Three Things a Day

Another visit from Brother John!

As always, I once again find myself sitting at the cyber wondering what to write to everybody after another week has flown by.

Strangely enough, next week will be the very last time that I will have this experience of wondering what to write to everybody. 

As my time has been dwindling down in Africa, Fro challenged me to look for things that I enjoyed about my mission in Africa, or rather things that I would miss upon my arrival home. She challenged me to write down three things each day on things that I would miss.

At the beginning of the week, I was doing pretty good but by the end of the week, everything was just going by too fast that I ended up forgetting to write down the things that I love about here. I feel like I probably already have talked about a lot of the things that I wrote but if not, this will just give you a reminder of the things I like about this crazy little part of Africa and about my mission in particular.

Okay, I'm just gonna get the food out of the way because that's what most of my list was.

• Aloco (fried plantains): The Ivorian staple, Aloco is awesome. It's pretty easy to make so if I can find some plantains I can make it really easily back home. 
• Viju Milk/Juice: This is a Nigeria drink that is absolutely delicious. It's basically flavored powered milk but don't let the name get you to think that it's not good. They have tons of flavors like orange, apple, pineapple, strawberry, etc. It's funny because I hated flavored milk back home but I'll give it to those Nigerians, they did a pretty good job with it. 

Viju juice! Present from Brother John.

• Coconuts: Ahhhh... coconuts are so good. Whether they be cut fresh or ones that you buy already cut at the market they are all really good. I really love drinking it with fresh lime too... very refreshing after a hot day. And eating the coconut "flesh" is always very good too. Now that I know how to open coconuts without breaking a cutting board, it's pretty dang easy to drink.
• Beesap: The drink that turns your mouth purple, this is amazing and so good to drink. It's made from sugar and hibiscus leaves (mostly imported from Burkina Faso! How 'bout them apples?!). I hear that Mexicans make a similar drink so I will be on the hunt once I get home!  

Some nigerian patte with beesap made by sister Precious... the beesap was sooo good!

• McDonalds - African Style: So we have this African mama who sells some pretty dang good fried food right down the street from our apartment. Among the varieties offered are enyam (the local spud here), bean balls (mashed white beans), aloco, but the BEST are the at-tele which is fried banana... man those are so good. You can eat them just by themselves! No pima required (the other stuff, save the aloco, is eaten with some pima hot sauce). After I had inherited President Weed's ketchup when he left, I also ate the stuff with ketchup which is really good. But now I'm out and have no more ketchup and it's too expensive to buy again... so piment it is!
  
  Also, once you get a variety of these things, it is best to buy a hot dog and about 200 francs worth of spaghetti to go with the dinner. What you do is you take the spaghetti with your hands, pick up a bean ball or a piece of fried enyam and eat! It's pretty dang good.  The spaghetti helps the enyam go down your throat. Exciting.

My fried foods with spaghetti!

• 60 cent sandwiches: Usually, on any given lunch break, you can find me on the wall of our apartment hunting down a sandwich lady. Sometimes it can take a half hour for them to come, but they always come! When I was at the bureau, I would always buy a sandwich with avocado and mayo for the morning (that's considered a breakfast meal here)... but for lunch out here in Menontin, they only have mashed beans with spicy oil which is great for lunch. I'll usually by two of them, one with a hot dog and the other with a hard boiled egg (for the protein of course)... man I'll sure miss my sandwich ladies. Maybe I can look into Wawa making similar sandwiches and hiring people to walk around New Hope with bread on their heads! That would be awesome!
• Enyam pile (mashed enyam) with peanut sauce: Man this is probably the best, most filling meal that you can get. Usually you eat this with either chicken or cheese, but I usually just get it with cheese. I am definitely going to eat this this week before I go home. Because the peanut sauce is filled with pima and is literally very hot, you are guaranteed a runny nose by the end of your meal! 

