know what, I don’t regret it at all, because if you are standing in an Africa latrine trying to finish you business there, thing you want is a fly to fly into your face. I’m just saying these flies are huge and loud. They sound like the flies from the movies when something is dead and the director really wants you to feel sickened. I think they come to Africa to get their flies here because they are uncannily huge. So, when Paul the fly hit the web, I was happy and relieved because I just wanted some peace and quiet. By the time everything was finished there was pee all around the hole and I knew I was not going to clean that up. So the moral of this African Folk tale is don’t kill the spiders in your latrine because if you do your fly population will get out of hand. Sleep well tonight knowing that you don’t have to defecate in a hole every night.

Photos

So These are photos that I have taken.
This Child leaves at the Place where we have our classes. It's is really a house and this child and his mother live there and take care of the house. Any way we are teaching him the importance of a helmet. It's interesting to know that he fell over many times because that helmet weights just as much as he does. Luckily he had the helmet on.


This goat's name is Fanny and she lives right next door to me. At the momment she and I are not getting along because of a missunderstanding about an orange.

So I went to an enchanted forest and all of a sudden realized that I was in an african jungle. This picture is of bats that are everywhere. Of couse you can't see they. They are just too small. But this is the african jungle and it was crazy.

This sign says That this is a place of reverance and to be quiet. This is a Mass grave in the Town of Ouidah which was once the capital of the slave trade in this part of West Africa. The slaves that didn't make it to the ships were buried here. Inside there is a statue of a freed africa slave symbolizing that death for these slaves here was a better alternative then the hell that they would experience on the ship on to the West and in the West itself.

This was a really big bug I found in the African Forest. I thought that the people from Photo design would aprecitate the little things not being to little any more.

This picture is also in Ouidah. This is the Pass of no return. This is where the slaves would enter the boat to leave this contenint. It was a sad thing to see. Those are to of my friends walking through it.

This was one of the first pictures I took while in Benin. They are to little boys just peein in the road. it was a site to see. Little did I know at this time that it was incredibly normal and everyone does it. So eventually I had to follow suit. Read in to that what you will. :)

This is a view of Cotonou. It's pretty average view of Cotonou. There are more packed places and there are less dense places. But this is from the Peace Corps Building. I'm actually living on the other side of town. You can't see it in this picture.

This is my host Family. I know I'm the only one that seems happy and its not because they just meet me and saw that they were going to have to feed me alot. No this is the way all Beninese take photos. In fact this photo shows a good difference between out two cultures. We take pictures with a small they take pictures without one.

Now we get to the pictures of my room in Azove. This is at my Host family's My room is a dungeon and I hate it. I just found ok this week that my adias bag, which since it is not being used I left it under the bed, has grown over with moss. I've been sleeping with a ton of moss under my bed. That bag wasn't the only time to get it either. Another bag and My favorite pair of pants all have seen their last days. Africa killed them.

Last picture. This is the other side of my room. behind the door is a small small small window. Never is there a time even during the day when I don't need an extra light in my room. You would think that it being so dark that it would be cool. No! there is no air flow because the whole room is a cement block and it is very humid. And yes that door way on the left is my Shower. Now when I say shower I actually mean a shower sizes room so you can throw the water on your body and not get everything else wet. Needless to say I don't hang out in there.

Donc, C'est ca. Don't get the wrong idea about my life in Training. I love it but it's different then the States. My family totally makes up for the room. I love them. All is well.

Still alive

Im on a french keyboard in an African county sitting next to some boys that saved up their money all week to look at porn for an hour. Anyway, Im still training in Azove, Benin. I,m having a blast and I,m going to be posted in the biggest city in the county, Cotonou. What,s more, Im going to be a college professor. Im going to teach people how to start and run a web design company essetially. How cool and perfect. And I think I can teach a few actual graphic design courses to. Wait wait. Theres more the university I will be working with is affiliated with Wake Forest so I can potentally take classes, for free, here and transfer the credit to the States when I go back. And I could take classes to start my MBA. Of cousre this is if everything works out that way. Things change all the time but I like to think about the good stuff. It helps me get through the not so good times and I can deal with change. After a Month in Africa. I can deal with change. Know that I really miss all of you and I think about you guys alot. Have a good time going back to school and continuing with your lives.

