fabric market

I am now almost 10 days into my 7 month trip and still never cease to be amazed that I am actually here. I have been working a lot so it has been very tiring. Still, there is so much to do in my free time. This afternoon I visited the fabric market in order to pick out fabric to have a skirt made. The market is just one street of vendor after vendor selling tons of fabrics. I found the one I wanted and was told it would be 5,000 CFAs for 6 yards, equal to $10. I was so overwhelmed by all the fabrics and all of the people and so stressed about trying to barter in French that I just took it at his price and left. Of course this was way over priced so the vendor was extremely happy. While I am somewhat upset I paid too much, I realize that a reasonable price of 3,500 CFAs is only $3 less, so it’s not really a big deal for me in the long run. I also received a marriage proposal. His name was Jean, and he absolutely did not understand why I did not want to marry him and bring him home to the states to meet Obama (the people here are obsessed with Obama).

Tomorrow morning I am going with a group to visit a local prison. We will get to talk with the prisoners and just get to know them and their stories. I am very excited because this is my first real opportunity for outreach. Most of the day trips take place on weekdays and because of my work schedule, I am not able to participate in any of these outings. One of the harder things to remember while working on the ship is that this ministry does not so much focus on having each individual on the ship work in outreach ministries, but instead to focus on the impact we provide altogether. As a whole, the ship is a fully running community and every job is necessary to make the ship run well. While not every job directly ministers to the people of Benin, as a whole the community has brought about a world of change for these people. While I would love to be directly interacting with the people of Benin every day, I know that this is not possible given my position on the ship. Still, I am able to see the profound impact Mercy Ships has provided among these people. Yesterday as I was walking through the streets with a friend, several people pointed and called out “Mercy Ship! Mercy Ship!” Just the people on the street knew who we were and how much we had helped their people, and they were all so excited to see us walking through town.

one week already?

It is hard to believe that I have already been gone a full week!! Even though I have settled in here well, it doesn't seem like I've already been here a full week! I have adjusted pretty well to ship life, although not completely. It is a very different atmosphere than living at home, but also very different than if I were actually living in the city of Cotonou. It is a nice transition phase, but also comes with problems of its own. The thing that has been most difficult for me to adjust to is the constant rocking of the ship. I constantly find myself swaying from side to side, at times it is hard to keep your balance. Another difficulty is that many things are written in 24 hour clocks, or army time. Trying to decipher that as well as figuring out the time change has caused me lots of confusion in calling home. I have also had to figure out how to estimate conversions from celsius to farenheit, lbs to kg, and USD to CFAs. Not to mention all the while trying to understand dozens of differing accents! While I have been told that the full adjustment phase takes about a months time, I am happy to report that the first week has not been too difficult.

At this time please pray that I am able to keep my energy up! Working regular work hours, 8-4, 5 days a week, is exhausting!! By 9 o'clock in the evening typically I am yawning and fully capable of falling asleep for the night!

Please also continue to pray also that I am able to raise a bit more money, I am still in need of between $500 to $1000. There are lots of opportunities to take weekend trips to neighboring countries or various parts of Benin. While the costs are extremely cheap, I am having to limit my spending due to my tight budget. While I am here, I hate to say no to a low-cost backpacking trip through Ghana or a safari in Northern Benin, as these opportunities are once in a lifetime!! But without knowing how I will pay for a plane ticket home, I am having to limit my spending money. So please pray that not only will I get the rest of the support I desperately need, but also that I will be able to be wise in my spending habits while abroad.

another day down

Today I began my work on the ship. On Friday mornings the Cafe sells waffles, so I got to help with the waffle serving. The Cafe is really relaxed because in the morning because most everyone on the ship is working and all of the children are in school. At 10 o'clock most everyone gets a coffee break for half an hour so that is really the only time the Cafe is busy. The rest of the time we just got to stand around and talk. There are only 6 people that work in the Cafe, so we always work together and will get to know each other very well. After the morning rush died down we cleaned things up and were free for 2 hours. When I came back in the afternoon I learned how to work the computers so I stood in the snack bar and helped check people out when buying their candies and sodas. The snack bar has lots of treats from different countries, trying to please everyone, so I'm pretty excited to try some of the things they have there.

This evening I joined a group to go out and play ultimate frisbee. A group goes to the police academy to play every friday, but today there was a big group of guys already on the field. We tried to talk with them and explain that we always get these fields on Friday and tried to arrange a way to split the fields, but they would not listen and kept yelling and yelling. They are a very physical culture, so whenever men are talking, they always hold each others hands or arms. At one point during the argument one of the African men put his hands on one of our men's forearms. He tried to shake that African man's hands off of his arms, then apparently the African men thought we were trying to fight! A bigger group came up and surrounded our person and yelled even louder. At that we agreed to just go and find another field somewhere else. We drove to a different field that was close by, but because of the terrible traffic here it took a long time to get there. Once there we attracted quite a lot of attention -- everyone wanted to see this strange sport and so many white people. Then we began to slowly see water bottles and keys disappearing from where we had put them. Thankfully we caught on to this pretty quickly and moved the rest into the cars before they got taken. We played for about an hour, until it got too dark to play anymore. It felt so nice to be able to get off the ship and run around. It was also nice to actually be in Cotonou, sometimes on the ship it can begin to feel like America so it is nice to go out and remember where you really are. I also got to meet lots of people this way which was really nice. Alot of them go play soccer two nights a week and volleyball once a week so there is plenty of opportunity to get off the ship and play games.

There are also alot of ministry opportunities off of the ship, but I havent been able to participate in any of them yet. Hopefully I will get to do that soon, but just getting oriented here has kept me pretty busy so far.