Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas from Benin!

Merry Christmas guys!!! Since I couldn't go Christmas shopping this year, here's a substitute present. For all of you.  Fresh from Benin. Hope you enjoy :)  The video won't upload on my blog but you can see it here: http://beninlife.blogspot.com/

There are about 10 of us at the Nati workstation for Christmas - a lot of other volunteers went down to Grand Popo, a really nice resort beach area.  Yesterday (Christmas eve) we made a shopping list and bought all the food we'd need for today from the supermarche and outdoor, regular marche, so now we can stay in and watch movies and EAT.  You can make a surprising amount of Americanish stuff from ingredients you can find here.  Breakfast: cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs, Lunch/Dinner: lasagna, salad, bruschetta, garlic bread, apple pie, brownies, cake.  This morning we started cooking to Elf, and now Glee is on. The workstation is decorated and we made paper snowflakes yesterday which helps it feel a little like Christmas.  It's still hard to believe, because it my mind it's still oh about...July.  I know time has passed, but it's gone by quickly and it also doesn't FEEL like Christmas (80 degrees...Christmas...what?!). 

I leave tomorrow morning (!!!) for a two day safari in Parc Pendjari, which is a few hours north of Nati.  Our guide is picking us up from the workstation and driving us up.  The park is supposed to be one of the best in West Africa because it has a lot of animals in a relatively small area.  It's also dry season which should increase our chances of seeing stuff.  Hopefully I'll have lots of pictures to put up.  The past few weeks have been really fast - I was in Porto Novo for IST (in service training) for a week, plus the two days it takes to get down there and another two to get back up.  My friend Bailey came back to Tonri with me for a few days in between IST and Christmas to see the water pump in the garden, since she works with the guy who's supposed to be finishing the hosing system.  It was really fun having her there and we made lots of crazy good food.  French onion soup, pizza, reese's peanut butter cup and banana pancakes.  I was at post for two nights and then all of a sudden it was time to head to Nati.  There's only one taxi driver that goes from Pehunco to Nati, but he's pretty good.  Generally leaves early, drives fast, all business.  Yesterday, however, he was in a hurry.  Something about he was continuing on to Tanguieta after Nati because someone was hurt etc etc, anyway we get to a part of the road that is being worked on - trucks are dumping mass amounts of dirt in an attempt to smooth out the ridiculously pitted roads.  Backing up a little bit let me set the stage. Bailey and I (plus the driver and another passenger) are crammed in the front seat, there's 8 or so other people in the car, and all of our luggage plus two guys are on the roof (this is a station wagon by the way).  We approach the construction area and see a guy standing in the middle of the road waving his hands.  Some might see this as a cause for concern, or at least motivation to slow down a little.  Our driver, in a hurry remember, maintains his speed until it's just almost too late, swerves and keeps going, brushing off the arm-waving guy's yells.  Now we're on a road with huge mounds of dirt scattered across it.  We're getting closer and closer to a particularly massive pile and it's clear there's no way to go over or under it, so we swerve around it.  Dirt roads here have big culverts (ditches) on either side of them, and our extremely top heavy car slides into one.  We ride in the ditch for a while, but then we have to get back onto the road.  The driver eases the car up...but it doesn't go.  We slide back into the ditch.  He tries again - gunning it, the car swaying, leaning at a physics-challenging angle, Bailey and I squeezing each others hands not wanting to look but doing it anyway.  We legit thought we were going over.  It was close.  But...we made it.  We screamed.  Then we added it to the tally of craziness in Benin.  About an hour later we hear a loud gunshot-sounding pow.  Busted tire.  We stop, 14 people file out of (and off of) the car, and the driver's assistant changes it in about 15 minutes.  Pile back in (and on), 20 minutes go by, and we're in Nati.  A little Christmas eve adrenaline pump.  Right now we're all coming off sugar highs from the cinnamon rolls and we're starting Planet Earth.     

Stay warm, eat a lot, enjoy the day.  And Happy New Year!


Sunday, December 19, 2010

Trois à la fois




Not trying to brag, but...







Also,

do any of you guys have questions you want me to answer? Anything you're curious about? Let me know and I'll write about it...it's getting to the point where I'm not sure what's considered weird anymore, so I don't know what would be interesting to hear about.  Let me know!


Thursday, December 9, 2010

Rodenticide

My proprietor's advice for getting rid of the mice in my ceiling was to get a cat and stick it up in the ceiling, thus scaring/killing all the mice.  I took the first part of his advice.  This is Scout.  I know she doesn't look super ferocious, but she's already killed and eaten a mouse.  I think she ate the whole thing - I never found any guts and she had a big belly when she was done.  She likes to sleep and play in the window, and also meow. But pretty cute nonetheless.