PST Wrap Up

Wow, three months here in Benin have really flown by. I have been so busy so I’m sorry for the delay in my post, but I have so many updates! As you may know I am in the Agriculture sector, also known as SAS. There are five people in my sector and we all lived in a village called Ouedeme that is just outside of Lokossa where the Peace Corps training center is located. My sector mates and I had most of our classes at the Arrondissement in Ouedeme, which is the chef d'Arrondissement office. The chef d’Arrondissement is similar to what a mayor is in the United States. We had most of our language classes here and many of our technical classes (agriculture specific) classes here too. We took a lot of field trips as well, to see farms around the area. My favorite was in Grand Popo where we visited 2 really cool farms, one of which had everything from turmeric, to lettuce, to bees, to turkeys, to arugula, to goats, and so much more! We also had a garden in Ouedeme where we grew green beans, basil, grand morels, peppers, and amaranth. Both grand morel and amaranth are leafy greens that are common here. We presented some of these at the sector fair which happened the week before our swearing in. The fair was a really fun time for everyone to show off some of what they learned. This was not just the Agriculture, Education, and Health sectors but also the youth entrepreneurship students that SAS taught, who were presenting their own products, the women's groups SAS worked with on business planning, the women’s CARE groups that RCH (rural community health) worked with on maternal health, and recognizing some of the students TEFL (Education) taught in Model School for their hard work. I was actually the director of the fair and I gave a speech at the ceremony in french. I helped organize all of our people and made sure everything was prepared for that Saturday. I also announced all of the names for the awards which was really fun. I think the speech went great and I will post the recording too if you would like to watch. I will be making another post about our swearing in later, but bye for now! :)