Thursday, November 30, 2006 Thanksgiving was a success. There was good eating, good times and good beer. Surprisingly as well it was a really mellow Thanksgiving. No stress, no anger, just good times. It was actually pretty surreal. Fun though.

Tonight is my last night in Parakou. Well, last night for awhile. I'm leaving tomorrow for a roundabout trip to Cotonou and flying out on Monday. Holy. Freakin'. Poo. It's hard to believe that I'm that close to being in the US. Frightening actually. I of course am looking forward to it, but going to Accra was a culture/development shock (albeit a delicious one). The US will be off the charts.

My JET application is officially in. Hurray! Now the waiting game begins.

Other applications are progressing, but I've been so busy in Parakou that I haven't had much time to devote to them. Almost there though, just need a few hours to clean up the essays and i'll be done. THANK GOD.

Thursday, November 23, 2006 http://cbs4.com/homepage/local_story_217041647.html

This set of blog entries by a Florida reporter who came to Benin is horrible. I can't be too hard on her, if you look at some of my early blog entries they are just as misinformed, incorrect, and error filled. In my defense though, I'm just a dude. She's a reporter!

Some highlights:

Day 2:

"We head about 30 minutes south of Cotonou."
OOOOPS! Thirty minutes south of Cotonou is the middle of the ocean, last time I checked. Ouidah (which is spelled with an H) is 30 minutes or so WEST of Cotonou.

"We bumped into a schoolteacher from California at the Port of No Return."
I'm a fan of franglais, "La Porte de Nonretour" means "The DOOR of No Return".

Day 4:
"They have no access to TV..."
I'm not going to say this is wrong about the TV, but the village she's talking about is in the south... I'd be willing to bet that someone in the village has a TV.

Day 6:
"In a nutshell, those who practice Voodoo believe that all life is driven by spiritual forces of natural phenomena like fire and wind, as well as of the dead. And, therefore, the deceased should be honored through rituals."
From my limited voodoo experience, this is actually an excellent description...

"There were no pincushions anywhere near the dolls by the way. And, there were no sacrifices either. At least, not on this day."
... but then she busts out with this.

Day 7:
"I have never done an interview barefoot before, but there are no shoes allowed inside the Thro Voodoo Temple in Cotonou—Benin’s capital."
Actually, Porto Novo is Benin's capital. I'll let her slide on this one though, Cotonou for all intents and purposes IS Benin's capital. As it was explained to me: "Porto Novo is the adminstrative capital and Cotonou is the economic capital"... still though...

Day 8:
"There is barely room to breathe at Cotonou’s bustling Danktopa Market."
Actually, it's Dantokpa. I'll give her this though, most PCVs say it wrong too.

"In fact, we had to hire two guards just to walk with us through the stalls to avoid getting attacked by a local."
Where do I even start... first, no one is out to attack you. Second, you'd probably be less likely to be attacked if you weren't walking through the market with several thousand dollars worth of equipment, gold jewlery, cell phones, and generally looking like an easy target!!

"I supposed it bears mentioning what I have been eating on this trip. There honestly haven’t been many choices. For the first part of my trip- while staying at the Novotel- I lived on Swiss cheese sandwiches on French bread."
You've got to be kidding me. You can find almost anything want to eat in Cotonou! Want Chinese food? No problem. Lebanese food? No problem. Pizza? No problem. Hamburgers? No problem. Thai food? No problem. Oh, and I would kill for a freakin' swiss cheese sandwich!!!!!!!!!!

"In Africa, there is a certain degree of useless pomp and circumstance you have to go through. Lengthy introductions. Lengthy thank-yous- for-coming-to-my-country. Lengthy speeches that don’t seem to go anywhere."
Maybe this is right, maybe it's not. It's certainly true in Benin, but in Africa? Africa is pretty big. If you took the land of the US, China, Japan and Europe and added them up Africa would be bigger. There are 53 countries here. My newest pet peeve is referring to the attributes of a region or country in Africa as an attribute of the entirety of Africa. In any case, I highly reccomend the book "Africa is Not a Country" by Margy Burns Knight et al.

