Visual Blowout

Yeah, I prepared a bunch of posts, and screwed up when I didn't put 'em on my usb key, so you'll have a whole lot to read in a week or two. In the meantime, these pictures should be worth at least a few thousand words...

These are Racine and Deo Gratias, two children that I cannot pass without stopping and shooting the shit, pretty much every day. The whole family is nice, they are good friends. I would be in love with Deo Gratias if she were only about fifteen years older. Neighborhood girls, spontaneously falling into formation. Playing ajido, the national board game of benin, on my front stoop with Grace, my next door neighbor. My AP Calculus and University-level vectors and matrices class put me about on par with her aptitude for the game. We battle it out to the bitter end. DiDi looks on. Me and Clement, my homologue--an English teacher in the school, and my Fon tutor. Yeah, I know my bumba is fly...

The road between my house and the paved main road becomes a lake everytime it rains. Hello, Malaria... Trying to figure out how to deal with this situation...
Issa, a neighbor and a zemidjan driver. This is the main road.
Sunset, having just arrived at Grand Popo. Aaron and I walked down the beach to the Lion Bar, a Rasta-run hotel that plays reggae non-stop and has nice murals everywhere. Trying a bit too hard to be cool, but actually succeeding in being cool. It was Nonvitcha, the big fete for Grand Popo, held every year on Pentecost weekend. We didn't really do anything special, but spirits were high...Aaron is a friend of my feather, and you can belie' that we flock together.

Me and Betsy doin it up at All-Volunteer Conference GAD fundraiser at Hotel du Lac, a ritzy hotel in Cotonou. I laid down smooth African grooves for dinner, she and Sandy brought the rukus for some after-dinner dancing ...needless to say, my bumba was permeated with sweat by the end of the evening. Luckily there was a sweet pool nearby.

Lots of words on their way.......much love to my people all over the world.

Long time no post

No, I haven't been swallowed up by a pit of jungle quicksand (we don't really have "jungle" here in Benin-- the bush in my neck of the bush is mostly scrubby bushes, grasses and weedy thistle punctuated with the occasional towering tree.) (And even if we had jungle, would we have quicksand?)

No, I didn't go out fishing with Albert again only to have our junker of an outboard motor crap out leaving us vulnerable to the Nigerian pirates and arms smugglers who patrol the coastal waters.

No, I haven't misteriously withered after a vindictive villager, hidden away in his room, pronounced curse words calculating my demise.


The real reason I haven't been posting is far less interesting- my computer lost MS Word, so i have no word processing application to work with for the moment.



So life is life... (yeah, I'm a deep, insightful dude) and by that I mean that it doesn't feel much out of the ordinary for me to be here in Africa. The novelty has officially worn off. I have my routines, my coping mechanisms. There are people I won't pass without stopping and shooting the breeze. There are those whose phone calls I stubbornly refuse to answer because I know exactly how pointless the conversation will be. I think I'm a little less smiley than I was a few months ago, although I still stop and shake hands with small children on a daily basis. I've been going more frequently to the clubs in Cotonou-dance is my favorite therapy.

When I got here, I felt like life was the next two years. Now I find myself fretting over my post-Benin future, which is probably healthy for a dude pushing thirty with no clear career trajectory.

In typical fashion, at the very last minute the school year was lengthened by three weeks because of the teacher strikes that have disrupted the year (my school didn't strike). So instead of final exams this week, I can look forward to the hit-or-miss, unpredictable battle of wills called "class".

So I am anticipating a great summer with some travel (Ghana perhaps, northern Benin for sure), some peace corps activity (training the new-jacks for 3 weeks, and taking two girl students to a week-long camp for bad-ass girls), a whole lot of music-makin and booty shakin, and of course, the best--those unplanned adventures that come a knockin at your door every once in a while.

Once I get Word, I will unleash the stories like a flood, I promise. In the meantime, tell me of your adventures and earth-rattling epiphanies...