Until I can make it to another Cyber café

The Parade that almost took my life

Life here is harder then I could have or did image. I have already had so many life altering experiences. I didn’t come anywhere close to being prepared for this. The moment I stepped on the ground in Africa, it hit me. The next couple of hours were mind-boggling and the next couple of days were the same. But nothing so far has compared to living with a family while I’m in training. Now don’t get me wrong I love my family here. They treat me better then they do their own kids, but the change is so big and the expectation to be something you are not in only two weeks to so great that it has already crushed a lot of people that are in my training group. So, I know you want some stories and guess what. I have a lot. I’ll tell one now and we will see where that takes us. So, yesterday was the Fete d’Independence for Benin. (oh by the way it is pronounced as Been-in) That’s how all the nationals say it so that’s what I’m going with. So the fete is put on in the Commune of Aplahoue (pronounced App-la-way). This is a town just 10 min bike ride from here, by car like 2 mins. The Business volunteers are in Azove, along with the Computer people. (that’s me) And in Aplahoue there is the Environment Volunteers. That makes up about half the people that are entering Peace Corps Benin this year. The rest of our Stage (which is what our “class” is called) is in other towns in the South. Actually we are not that far from them either, about 40 mins by car. Anyway. So the environmental and business volunteers got together in Aplahoue to celebrate the Independence Day for Benin. We get there and we are the only white people there. Which you think might be weird, but we have been the only white people for the past week and a half. So, the weird thing was to see another white person show up that none of us knew. They were hanging out with the mayor and held a prominent position in the parade / celebration. I figure that they were some French NGO representative or something, because they didn’t speak English. Really every-time I see a white person on the street I know them because they are in the Peace Corps. Talk about being a minority. I have experienced it and there are really ugly parts of being in the minority. Anyway, The festival started off with a guy that could balance anything on his bike in whatever position you thought possible. And, as a sign of a good trick, people walked up to him and stuck change to his forehead. Yeah, when he was trying to balance. Next in the parade were a ton of groups of dancers. Yes, people would walk up to them too and stick things to their skin while they were dancing. It was interesting to see the performer work around that. But anyway, also in the parade there were the most off the wall things. Like when I went to the parade I was thinking I was going to see like floats and circus performers. Well, who in Africa has that kind of time. So, they had the Hair Dresser organization come up and do a little thing. Then they had the Tailors come up and show their skill by making a couple of outfits on the spot. The outfits looked like they were going to rip at any moment but they were there. Anyway, if that wasn’t odd enough, the taxi drivers came through along with the taxi-motos. (these motorcycles are in greater number and fill the streets. We get to ride them if we want to go places; only we have to wear a helmet so we don’t die.) In this part of the parade there was one taxi driver that took it upon himself to make the parade interesting by putting the car into multiple doughnuts in the middle of the parade stage area. Which, you might think wouldn’t be a big deal only that this stage area was just the road and when he put it into doughnuts he came literally within two feet of hitting us and everyone else in the crowd. The road was the stage and that wasn’t bigger than a small two way two lane road back in the states. (which that’s the biggest road in the commune; a commune includes like 20 villages) So, we’re just on the side of the road. I’m telling you that if he came out of the turn to soon, we would have been dead. No questions asked. It was scary and what was more was the officials of the parade started yelling at him like this wasn’t planned at all. And the crowd went crazy, as everyone would run every time the car came close. People falling all over each other can create chaos in an instant. So, everyone after him had to do something else and it just got crazy. Anyway, the parade ended soon after that and we went to the mayor’s house to eat with him there. So the day ended well. And everyone survived another day in Africa.

(This was typed on Aug. 2 and I put this up when I got to an Internet connection on Aug. 25)