Grrr.... They cut my water for not paying my bill yesterday. Why is this annoying? Surely it's my fault, it was after all me who didn't pay the bill, right? Well, it's simple. The bill I didn't pay was the bill from JULY. That's right, I've paid every month since then and they didn't mention anything. That's 5 bills I've paid since missing one, and not a word until they cut me. GRRRRRRR!

It's fixed now, but I had to pay the $5 fee for getting my water back, plus this months bill, plus the bill I missed. What's really annoying is that my water bill generally floats around $1.50/month. If they had just said something during those 5 months I could have paid it when I was paying my other bills. Oh well. It's over.

Thanksgiving is upon us. Enjoy it, eat well. We're actually celebrating here on Saturday (since teachers all have to teach during the week, Thursdays are difficult) so no feasting for me tonight.

Oh, I went to the bank and discovered money I didn't know I had. This quarter has been so awesome, I've been living the hedonistic lifestyle an ex-pat ought to live, and still have money! I wish I could live like this in the States on $6/day!!

Monday, November 20, 2006 The countdown has begun. This week I'll be running around like a maniac trying to finish everything I need to finish before I get home. Trust me, there is a lot.

In addition, I am poor... because I ate too much delicious chicken.

That is all.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 Everything is now brown.

It's amazing how fast the season has changed. Last week at this time we were still in what was known as the "Petite Chaleur", where it's hot and annoying. While it was hot, it wasn't really dry. There was quite a bit of humidity in the air still. No longer. Along with the cold, all moisture has been sucked out of there are. Lips are chapped, and what was green and beautiful before has now died. It's a little disturbing actually to have seen the change from green to brown happen so quickly.

Another side effect of the dryness is, as everything is dead and dry, the burning starts. One of my friends told me that for the village-bound, this is a great season. They start brush fires, and kill the animals that come out. It's free meat until all the brush is gone! As for the animals that come out, well... there are rats, bush rats (which aren't really that rat like... more like humongo guinea pigs), and bush chicken (or as the french dictionary translated the word: partridge).

We're getting to the home stretch now. I'm working on getting mentally prepared for heading home. This means finishing up essays, getting the last few reccomendations for grad schools and JET, not to mention running around buying gifts, taking pictures and all of the other crazy things one needs to do before travelling. It sucks.

Okay, it doesn't exactly suck. The problem is on top of all that, my projects are going well and for once I've got a fair amount of work to do. I miss last year where I could sit all day at my house reading and doing nothing! Well, that's not really true.

I've actually found that in my last few months here in Benin have been the best months so far. No longer are things confusing, I speak the language well enough to do anything that I need to do, the culture makes sense, I like the food and I feel like I've actually settled in. It's sort of a weird feeling actually. Interestingly, my stay in Parakou is now the longest I've lived in one house since the beginning of college (2000). Strange?

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 We had our first Harmattan day last Wednesday. The normal blue sky turned a brilliant white, and the air was dusty. Of course that was only the beginning, which means that none of the Harmattan benefits had yet arrived. They now have. I woke up cold this morning, very cold. So cold that I needed a blanket. It must have been like 70 degrees! In any case, I'd like to bid welcome to the Harmattan... may you last and continue to chill my bones.

Saturday, November 11, 2006 Whew, what a week.

I've been teaching pretty much non-stop. Excellent practice for JET I suppose, but still quite the week. Actually, let me back up a little.

I went down to Cotonou 2 weeks ago for the national VAC. I had the best Lebanese food known to man, it was an awesomely huge amount of food and the biggest variety known to man. It was epic.

Okay, back to this week. I was contacted by the FOB (Federation des ONGs du Borgou, or "The Borgou Federation of the ONGs") to conduct a three day conference on HTML/CSS design issues. Wow, it was fun... but wow, it was long. Three days of teaching HTML morning till evening plus class prep for the next day was, well, long. Fun though.

Follow that with a two-day tag-team formation with Theresa on the same subject (although this time in English) for PCVs... it's been quite the week. All inconvenient at a time where I'd like to be filling out applications for grad school... but eh, c'est la vie.

I'm going home soon. Exciting, frightening. To think that in a little less than 3 weeks I'll be chowing down on things like cheese, ranch dressing, and tacos without having to do a lick of work... well my stomach is ready.