Okay, now for the other stuff:

• Scripture study: One thing I will really miss upon my arrival home will be the fact that I won't have a time set aside to study the scriptures. One nice thing about the mission is that you always have a time dedicated to reading the scriptures, and nothing else! My Gospel knowledge has increased one hundred fold thanks to scripture study and I will definitely continue once I get home, but I know it will be a lot harder.
• "Bon assis!": I'm definitely gonna miss weird African phrases too. The most common one people say is "Bon Arrive" which means good arrival... I suppose it's the African way of saying welcome. They also say all the traditional French ones like bon appetit, bon soir, bonjour, bonne digestion, bon voyage, etc... but my absolute favorite is Bon assis, literally meaning "good sit" which is what people say to you when they're busy and you're sitting around waiting for them. It's kinda like they're saying to you I haven't forgotten that you're there! It's so stupid that it's funny.
• Negotiating prices: Okay, this is actually a double-edged sword because sometimes this can really bite you in the butt if you're not sure of yourself. One thing I like about negotiating is the fact that you can always get things at a lower price if you know what you're doing. When I go souvenir shopping, this is pretty key so that I don't accidentally spend $100 on only a few objects (yeah that happened near the beginning of my souvenir shopping experience)... of course, one thing that I have learned is never be afraid to walk away. Also, if you want to get a good price from a Beninois/Togolais, just make them laugh and they will be more willing to give you a better price.
• The Heat: Another double edged sword because most of the time it is too hot! But it's nice never to have to worry about whether I need to wear long sleeves or short sleeves! And oddly enough, I have become so used to sweating that sometimes I don't even need fans to cool me down anymore because... well... that's my life: sweat.
• The People: Of course this is the very reason I am here! I really love getting to know the members and making friends with people that I would have never imagined to be my friend! Sometimes it can be hard for me to relate with people here but usually as long as you can joke around about stuff, people will laugh and smile which makes them like you! In just about every place I serve, there is always somebody that is very dear to me and somebody I really hope to see in the future! Attiogbe/Sr Ngessun from Wuiti, John from Kodjoviakope, Precious from the Bureau, and Ismael/Betty from Menontin (I think it's kinda funny that there are two Togolais/Beninois on the list, then an Ivorian and then three Nigerians!)... of course there are tons more people that I love from every sector but those are just to name a few. 
• Mission friends: Do you know that missionaries are actually awesome people? It's so much fun being here with so many other people doing the same exact thing that I am doing. The friendships that have been made here will definitely last far beyond the mission.
• Moto taxis: So I don't take them anymore (don't worry) but while I was taking them I actually really did love them! I was still scared out of my mind when I took them, but they are a lot of fun... plus they're cheap and fast! Of course, I've seen some gnarly accidents from motos but... that's why I prayed every time I got on one.

Honestly, there are a lot more things that I could talk about but I'm going to limit myself here. There are a lot of things that are really hard to deal with here in Africa as well. But if there's one thing you've got to learn about living in Benin/Togo, it's that if you're only going to focus on the bad stuff, you're in for a long, long mission. 

It's hard to believe that I have one more week to live in such a crazy part of the world. I will be trying to take advantage of every single last bit of this place this last week. Saying goodbye to people will be really tough but I know that we will see each other again, whether in this life or in the next life. 

Thanks again for all the prayers from everyone... I'll need every one of them when I'll be traveling home this next week! 

Love,

Elder Hawkins

New text signature on our phone made with what I think are Ethiopian characters.

One Last Great Adventure

Kunz and Hawkins = African Brothas!

First of all, I want to thank everybody for the birthday wishes! To let everybody know how I celebrated, I will attach my birthday dinner.

My great b-day dinner of tapioca gruel and fried donuts.

As you can tell it was delicious and it only cost me 40 cents... at least this time I didn't get tricked into buying lunch for my companion like last year!

Other than that, my last birthday in Africa has finally gone by... it was pretty much the last thing I needed to celebrate before I leave for home!

However, the most fun thing that we did was not on my birthday... this week I finally got to cross one more thing off of my Benin bucket list: Ganvie, the Venice of Africa!

We were finally able to head out there and just in time too (it was either now or never). As Elder Kunz and I had never gone out there, we decided to plan an activity with the Office Elders so that we could go and see Ganvie... we kept trying to plan zone activities and get our Zone leaders to do it, but... when you only have a few weeks left, you
gotta take matters into your own hands!

