Tales from Rohan

Hi Everyone. Unfortunately I won’t have any new photos for a little while, as my camera finally decided to break down during a Thanksgiving fête. However I did want to share a few thoughts.

Here is Benin, how do I know it is almost Christmas? Is it a light dusting of snow? Christmas carols in every store? My mailbox filling up with requests for donations? Cards appearing and gifts going up under the tree? Not a chance.

Today I hit my head on a fist sized mango (still hard for about a month). The Harmattan winds are slowing down and the temperature is creeping up into the 90s. I’ve received almost all of my birthday cards. Students who were otherwise finished with University last year are doing their equivalent of a dissertation defense (called a soutenance) while their friends and family peer in through the windows in their best clothes and call out a big cheer when they pass. Yup. It must be almost Christmas.

I had a good time in Parakou celebrating Halloween with many other volunteers who were in town for a regional meeting. A volunteer in a town a few km North of me bought a few pumpkins in a village nearby which specializes in growing them. These pumpkins were promptly turned in Jack o’lanterns. Not to be wasteful, this weekend I baked some of the flesh for pie (well sort of pie cupcakes) and plan on making a Thai pumpkin stir fry with the rest tonight.

I’ve taken a few nice bike rides out on dirt roads from my house. It is good exercise, beautiful and fun, but I come back not only sweaty but coated in the red dirt that is everywhere here.

Here are a few assorted snapshots I like of village life near Parakou. You don’t need to go very far outside of town to find it.

time for homework…

I am now a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) or a “stageur” as we are known in country. When my staging group of 56 people arrived, we got a very warm and enthusiastic greeting from large portion of Benin’s current volunteers. We stayed for a few days in Cotonou (the biggest city and commercial captial) at a retreat center so they could give us the most essential training (including learning how to ride a zemijohn motorcycle taxi), figure out what French class we would be taking, and get our shots and our malaria meds. Then we hopped in a few minibuses to meet our families for the rest of our 9 weeks of training.

We are each staying with a host family in Porto Novo, the second largest city in the country and the administrative capital. My host family are great and I am settling in well and very happy, though a bit tired. I had prepared photos of my host papa, my host sister Nora with a cousin, and my mama with the three granddaughters who are staying here over sumer vacation (Oceane, Afrisse, and Barbine), and my room. These pictures were taken on Saturday which was Benin’s Independence day, so everyone was already dressed up to party. Unfortunately the upload speed here to the Internet is much slower than dialup, so I will need to save photos for overnight trips or maybe just use the mail.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment here is the tempo of life. A very common phrase you hear here is “Doucement” which means literally gently or softly, but in Benin means “Take it easy” or even “chill out”. I was shaving getting ready to go out with the family on Independence Day when papa came in and said “Doucement Rohan. Il y a assez de temps.” Take it easy. There is plenty of time.

Of course, no good independence day celebration can be complete without a parade and speeches are appearances from various officials. I happened to get a decent picture of the king of Porto Novo (in the center under the umbrella) only to later have an audience with his majesty with my French class on Thursday.

Please don’t be upset if you get a letter from me with US Stamps and US postmark on it. I went to the post office yesterday and realized that enough stamps to mail one post card to the US costs half of my daily living allowance. US volunteers regularly hand carry letters to mail in the States, so I may be using that option a lot.

À la prochaine!

It’s official. After a very long application process, the US Peace Corps invited me to volunteer in Benin (West Africa) for 27 months.

Q: Wow! When do you leave?
I attend two days of “staging” in Philadelphia July 22-23 with a bunch of other Americans crazy enough to volunteer, then we get on a plane to Benin and arrive July 24.

I am leaving Santa Cruz on July 8th to go visit some family (my mom, my dad) before staging. I am renting out my house from July 1, 2009 until December 31, 2011 (to give me time to do some traveling in the region). I’ll probably do some camping and some rafting between the 1st and the 8th, but I may be on your couch instead!
Q: Where the heck is Benin?
Benin is in West Africa just west of Nigeria. (locator map courtesy of Wikipedia). It is entirely in the tropics. It might look small here, but it is actually about as big as Pennsylvania. From the Atlantic Ocean in the south (tropical lagoons) to the Niger River in the north (savannah) is about 700km. The capital, Cotonou, is at about 6º North latitude and almost on the Prime Meridian.

