Monday, May 15, 2006 Well, I'm back. I have to say the Atacora "Roulons Contra Le SIDA" even was one of the coolest things I've done so far in Peace Corps. I'm going to steal from Clare and give you the numbers.

People Sensibilised: 3,340
Villages/Towns Visited: 17
Villages whose name was not known until arrival at said village: 1
Villages who don't appear on the map: 5
Kilometers Biked: 175
Longest Hill: 5k
Languages spoken on trip: at least 7
Best response ever to a salutation (in local language): "Yo!"
Cow herds ridden through: 1
Number of bike games invented: 3
Number of bike jousts: 1
My average cost per meal: $0.20 (100 CFA)


All in all it really was amazing. We all arrived on Friday night, ready to go. Ate a delicious meal at one of the coolest bars ever; La Braiche. It's up on a hill and has a very nice view, cold beer and good food. I envision there will be many beers had there while I'm in stage. Even better, because of the proximity to Togo, the beer selection is better than the standard 4 (La Beninoise, Flag, Castel, Guinness). Good times were had by all.

The next day we had a day long session by PSI on how to give an AIDS formation, formed teams, discussed logistics and essentially got everyone one the same page.

Finally we started on Sunday, at around 06:30 we rolled out of Natitingou headed towards Boukoumbe. This was the longest day of our ride, coming in around 50k. We stopped in Kouaba for our first sensibilisation, which was nerve racking at first. It turned out good. The terrain of the day was relatively hilly, but we were riding on the spine of the mountain range for the first part of the day... so the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. We arrived in Koussoukoingou ready to give our second sensibilisation of the day, but unfortunately the people hadn't been informed by those in charge... worse though for us though there was no food. Thankfully everyone was pretty pumped to be on the trip, so energy was high and we continued on. Just outside of Koussoukoingou is an amazing decent from the mountains that is absolutely awesome. Glen has coined it as "the most beautiful view in Benin". It really was cool, and going down steep rocky hills on our mountain bikes made it even cooler. Boukoumbe was awesome, especially as there were cold drinks waiting for us at the local buvette.

I wish I could go into detail about every day of the trip, but honestly it would be pretty repetitive. We followed the basic pattern of: wake up, ride some bikes, stop in the town of our next sensibilisation, wait around for about an hour for people to show up, sensibilise, ride some bikes, stop in the town of our next sensibilisation, wait around for about an hour for people to show up, sensibilise, eat food, ride some bikes, stop in the town of our last sensibilisation, wait around for about an hour for people to show up, sensibiliise, wait around for food, eat food, sleep, repeat. It was so really fun to see a different part of the country in a much different way than most people do... and even more cool to interact with the people who lived there.

My favorite section of the trip was the decent after Koussoukoingou until we got to Tayakou. That three days was just rolling hills and the Atacora mountains on our right. It was easy riding and just plain beautiful. The most remote village we visited was Managou, on possibly the most challenging day. We rode 10k out of Tayakou to Tanguieta where we stopped for lunch items for later. We were then immediately subjected to a head wind and many kilometers of uphill, followed by more kilometers of incredibly rocky and difficult terrain. Culturally we ought not have eaten there, so we turned around after our sensibilisations and headed back out the same rocky terrain and continued all the way to our last village on empty stomachs. Let me also say this was the hilliest part of the trip. Suffice to say, it sucked. It did feel good to be done though, and Anne (our AO) provided us with a delicious Hungarian sausage. Nothing has ever tasted so good.

On the subject of Anne, and PC support of this trip in general... it was amazing. Anne brought tons of snacks for us, and everyone in our chase car was so encouraging. They'd zoom by, honk and wave, and then stop and clap for us as we went by. Very, very cool.

I really can't say enough about the trip, it was totally, totally awesome.

I'll finish with a list of villages and dates (minus the mystery village I forgot the name of)

7/5
Kouaba
Koussoukoingou
Boukoumbe

8/5
Nata
Kouporgou
Manta

9/5
Bongou
Ouankou
Tayakou

10/5
Biacou
Managou
Cotiakou

11/5
Mystery Village
Boribonsifa
Ouasankou

12/5
Tampegre
Natitingou