Friday, July 27, 2012

Where I Will Be Living


Drum Roll Please: Missérété in Akpro- Missérété in Ouémé

Basically... I am going to be living in a small village about 10 minutes outside of Porto-Novo. I am in the region near the Atlantic Coast and near Nigeria. I am not far from Cotonou, so the main headquarters will also be my regional workstation. The village is called Missérété and I will be working closely with the communities of Blewan, Gome Sota, Sogbé Aledjo, and Vakon. I believe my house is in Vakon.

Leading up to Post Announcements I was hoping to get far away from the cities... but I think it will be OK. I will be living in a village so I won't have to see the city all the time (unless I have to go to Songhai) and since I am near the cities I will have easy access to most things I might need.

My village has electricity (don't know if that means I have electricity). My water close to (or in) my house. I might be first PCV to have a post at this site (the paperwork they gave me was vague). The local language is Goun. There is a health facility in my village. And it has been confirmed that there are no bats currently living in my house. Other than that I know very little about my village... some volunteers received a list with things like “population, religion, ect.” and some even got pictures of their house or supervisors. I did not receive any of that :(... if someone wants to google it for me...

Also, my job has evolved, I am now going to be a “Gardening Production Adviser.” From my current understanding that means I am going to continue to work with the practices of Songhai (where we do our training) even after training is over and with the “Centre Communal pour la Promotion Agricole.”
I am going to be working with local farmers/gardeners to promote new crops, composting, natural pesticides, irrigation systems and other sustainable gardening techniques as taught to me by the geniuses at Songhai. In addition, I am also going to be promoting and assisting with environmental education at the local schools.

We meet our supervisors on Friday, and then we go to see our posts on August 5th. I promise to take some pictures. Then maybe I will figure out how to post them with the slow internets. 

Can't believe its been a month already!
Z

2 comments:

  1. Have you seen this?
    http://travelingluck.com/Africa/Benin/Benin+%28general%29/_2391021_Vakon.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. This website from other comment may have slowed my computer---not sure if you should there.

    ReplyDelete