Coochie Coochie - We're Moving to Tchaourou

So when we’re done with training, we’re moving to Tchaourou (pronounced Cha-ro), the main city of a county (for lack of a better term) by the same name that is actually comprised of 7 towns and assorted villages. More importantly for you geography buffs out there, Tchaourou is located 50 some odd kilometers south of Parakou, which is the second largest city in Benin and just about the country’s center point. So if I were to draw the analogy, Parakou is Chicago and Tchaourou is Gary, Indiana.

But Tchaourou is not to be underestimated or relegated to some second city status. As you Beninese political junkies know (I know you’re out there), Tchaourou is also the hometown of recently elected Beninese President Dr. YAYI Boni, thus giving it much more gravity on the national map than other cities of similar size.

As part of our two week training we were able to spend a couple of days in Tchaourou getting to know our way around, as well as allowed to come up to the Parakou workstation which will be our regional office for the Corps (thus the internet access).

So here’s a little primer on our house. Up front we need to thank the recently departed former volunteer Lisa who was kind enough to leave just about all her furniture, giving us the luxury of having it feel like home instantly. We also know it’s a luxury not all volunteers have and cognizant of karma, all West African volunteers coming through Tchaourou are welcome for a bite and a good night sleep any time the want.

The unit is one of three in a concession, or walled in compound. We will share it with the Chef d’Arrondismant (head of our part of town) and his family, as well as the woman in charge of the Public Health Center (aka Jaren’s boss). Having met all, they were all very nice and we don’t anticipate any great problems.


Here is the view of our front door and the view from it. As far as we can tell, that is a chicken tree as the only thing edible we ever see come out of it are live chickens (we also have guinea fowl who live in the concession, but no goats or pigs – yet).

Here is the view of the living room and spare bed. There is an equal size space where the dining room table and a book shelf are. We’ll probably move some stuff around to make the place a bit more to our liking, but you get the picture. And yes, the chairs are super comfortable.


Here is the bedroom complete with double bed and double occupancy mosquito netting. For those who are concerned with some of our anti-malarial precautionary measures, in a ddition to the mosquito netting all the windows have a fine plastic screen over that creates a double layer of protection.

Here is the kitchen, or at least part of it. We will be bringing up our Peace Corps issued stoves and gas canisters, as well as having another table built for prep and another small basin table for bathroom-like use (brushing of teeth, washing of face, picking of nose etc…)

And finally the two largest changes, the “shower” and the latrine. Shower in name only, it is a semi secluded 3’x3’ elevated cement platform graded to draw the water toward a small hole leading out of the back of the concession. It is semi private but located in out 100% private back porch area, where we also have sitting room and another covered room that is supposed to be an outdoor kitchen but is way to stuffy to hang out in.


And the latrine. Cement donut with a hole in the ground. At this point, we’re pretty much limited to squatting, although Steve does plan on buying a toilet seat I can carry with me back and forth. It too is newer and in very good shape, but its still not exactly a toilet. And as anyone who knows Steve knows he does his best pondering in those last two places, so with the lack of both he has gotten very little thinking done in the last month.

As for the ride up here, the short version is that a 4 hour trip took 14. But longtime readers of this blog are probably used to hearing nightmare travel stories from us so we’ll just leave it at this -- the words army checkpoints, over-packed ‘59 Peugeot 504, dropped clutch, blackout welding, Peuhl herdsman in a pink sequined boumba and mullet (complete with hobo-style "sack on a stick" luggage), rebuilt transmission rattling its way through the country night and near blind old man simply known as “Vieux” were all involved. Oh yeah, and a cute little kid.