Thankfully, it was pretty cloudy and it had rained that morning so we had no problems weather wise! We headed out to Calavi (which is the shortest way to get to Ganvie). We had to, of course, negotiate the price for renting the boat but we ended up getting it for $28 (renting it for three hours, taking 8 people).

The dock parking lot with the cows we almost hit going in

The dock and going out

The beautiful boat: Elders Oliverson, Isampua, Semeha, Me, Kunz, Donadier

It was pretty sweet! The boat looked sea worthy enough so I wasn't too scared but, you know Africa, anyway it was pretty cool to finally get going out there! The lake was very dirty because of the rain (every time the paddle came up from the water, the water was the color of Coca Cola) but that didn't scare us. The only funny thing was that Elder Isampua was pretty scared to go on the boat (I don't know if he knows how to swim) but the lake is only three feet deep so I wasn't too scared. Plus my camera is waterproof so no big deal!

But thankfully our boat did prove sea worthy all through the trip! We had two rowers with us... it took us about an hour to get there but it was so cool. A lot of people on other boats were passing us and looking at us really weird but it didn't matter as we were on an adventure!

Just cruisin' on the water

Kid with a gas tank boat

Thankfully we didn't see much trash on our way over... actually we saw some really cool plants that grow on the lake that had really pretty flowers on them.

The cool flowers on the lake.

Once we finally got to Ganvie, it was quite different from what I had imagined. I kinda imagined a huge village made on a pile of sticks that floated on water, but it wasn't quite like that! Instead, they were just parcels built on sticks, which is probably what I should have imagined.

Cool straw hut

Ducks!

A house with a very visible water line... in 2006, the water was up to this point and most of the city had to leave and wait for the water to come back down.

The Bridge of Ganvie. Not sure where it goes to.

Our tour guide/rower guy explained to us that Ganvie was created in the early 1700s to escape the slave traders (who would think to look for people in the middle of a lake?!). And even after the slave trade, people continued to live there... apparently, our tour guide said that like 40,000 people live out in Ganvie but I really don't see how that
is possible. I think I might have heard him incorrectly but I think it was more like 1000 people lived out there and that might be stretching it.

Once we got there it was pretty interesting to see all the houses on stilts. Apparently, the water on lac Nokoué is either salty or fresh water depending on the season. During rainy season, it tends to be fresh water from all the rain, but during the dry seasons it is salty.
The main occupation of the people would be fishing. Our guide said that usually the men will go out and fish (women are actually banned from fishing) and then the women will go and sell the fish (men are actually banned from selling). Most families have about 3 boats: one for the father to fish, one for the mother to sell fish, and one for the kids to go to school in.

Fisherman!

Sad little kid... most of them were pretty happy to see white people though

Nice Coconut tree!

The mosque

Most people's homes only have one or two rooms and are not too big. There are a few small islands on the lake where people take their kids to learn how to walk (apparently, people can always tell that somebody comes from Ganvie because of the wobbly way they walk). Remember, everything that I am saying to you is coming from my boat driver so
you know that it's true fact and reliable. Like Wikipedia. No worries.

Anyway, there were a lot of kids out there who were all shouting "yovo, yovo" which I didn't mind too much! I thought it was kinda funny this time around because everybody else got a kick out of it too.

The biggest island I found

Our first stop was to the Ganvie hotel and gift shop (who in their right mind would stay there? That's like staying in a train caboose). Actually the two places they took us to were to gift shops... but joke's on them! We didn't buy anything! It had some pretty cool stuff
but I liked just being on some crazy Ganvie stilt houses! The Hotel was called the 7 Star Hotel because it's better than a five star hotel in that you can catch a fish right from your bed... Also, the bathroom just turned out to be a hole to the water...

Kunz and I at the 7 star hotel

The floors and the water below!

Cool vintage coke sign in the hotel

The front of the 7 star hotel

the bathroom with the hole to the water haha

Kunz using the John!

These were the toilets that some NGOs built throughout the city for who knows what reason!
Sorry for all the bathroom pictures

As we kept going along, we noticed a few other cool buildings, like this huge three story building that was a hotel and night club (ookaaay). Also, apparently there are two main "roads" in the city: Fisher's road and "The Young Adult Celibate Lovers road" (yes it is
literally called that) which, according to our tour guide, is where all the youths from the city go set up dates. Apparently it's closed off to everybody else save people going on dates after 7 o'clock at night.... so if you're a married man/woman and you find yourself
there, you're in big trouble!

