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...