Q: Is it safe there?
Benin has been stable since multiparty elections in 1991. Wandering around on the beach in the biggest city Contonou isn’t recommended, but otherwise its quite safe.

Q: What will you do there? Where will you be exactly?
I will be an Information and Communication Technology volunteer and my title will be “Technology Development Advisor”. This means my primary program is doing stuff with computers / communications equipment. I’m not sure exactly what I will be doing or where I will be placed in country until after my first 3 months (we train in country for the first 3 months and learn a local language), but I will post an update here. The brochure I got said that I may:

• actively work with associations and small businesses at the grassroots level providing basic technology knowledge and skills.
• engage in activities that foster technological empowerment in women and youth.
• promote Benin (Beninese business, trade tourism, etc.) on the Internet.
• increase the effectiveness of Beninese communications technologies (Internet, radio, wireless, mobile, satellite, etc.)
• enhance the performance of institutions providing financial services by transferring relevant information technology knowledge and skills.

In addition, most Peace Corps volunteers take on several secondary programs once they get established, and everyone is trained in HIV/AIDS prevention.

Q: Where do you live and do you get paid?
Peace Corps volunteers are expected to live at the same living standard as their local country counterparts in their community. In rural areas volunteers often live in mud huts with thatched roofs. In the cities they can live in concrete multi-story apartment blocks. The community provides local housing (a private room to sleep in and a private room to wash in) and Peace Corps provides a stipend in local currency similar to what a middle-class person in country would have after paying taxes and housing expenses. Supplementing your living expenses with savings from home is frowned upon.

Q: What language will you be speaking?
French is the official language in Benin, so I am definitely brushing up on my French. In addition I will learn an indigenous language that you probably never heard of. I don’t know which one I will learn, since it depends on what part of the country I am placed in. Some of the languages there are Fongbe, Yoruba, Ge, Bariba, and Fulani.

Q: Where can I learn more about Benin?
Wikipedia and Lonely Planet are both a good start.

Q: Can I come visit?
Yes, but please be aware of a few things:

• I can’t have visitors for my first 6 months or last 3 months in country
• You need to be prepared to travel on local style transport: shared buses, zemi-johns (a motorcycle used as a taxi), walking, and perhaps bicycling. I will be getting around on a bicycle, zemis and busses and will not have access to a car. (Nor do I recommend renting a car.)
• You should also be prepared to eat local food, possibly from a communal bowl with your (right) hand.
• Locals don’t wear shorts or tank tops.
• There is not likely to be a western style hotel anywhere near where I am staying, but you are welcome to sleep on my bed or on a mat on the floor.
• I need to take vacation days each day someone visits me (including weekends) so please let me know before making travel plans if you would like to visit.

Q: When is the party?
Saturday June 20th I’ll have a big backyard barbeque and party 3pm to 3am at my house.
121 Ladera Dr
Santa Cruz CA 95060
408 307 1866

Q: When will you be back in the States?
I am planning to take some vacation time in September 2010. If everything goes well, I will be done with my service at the end of September 2011. I will probably take some time bumming around the rest of West Africa and then come home for Christmas 2011.

Q: How can I get in touch with you?
For now, send email to my gmail account (r o h a n DOT m a h y). For my first three months, you can get in touch with me at the address below. Letters generally take 3 weeks to a month to arrive from the US. Please don’t send any packages unless you talk to me first (I have to pay duty on incoming packages and they are much more likely to get stolen).
Rohan Mahy, PCT
Corps de la Paix Americain
01 B.P. 971
Cotonou, Benin
Afrique de l’Ouest (West Africa)

I went to CES (the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas) last week. As usual there were way to many enormous TVs and not much substance. The coolest thing I saw last week was in the tiny section reserved for “green” products where a handful of companies showed off solar gadgets (mostly useless) or some very innovative stuff.

Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies really impressed me. These guys are doing exactly what I thought we should be doing when I first learned about PEM fuel cells in the early 90s. I rode in a fuel-cell powered hydrogen car with metal hydride storage at the 1991 Willits Solar Expo and Rally and I have been waiting for good quality commercially available fuel cells and credible hydrogen storage ever since.

