Blogs from Cotonou, South, Benin, Africa

My vacation in the Republic of Benin was a much needed one. After 3.5 months in Nigeria, I really needed a time out – Benin was it! I went overland from Nigeria to Benin. It was my first land border crossing in Africa and I was sort of nervous. But it went well. I didn’t have to do much; the international bus I took from Lagos to Cotonou got our passports stamped. I guess that is one of the benefits of the ECOWAS agreement between West Africa countries. The journey took 6 hours. I did not go alone; my Nepali friend came to visit in Nigeria so we went to Benin together. Cotonou is my favorite city in Benin thus far. Although it is not the capital, it has way more things to do than Porto ... read more

**photos have been added! Tuesday June 5 It was a stroke of luck deciding to sleep on the truck as a huge storm arrived in the middle of the night without warning, catching everyone off guard and flooding tents before people were able to get their rain covers on. I lay on the seats under my mosquito net (first time it's been used!) watching the lightning and torrential rain and jumping when the thunder crashed directly overhead It was an uneventful morning until we were all on the truck, ready to hit the Benin border late morning. When the truck wheels first spun, barely anyone moved; it happens occasionally and we're used to the sound. But then the front right hand side seemed to drop and that got our attention. Jumping down we saw the source ... read more

alive and well in cotonou! a whole hell of a lot has gone on since moving into kpovie. firstly, this is a french keyboard so expect many spelling errors. secondly, there is no electricity or running water in kpovie which means i quite awesomely go get water from a well and carry it back to my house on my head. not going to lie, it took me a good 2 weeks to actually be successful and not spill water everywhere. the first few weeks were pretty difficult especially being completely cut off from everyone back home. my homologue and i are both citygirls so village life and all the rules set in place by SYTO benin were a lot to deal with. there was a lot of not adapting, some yelling, a minor mental breakdown, and ... read more

HI ALL I'm in AFRICA. It's 28 degrees celsuis and the SUN is beautiful (ok it's night right now, but ... yknow... it's winter where y'all are right now. Sucks to be you?) Arrived in Cotonou 3 a.m Saturay morning convinced it was Sunday morning. The plane got delayed and detoured to Marseille France making an already super long journey 6 hours longer. But, the all in all went pretty well considering. So Cotonou. Firstly, I am very much loving the city. It's nice to see people out and hear cars go by and just listen to the hum of citylife. We're staying at Cotdiam which is a... religious... housing.... unit? of some sort. They host a lot of weddings and SYTO doesn't feed us very well. :( The food here so far has hardly been ... read more

Cotonou, the 'safest city in Africa', was quite dull. Miles and Sally ate a pizza and were strolling towards the hotel when Sally's bag was snatched. Miles bolted after the thief at slightly less than top speed, down narrow dark alleys, leaping across drainage ditches, vaulting fences, and kicking a dog in the head. Cowboy boots were not made for running, nor was Miles. He casually wondered about the abandoned Sally, whether he would see or hear of himself again and pounded stupidly on, thief still in sight. The robber entered a house. Miles followed, bursting into a simple sitting room where a family watched TV, no thief in sight. Miles, huge and white, stood panting, then spun on his Cuban heel and exited wordlessly. In a candlelit night Mileset he laughed guiltily at the remnants ... read more

Wednesday June 16: Benin We left the beach in Ouidah to go to Cotonu, with some stops along the way. We started at the Door of No Return, which was one of the last stops for the enslaved to be taken to the New World. There was a memorial set up to represent the last stop of the Slave Trail in West Africa. We continued along the road, which was the Slave trail, and saw many statues that had been put up as part of the Dahomey Kingdom and the religion of Voodoo. The next stop was at the Dahomey Kingdom and the palace that still exists today from it. The Kings would build their own palace right beside the previous Kings palace. It was interesting to see how Benin functioned before colonialism began. We then ... read more

We arrived in Cotonou and got dropped off at the main market during rush hour. Then followed the most terrifying moto taxi ride of my life. The driver weaved between cars that I thought were going to hit each other, at one point I actually put my hand on the hood of a car I thought was going to hit us. I could see, though, that if he hadn’t driven like a maniac we would never have gotten anywhere, traffic was hardly moving. We met up with some Benin PCVs at their bureau who pointed us to an affordable hotel and some cheap food. We had a couple of days to explore the huge main market, the artisan’s market, the restaurants, and the nightlife. Our favorite spot was the Musée Zinsou, a shining new modern art ... read more

Woke up and took a bucket shower which is really gross to do inside a bathroom. We waited aroudn our hotel for quite some time before we actually started our day to visit the stilt village in Ganvie. After our talk about visiting Nigeria subsided we got a ride to a village near the lake entrance to Ganvie. The ride on the water was crazy. We took a canoe for the four of us which was rowed by a small boy. Our sail was made out of a patched bedsheet. Our boat constantly felt like it was sinking. We actually crashed into a fish trap and the man just assured us that there was "no problem, no problem." When we arrived in Ganvie we all sat in shock for a bit. It's like something you'd see ... read more

It is hard to know the words to choose to begin describing this new adventure of my life, but I guess its just easiest to start at the beginning... So my last week in Montpellier flew past, every day at school with an awesome class of people who became great friends. We had an awesome night on out final thursday, all meeting up for goodbye drinks, lots of laughs and languages around the table (sorry I forgot the cd with the photos on it, they are no longer on my camera, will post them next time). But studpidly of me I was slightly sick and ignored it and then on Easter sat and sun got real sick, the whole head full of snot and throat like sand paper, story.... Not very good considering I was flying ... read more