It’s been an eventful couple of weeks for Benin. Last weekend they held elections for the national parliament, which at least in my part of the country were peaceful and orderly. Campaigning was interesting to watch, it’s all confined to a two week period before the election, and as far Read more…
It finally happened. Mawu and all the other voodoo spirits made the decision, and the oven that is West Africa has been cranked up. The good news is that all of my bucket baths are now with nice warm water. The bad news is that the last thing I want Read more…
It’s burning season in the Collines. Every year, once the dry season has started, people burn all the grasses and low-lying shrubs. So the sky fills with smoke, there is burning ash all over the place, and it is means it’s time to hunker down because the dry-hot season is Read more…
It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been here for about a year and a half. Time is starting to go bye a lot faster, mostly since my schedule has been getting a lot busier since the school year started up. Got my haircut again yesterday, trimmed down to the Read more…
They call this time of year vacance, and since I don’t own any farm land it’s basically dead time. It’s the heart of the rainy season (more on that) so people are out in the fields all days planting. This means that the village itself is dead pretty much all Read more…
The school year is starting to wind down now, only a couple of weeks left in the school year. The last couple of weeks it’s been nice and rainy, just the way I like it, and you can sort of tell that things are slowing down at the school. Our Read more…
Been a few weeks so it’s about time for an update of sorts. This next week is midterms, so the last week or so of classes have just been review sessions. We’ll see how well the kids do; my guess is that some will do very well, and others very Read more…
A little bit of tidbits to report since I last wrote. The week before last I was back in Porto-Novo for another round of training, which was nice because I got to have running water and air conditioning again. Another nice part of being back in Porto-Novo was being able Read more…
Look up Benin in any book or website and one of the first things you’re likely to see is that it is the birthplace of Voodoo (Vodun). While I don’t really like to play up or write about this aspect of Beninese life (I think it’s hard to do it Read more…