Finally!!

hey everyone i finally have my table and cabinet for my kitchen after ordering it over 20 days ago!!! i even got a lower price because it was 8 days late and i said that if i had to pay the original white girl price he gave me i could easily find another carpenter next time i was in need of such services. he knew i could find a better price from the numerous other carpenters in the area. so i got a discount am i going to return to him though, probably not he kind of gave me the go around and well i dont have to deal with that shit that and my stuff was still slightly expensive after the discount.
well enough about that. this week has been all about visiting schools and hopefully starting environmental clubs. the perfect environmental club would be one with a professor from the school that basically took charge of the clubs purpose, like having a school garden, or starting a tree nursery or one that did some waste management around the school where i could visit and check progress every so often. i doubt this will be this way for all schools. although there is a very interested prof in pennasolou who wants to start an environmental club and wants to really take the kids to pendjari, go him!! i might also recruit some other volunteers in my area to help out and organize some things. im sure most schools i will be the person who is backing the majority of the things that are happening, although for a sustainable developement project, i would really like some motivated people in the community to take over this may only come with time. oh my job title i guess you could say the title of any peace corps volunteer is development facilitator, honestly before coming i didnt really think of it this way, that peace corps meant development work im not sure how i thought of it but it wasnt quite like that. maybe its because peace corps volunteer sounds a whole lot more romantic than sustainable developement facilitator. every school we visited sounded very interested in starting a club. but i just met with the school directors this week. how you go about doing something in any organization here in benin is you start from the top down. for example if you want to visit the hospital you go to the hospital director first present yourself use lots of flowery language and then say i would like a tour then the director will find you someone to take you on a tour or he/she will do it themselves. where as in the states if i wanted a tour of a hospital i probably wouldnt go right to the head guy, because that would be considered rude for a person off the streets to just barge in unannounced on the head person of such an organization. i might try to speak to the receptionist or something before. but here you start with the head guy, barge in unannounced and they like it. its not rude its actually respectful of their authority, are they busy?? ive never met a person who is actually busy like we think of busy, meetings backed one on top of another, people here just arent bogged down with time commitments and deadlines like we are in the states. like for example ive waited over an hour to give a waitress the check after lousy service, the service she gave me might have gotten me fired certainly there would have been no tip and lecture from my boss about customer service and being polite, she was terrible, at least i was nice even if i was wrong. if i recieved the same service in the states i might have just walked out and payed the money to hostess because clearly the waitress wasnt paying attention. but this is normal here in Benin.
i cringe at the customer service here, but everyone is equally crappy. i bet if there was a restaraunt with good waiters and waitreses who were not only fast but polite they could make a killing. such is life.