The "Ganvie Night Club"

Oddly enough, I saw a lot of animals that actually lived there like chickens, goats, dogs, etc... as for what they do all day I have no idea as they can't go very far without falling into the water. 

Goats in Ganvie!

 Dogs!

Electricity wise, most people just don't have any but there are some

people who are able to afford generators and solar panels (there were various solar panel street lights throughout the city actually). I also asked where people throw their trash away... well, it ends up in the same place that their bathroom waste goes as well.

Hipsta pic of Afrikan lake

As you might imagine, the water on the lake is not drinkable and is highly polluted. So, there are a few fresh water outlets on the city that people canoe too with big tubs to fill up with water. I'm not sure where the fresh water actually comes from but... I'm guessing it's not from the lake.

I think that's about everything I saw out there. On our way back, our tour guides fired up the roaring engine of our big canoe and we got back to the dock in about 10 minutes.

The Mighty Izekor coming down the stairs to the boat.

Donadier and Fr Francois who helped us get out to Ganvie (a member in Cocotomey)

Towards the end there was quite a bit of water in the boat... not as seaworthy as I thought

Thankfully Elder Izekor did not "drive" the whole way.

Big open waters

Getting off the boat was a slippery affair.

Kunz, Me, Oliverson, Donadier

 Anyway, that will probably be my last, real African adventure on my mission! Hopefully I'll be able to come back one day and visit the northern wildlife reserves, but those are just a little to far away to visit (not that Elder Oliverson and I haven't been planning on sneaking off for two days to go and visit...).

Other than Ganvie and my birthday, there wasn't really anything too special that happened this week. Elder Mejean has finally left back to France and he promised me that he will be eating raclette for me this week... we had interviews with President too... mine wasn't really too big of a deal because I'll be having my exit interview in two weeks anyway!

Like I said last week, I'm still chugging along. I'm really thankful for all the advice that people have been sending to me about how to finish the mission well... and I'll be applying it my best! I can't say that this last month has been easy, but nothing ever has been easy on this mission so I'm not too surprised!

Thanks again for all the birthday wishes! I was glad to "talk" with so many people today and hope that everyone has a great week... hard to imagine that next week will be my last in Africa, so this will be the time to take advantage of it!

Love you all,
Elder Hawkins

Me and Ganvie

Still Chuggin' Along

October is finally here... I felt like it was just yesterday that I was celebrating Columbus day! 

This week was a pretty normal week (meaning no hospital visits)... we weren't able to teach as many lessons as I would have liked to but we had quite a few ratez-vous and a lot of lessons that were far away. When you don't have bicycles, walking can get pretty tiresome. Add that and the fact that there are no taxis in Cotonou and President Morin is trying to ban taking motos, it can be really tiresome (and makes you feel more guilty for taking said motos). 

BUT, I'm still chuggin' along. Still gettin' work done. Still makin' things happen.

On Saturday, we started to prepare for a missionary activity that we did today. We wanted to do a BBQ so we headed down to Tokpa on Saturday to buy the chicken and other ingredients that would be necessary for our BBQ. So, during our lunch break we went out there and met a few other missionaries to do some quick shopping. Thankfully, it happened to be one of the hottest days that I can recall on my mission. Goodness... I hate shopping at Marches here... they are literally the most terrible thing you could imagine: yovo chants, tiny roads (filled with huge puddles), tons of people, bad fish smells... all in one spot. Apparently, Tokpa is the biggest open air market in West Africa, but I honestly don't have any idea why people go there to shop. 

View of the market found on the internet. 

Why? Probably because all you can find in the marche is tomato paste, rice, casava, pasta, powdered milk, maggi cubes, etc... which you can find in just about every single boutique/local marche in Cotonou. Yes, there are speciality items that you can find in Tokpa, but because it's so big, you have to go on a hunt to find it (and there is no store directory if you can believe it). So why you would go all the way down to Tokpa is beyond me.

