Blogs from 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

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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

Soft sand with crashing waves and coconut trees blowing in the breeze. The more you travel Africa the more mixed your emotions become. Sure you feel sorry for them but than you feel like its time for them to take ownership for their problems. Yes the western world requested slaves but how did they get them? And how did those slaves come to such a tranquil place? I arrived in Cotonou Benin’s capital not that impressed. Unlike Lome in Togo the capital here is a block or two from the beach. So instead of the pollution of the cheap Chinese motorbikes and other fumes escaping along the coast. There is no escape. No sea breeze from the low rise buildings. In fact my first claustrophobic thought was ‘Oh no this is not how I’m going to ... read more

Monday 25th October - in Francistown Now that we have had time to settle in our accommodation at Woodlands, just outside Francistown, here is a quick reflection of the first week in Gaborone. Things have not always gone according to plan! Will and his BCA counterpart Girish could not have done any more pre-trip planning if they had tried, but factors outside of their control such as the teachers’ strike, punctures on the ‘shouldn’t be on the road’ combi and Godfrey’s time keeping have put a spanner in the works. In spite of that, we have had some great sessions with both teachers and children, but not necessarily on the same day. We have only had the primary school teachers for a single morning in various locations which has limited the amount of tutoring that we ... read more