Para-marooned

It’s day four of my move-in experience, I fear there are no other survivors. Soon I will be the only one left.

So, the Peace Corps has three work-stations (basically houses with internet) in the north of the country for volunteers far away from Cotonou. This way they have somewhere where we can complete all of the forms and whatnot that they make us fill out. For the first time, this year the Peace Corps decided to send volunteers to the workstations to buy things (such as stoves and gas) before shuttling them one by one to their posts.

There were seven of us when we came up to Parakou on Sunday, and at long last on Friday I will be the last to be ferried out to post. On the one hand it’s kind of annoying to be stuck here for five days, especially when most volunteers got to their posts on Sunday since they all live in the south. I’d really just like to get to my house and start trying to get settled before starting to teach in two weeks.

On the other hand it is also kind of nice to be able to see and explore Parakou. Parakou is the largest city in the north of the country, and serves as the hub of the region. It is a little bit smaller than Porto-Novo in terms of people, but much larger in terms of size. Also, the people see fewer white people, so they are generally kinder and demand far fewer gifts, which is nice.

Also, with all of my newfound free time, I’ve had a chance to upload photos. So if you want to see any of them, then head on over to the photos page. They are very unorganized, so you’ve got some of my school, some of my host family, some from some fetes I went to, and some other random shots from my post visit.