But we did go all the way down to Tokpa... mainly because it's a central location and it's easy to get to (all the buses and taxis go there pretty cheaply). Once we got there we went into the belly of the beast and saw just about everything you can imagine buying from the biggest West African open air market: ladies carrying live chickens on their heads (they break their wings, tie their legs, and lay them down flat on a big tray), a wide variety of fish that you would never want to eat, never ending vendors of pima and other leaves made for sauces here... but once we went deep into the market, we finally found this meat lady that Elder Silvas knew. Thankfully, she had raw chicken sitting out so we knew that we were in the right place. For a second I thought she was going to sell us the raw, thawed out chicken but as we were buying in bulk, she took us back to her circa-1960s freezer and sold us 10 chickens for $30. However, these are African chickens which have about half the meat as a regular chicken back home. 

Feeling victorious, we set about through the marche trying to find some rice and plastic plates. We found the rice pretty easily (12 pounds for $6!) but the plastic plates were ridiculous. Since the ladies saw that we were about 6 white guys in a group, they just went nuts on the prices. We probably went through about 3-4 different vendors until we finally were able to buy 50 plates for $5, which is pretty expensive if you ask me. 

The real adventure came when we tried to get out of the market and regroup back at Festival de Charwama.  Elder Silvas' companion, Elder Makondo, took us through a "shortcut" to get out of the market. Turned out to be a 30 minute detour... and we all got absolutely fried because of it. Like I said, it had to be at least 100 degrees outside and there wasn't a cloud in the sky so you can imagine how hot it was. 

But, there were charwamas at the end so victory was ours! 

Then, because of a lack of time, my comp and I had to go straight back into the sector under the scorching hot sun... I was already sun burnt at this point but I still put on sunscreen because it was still hotter than Adele's temper outside. Thankfully, I have my handy-dandy lavender oil which I rubbed on the sunburn to help it go away when I got back to the apartment (which worked well, by the way). 

The next day, I went to Fidjrosse to help Elder Silvas do some preparing. Turns out that I am really horrible at skinning and gutting a chicken, so Elder Silvas took care of that while I cooked rice, peeled carrots and scrambled some eggs. 

Chicken!

At one point, we ran out of room to put all the cooked rice so we took one of our laundry buckets, put garbage bags over it, and then dumped all of the rice in it... it was pretty effective for holding all the rice but not a very good insulator to keep the heat! 

The rice bucket! 

Also, another food to add to the crazy food check list: Chicken necks. Didn't know that it was edible, but apparently it is. Elder Makondo took all the scraps that we had from our chickens and proved to us that they were edible. The neck actually wasn't that bad... a little tough but it tasted like chicken if you can believe it.

Chicken guts!

This morning, the Assistants brought all the food over as well as the grill. It took a while to light the charcoal because it was so windy at the beach but my companion stepped in, channeled is Togolais-ness, and started that fire like a pro.

Just BBQ some chicken.

The activity turned out really well though... everybody had a good time... we didn't end up recovering all the money that we had put into the activity but it's okay. We had a good time, grilled some chicken, played some Africaball (probably my last), and ate some decent food.

The trashy beach we paid 40 cents to get in to.

Cool knit American flag I found at the beach place... why it's there? The place is called Obama beach so it's got this weird American theme to it though there is nothing American about the place. Except the flag. 

The Beach.

Other than that, things are going pretty well. Preaching the gospel is still the same old, same old. I wish I would have more cool stories to teach about that but nothing too out of the ordinary or interesting has happened with our lessons this week (besides the fact that people have been giving us a lot of drinks and food recently... I think that means we're doing a good job). Teaching has been going well though... my companion has learned a lot in the few weeks that we have been together and his teaching has really improved. 

Alright, well I best be going now. Thanks for all the prayers and kind thoughts... 

Love,

Elder Hawkins 

Started my last planner this week... as I will have done 18 planners, it worked out perfectly with half innings in a baseball game! So, right before my year mark, I started numbering my planners by baseball innings. I've gotten lots of compliments on it!

These pics are especially for Sur: 

Usually found on the walls of parcels or in this case, stuck in the ground, people will place signs to mark ownership...

... and I happened to find Mr. Gomez's property.