Throw on that Hot Blanket

Landed a few days ago and Benin has been full of interesting sights, experiences and things to learn. Its the rainy season so the night we got here it was like a hot blanket was thrown over my shoulders. The humidity was heavy but not too much worse than DC. We taxied to the "gate" which was just some stairs that went down to the runway. Our plane was the only one visible at the airport that wasn't rusting and still had wheels on. Inside the customs/passport control was just a hot room with bright kind of colonial sky blue paint slightly peeling off the walls.

Exhausted our, group left the airport stepping in to heavy air ladened with scent of exhaust and the screening cheers of about 8 current volunteers who came to greet us. We left on a bus through the super crowded streets of Cotonou for a Catholic mission of sorts near the outskirts where we are staying. Not ten minutes in to the drive i witnessed my first traffic accident in Benin. The place we're staying is interesting and it has and pretty expansive grounds that seem to be home to a lot of other people that are staying here from other parts of West Africa, mainly people who fled the political turmoil in the Ivory Coast. There is no Internet and we've been mostly held up here undergoing trainings and orientations. We've only been in to town once to the main office to conduct our language interviews, which went surprisingly well. I was really surprised. My vocab and verb conjugation are bad, but I'm talkative and can work around most of my limitations. Im really surprised with how much i can communicate with the french I have and I think my accent makes me sound better than the content of what I'm saying. I ran in to a group of guys for Ivory Coast who fled the recent turmoil. Talking to them in French was like peering in a window of a whole new perspective and culture. I've never utilized another language this much before. I'm really excited to work on my French now.

Other than that, we spend a lot of time just getting oriented. We're a big group and as you can imagine, a group of 50 Americans on the street is a bit of a spectacle. It will be nice whm I'm posted to travel around solo.

Now to bed because we're leaving tomorrow at 630 am to practice navigating moto taxis and later to meet the ambassador, which should be interesting.