Horizon has PEM fuel cells from 12w to 5kw. They have tiny 10 and 20 liter hydrogen storage containers for small applications and they talked to me about custom much larger storage they had done for their jet project and for a car-sized vehicle. Finally they have a sodium hydroxide based storage system with integrated fuel cell called HydroPak that they use as a portable power system.

They are doing interesting stuff in so many areas. I thought the hydrogen powered e-bike with a 300km range was another nice touch.

Finally the guy I spoke with mentioned a vehicle they were working on with another company that had all the elements I would have put in my spec sheet: carbon fiber body panels, PEM fuel cell, 3-phase inverter, in-hub electric motors, regenerative braking, etc.

Also nice to see was the flexible solar panel folks PowerFilm Solar that Google helped fund making commercial progress.

A few days ago, I went to the South of Lebanon. To go south of the Litani river (other than to the city of Tyre) you need to get special authorization from the police. Four of us took a taxi from our hotel for the day. The taxi driver speaks excellent French so we talked about various things throughout the trip. Before we left, I found out he was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross during the civil war.

First we went to Sidon (Saida) which is a quaint town with a small Crusader castle built sticking out into the sea. There was a Roman city here as well (and earlier) so the Crusaders used “leftover” pillars extensively as building material–not just as lintels and for structural support in the castle itself, but also in the sea wall.

Next we saw the remains of an old castle (Chateau Beaufort) on a knife ridge that was held by the Israeli army for a long time and finally destroyed by Hezbollah. After that we went to the town of Khiam. This town had a small prison on a hilltop that Hezbollah was using as a local base, and this is were Israel launched the first ground offensive during the 2006 war. I looked around for a while and I could not find a single building that had not been bombed in this village. Most houses were being completely rebuilt or extensively renovated. A few others still showed their shell damage. At this point in the trip, our driver told me that he grew up in this village and that his brother was a Hezbollah soldier who died in 2006.

Cluster bomb says “Made in USA”. Taxi driver’s brother is on the far left in the second row on the “martyrs poster”



After leaving the former prison, we drove along the border with Israel/Occupied Palestine and saw UNIFIL tanks and trucks all over the place. We stopped to talk to some Indonesian UNIFIL troops at an overlook and one of them asked to get a group shot (unfortunately mine was blurry).

Israeli flag The border Lebanese, Palestinian, and Hezbollah flags

UNIFIL is out in force

Finally we stopped in Tyre (Sour) and saw the ruins there, including the world’s largest hippodrome (420m long).

Intense.

I have been in Damascus, Syria for a few days now. The old city is really cool–a maze of twisty passages that all look alike–and one that has been continuously inhabited for over 5000 years.

People here are generally very polite and friendly. I have had almost no negative reactions to being an American here, but I am definitely a pretty rare beast.  I have met one other person traveling on an American passport since I arrived here. It is a bit surreal to tell someone selling Hezbollah buttons that you are an American. In one way Syria is more relaxed than Jordan. There is a significant Christian population here, so there are quite a few night clubs, bars, and liquor stores, and more women who do not wear a hejab (headscarf).

Yesterday I read part of the Syria Today weekly news magazine in English. It had a surprisingly good (throrough, independent, and balanced) analysis of the possible affects of the US Election for Syrian foreign policy. It also had a report criticizing the government in its recent censorship of a Syrian soap opera that featured a freshly released policitcal prisoner. I guess the print media is more free than broadcast TV.

Sorry for the lack of photos this post, but it is 1am and I do not have my camera. Tomorrow I am off to Palmyra, then probably Homs, Hama, Krak de Chevalier, Latakia, and Aleppo. Good night from the Old Town.

On the way up to Missoula, we spent a day at the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone.

Old Faithful doing its thing

One of our favorite continuous geysers

Oooohh!

The name says it all

Another tourist grabbing a good shot of “The Grotto”

I think this one is Morning Glory Pool

Punch Bowl


Two more beautiful blue pools

Riverside Geyser erupting


Too close?

Daisy Geyser with a view of the Old Faithful Lodge

This photo should explain why you don’t want to fall asleep and roll your car on I-80 in Nevada. That’s a medivac helicopter taking off from the freeway. The back of the car looked even worse than the front.