One month Down

one month down... 23 more to go. my how times flies, even though some days seemed to last forever. if my time here were represented by one day it would now be 1am on that day, still time to party from the night before.
so anyway my job is actually getting going. you may be wondering the whole reason why im here and frankly i wonder about that too sometimes. aside from expirenceing a different culture and learning the language and have a great big adventure in west africa i actually have a job believe it or not. this is another thing that i sometimes wonder about, if i really have a job or not. heres some background history on peace corps and their relationship with bassila. peace corps has a long history with bassila in fact i am by far the first volunteer that has been posted here, there are many many people before me who have lived and worked here. sometimes at the same time so even though there are now two of us living and working in bassila this isnt anything new. so the people here are used to seeing americans, the local term is yovo. and these volunteers have left a positive impression on the people and did a really good job paving the way for the rest of us and people who are here to do projects that help improve, for lack of a better word, the general area. But there has never been an environmental volunteer in bassila, at least not to my knowledge. so while my postmate a small enterprise development volunteer isnt the first in that sector, people know what types of projects she can do and shes already done some trainings and worked with groups on some projects. my work isnt quite sure what im good for just yet. i try to explain but im not sure they fully understand, this of course is probably a communication error on my end, but either way theyre really not sure what to do with me.
during the first week they found out that i know how to crochet plastic bags so my boss thinks this is a good idea because there is not a waste management system in benin. it makes me feel like the worst environmentalist in the whole world but where do i put my trash, on the ground. i know its bad and it goes completely against everything ive ever been taught about nature and i feel in the end like im doing more harm than good. but this is kind of how i justify to myself, i reuse as much as i possibly can, including plastic bags, i also dont buy packaged food. food here is sold as is, the only things that i buy that have packageing is tomato paste, and i reuse the old cans as scoops for rice, tapioca, flour, sugar, oatmeal, etc. i can also use them when i bake because i have to use a dutch oven set up, i will explain how this is done later. i also dont produce as much garbage as i would in the states, just in general. and i compost. anyway so while i can do all those things and if everyone did there would still be an excess of garbage. togo starting producing these black plastic bags not too long ago and theyve since caught on in benin, so now everytime you go and buy tomatos, onions, wagashi, anything it is put in a black plastic bag. things like street food are also put in a bag for you, ive eaten yogurt from a bag before. when people are done with these bags there is only so much reuse you can get out of them they go on the ground, this is a lot of the garbage here in bassila is these plastic bags. you can crochet with them and make lots of things like other bags for example. my work partner got really excited about starting a womens group who makes these bags from bags, and then maybe even sells them in the market and makes money off of them for very little cash input, all you need is a crochet hook and scissors. so then he says why dont you make something so that it can be used as an example, so this has been my job ever since, crocheting trash. i went to college for environmental science, spent a pretty penny to get that degree too, and im crocheting plastic bags, im pretty much the bag lady of bassila. so the last week ive been trying to explain other things that i can do because it takes so long to crochet anything with plastic bags because all the crochet needles you can find here are tiny. attempting to diversify my work is difficult because my work partner is just so interested in this crocheting project but i think i might actually be able to do more things soon like mud stove building
i started to teach some of the people at my work how to use excel for analyzing data, they really would like to know how to put standard error bars on their graphs, i think they dont know what standard error bars represent, ive tried to explain that its a description of an average and that you need all number that make the average to get standard error but they want to do it with just the average, which is unfortunate. but anyway i feel like im helping because before they didnt even know how to make a graph using the data that they had. i feel like im using more of my degree helping them alalyze some of their data even though i dont really understand what it is, something to do with rice but the specifics escape me at the moment. anyway thats all for now.