Blogs from Benin, Africa - page 8

Thanks to everybody for your support in my fundraising! I managed to raise just under $2000 toward my program fees for Youth Challenge International and Cross-Cultural Solutions and really appreciate everyone's help...I had tons of fun and attached a few photos from the night for your viewing pleasure... Best Bron... read more

Bonjour, We dragged ourselves away from the hustle of Cotonou on Tuesday and in two legs (first stopping at Abomey) are now in Parakou. The journey north, facilitated by the now mandatory Peugeot 504, was without hassle (by African standards) and we soon remembered how different things are up here as the thick forests petered out into harsh, quite barren scrubland. Things are definately heating up with the hot, dry air doing little to cool the cramped interior of the 50 year old car (4 in the back, 2 in the fornt passengers seat). It will not be far north now until, like in Mali, the vegetation dissapears altogether and the harsh Sahel region will be back. The difference this time is that our plan is to push even further north and properly enter the Sahara ... read more

November 11: We crept into Benin at twilight, after hours of frustrating travel to the East frontier of Ghana and across Togo. The country appeared unremarkable at first sight: a plain of grassy earth punctuated by a few modest mud structures and tall palm trees ending, rather abruptly, at the deep blue waters of the Gulf of Guinea. The chartered taxi that we were traveling in dropped us in the nondescript 'burbs of Cotonou, the tiny francophone country's largest city. Here, hundreds of zemijohns (motorcycle taxis in various degrees of upkeep) thundered down the streets shrouded by a brown haze of exhaust and dust. We quickly found a few willing drivers and sped off through the congestion and chaos to the Jonquet district of Cotonou. After finding a spartan but tidy room at a nearby pension ... read more

So we left Ghana a while back now and after entering Togo on a river-bed type road where the delapidated border posts were filled with mountains of corn on the cobs (don't ask - I don't know) we have headed south through Togo and then crossed at a slightly more uptempo border into Benin where we now reisde in the eastern most town and capital of Porto Novo. Togo was very small but very beautiful, the town of Atakpamé our highlight which was a small town with a real French colonial feel to it, Peugeot 504s rolling down the cobbled streets to a backdrop of wide leaved vegetation that gave me a sense of an Indian Jungle. We took a trip higher into the mountains early in the morning, the mist still hangin in the valleys ... read more

I know that when I am so hot, so hot that rather than drying off after a bath I just start sweating, rain will come. Sooner or later, rain will fall and my toes will be cold and I will be able to drink coffee or tea at 14h. I know I have to wait, though. I might sweat for a long time, a couple days even, before the world finally cools down. I also know that rain cancels any plans. I love not needing to wear real clothes for the majority of most days. I get dressed to leave the house, but most other waking moments, aside from those cold and rainy ones, I am wrapped only in my pagne. I love cooking; my most recent success was chili. I cooked the beans over ... read more