To Benin and Beyond: Oh By The Way, You're Going to Need a Helmet

So that took a long time.

And by a long time, I mean that in less than 24 hours since arriving here in Benin, I am already in love.

Getting here to Ouidah however, may be a bit of a different story. It wasn't bad, but it was long and certainly not uneventful.

When I blogged yesterday, I was sitting at gate A7 in the airport in Budapest. Everything was going great with my giant coffee (still not 12 cups, but bigger than an espresso =D) except for the fact that my plane was leaving from gate A5. No, I wasn't in such an oblivious state of joy from the coffee that I was unable to correctly navigate the airport; my boarding pass clearly read A7. It didn't wind up being a big deal though, the other travelers at the airport just all got to know that Julia King was not in the right place at the right time when they paged me over the loud speaker. I got on my first of two planes without a hitch after that. Unless you count how ugly of a sleeper I am as a hitch, which I sort of do because knowing that my wide open, mouth-breathing mug was visible to all of the other passengers around me was making me pretty self-conscious and unable to really fall asleep despite the fact that my 2 hours of sleep the night before was kicking my "bilateral ocular drift" (my self-diagnosed condition that I blame for all of the times I have fallen asleep in public) into full gear.

Upon arriving to Charles de Gaulle in Paris, it dawned upon me that airports are an incredibly comfortable place to navigate even if you do not know where you are going because everyone else is lost too. If I was to make a documentary about signs and their effectiveness, I would start at an airport. Everyone knows where they want to be, but without the rocking signage, no one would really get anywhere.

Anyway, the flight from Paris to Cotonou went great except for the last hour and 45 minutes where I could feel my old "I have been on this bus/plane/train too dang long" rage taking over. I managed to watch two whole movies--50/50 and My Week With Marilyn, both of which I would recommend--without going too nuts, but that is probably because I had French subtitles on both of them so I was more engaged than if I had just been sitting. When we finally arrived and got off the plane, my first thought was "Holy Bejeezis, it is humid." Then there was a breeze and I relaxed a bit. Only to walk into the luggage claim area where relaxation had probably not been seen in awhile. Basically the way you get your luggage in the Cotonou airport is to have the entire plane worth of passengers crowd around the conveyor belt so close that in order to get your bag, you have to "Excusez-moi"/push your way through all the people and then try to snatch your heavy bag off the belt without knocking out an innocent bystander in the process. Three times of watching my bag go by, with my firmest "Excusez-moi!" and the help of a nice man I finally grabbed it. Then it was off to meet Brownie-my Humanity Exchange country manager-, Edie-a current volunteer/flat mate from Nigeria-, Robin-a volunteer from the UK who was headed home on the plane I had just arrived on-, and one other very nice girl whose name I didn't catch who was waiting for me in the crowded lobby with my name on a piece of paper so I could find the rest of the gang. We headed for the parking lot to meet Sebastian, our fearless driver for the trip to Ouidah, about 40 km away.

This drive alone deserves its own paragraph. Benin and neighboring Togo are know as Motorcycle Countries, which translates into "You are driving along and then 'SWEET BABY JESUS' there's a motorcycle on your hood/bumper/windshield." Twenty minutes into our drive, literally just about when I was going to ask if there are a lot of accidents, we drove past a man bleeding and unconscious in the street from a recent crash. A small crowd was forming around him, but most people-including us- continued to just weave around, so I assumed this wasn't too out of the ordinary. I made up my mind right there that I would avoid the popular moto-taxis.

That lasted a long time…

After enjoying the most relaxed morning I have had in three weeks-eating food I made myself, journaling, playing harmonica, and reading Harry Potter in French- Sebastian returned and told me in French that I would need a helmet for later in the day. I said a quick prayer to the saint of not dying on motorcycles and then was relieved to see that for at least the beginning of my tour around Ouidah with Brownie and Sebastian, I would be in a car. We briefly visited the orphanage-where I will start volunteering tomorrow-, three different Catholic churches (one of which is across the street from the Temple de Pythons), CIAMO-the music/art school where I met the director, John Mark, and will be working at in July-, and the beach where the Port de Non-Retour stands ominously, marking the final point for African slaves before they were shipped from their homes to Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Though the rest of the beach looks like it could be a screen saver, knowing its history made standing there different from just any other beach I have stood on. Brownie told me that nearby there is also a memorial commemorating the fact that Benin was the first country in Africa to recognize that Africans also played a perpetuating part in the slave trade.

From there, we headed to Brownie's house for lunch and mid-afternoon napping and reading children's books in French. Then it was off to the market with the two lovely ladies who live with Brownie (who told them to only speak in French with me, no English). And guess how we got there?

Yup, helmet on and prayers being said, I got onto the back of a motorcycle while the two of them got onto the back of another. When we got to the market, I turned to my companions and said "Je suis vivant" or "I'm alive" to which they just laughed. They helped me haggle (by which I mean, they did all the haggling) for my lettuce, cabbage, green beans, tomatoes, onions, oranges, garlic, eggs, and red wine vinegar and then it was back onto motorcycles to my apartment. I decided that I rather enjoy this moto-taxi business and maybe I will buy one when I get home (bahahahaha, I only said that to make my mom mad…but seriously =D)

The French professor, Christian, was working with Edie when I got back, so I was able to meet him and do even more parlant en francais. We talked schedules, books (he loves Lord of the Rings, we are going to get along well), and movies, and planned how I was going to fit my 40 hours of instruction into the next four weeks. I had so much fun in the five minutes that we spoke entirely in French that I really cannot wait for the next 39 hours and 55 minutes.

And now, I must finish this excessively long blog in order to go make my own dinner, which I also could not be more excited for. I am thinking an iced coffee (even though Europe doesn't seem to be on board with the concept of cold beverages, I am pleased to learn that Benin is all for them) and sautéed vegetable with a fried egg. And now I am drooling on the keyboard. Au revoir pour maitenant!

For the honor and glory.

The Port de Non-Retour that I mentioned above.