Craig and Heather's Excellent Beninois Adventure: Short Update Before Swear-In

Stage is coming to an end--we swear in on Friday the 17th--and we are excited to finish jumping through the prerequisite hoops and get to Bohicon and begin settling into what will become our home for the next two years, integrating into our community, figuring out the match schedule for the local professional footy team, and getting acquainted with our host organizations and doing research for our jobs. One of the first things that we plan on doing when we arrive in Bohicon is securing a reliable internet connection so that we can communicate with you all on a relatively regular basis.

Some quick updates:

A big thanks to Vashti, Johnny, and Erin for the sweet box of goodies! The candy, tortilla press, sandals, pictures, seeds, gloves, and love were all received intact and with no damage to the goods inside or the love that accompanied it.

We (finally) received Brian's postcard from Ireland, and we appreciate the kind words and beautiful prose.

We celebrated our 5th "dating-versary" on September 10th. Since we're still in training and on training salaries, we couldn't do much but we had a half day that day, so we got to spend some quality time together, which was nice.

We both passed our final language interviews. Heather finished at the Advanced Low level, and I finished at the Intermediate High level. We both needed to score at Intermediate High to swear in, and we plan on looking for a language tutor (in French and/or Fon) shortly after arriving in Bohicon.

There has been a chorea outbreak in West Africa and as well as Benin, but it is mostly in Cotonou, which we will not be, so don't worry about us there if you see it on the news. We have been well versed on how to prevent getting it.

We all visited Ouidah on Saturday and saw a sacred forest with voodoo statues, the "Gate of No Return", which is on a very beautiful beach and the slave road whereby slaves that had been sold to European traders walked to the beach from where they would be taken to waiting ships and sent to the Americas. The Gate is a World Heritage site. We also saw a snake temple. Snakes are considered sacred here, especially the python, and there is a temple in Ouidah just for snakes. At "high season" there is said to be over 200 pythons that live there. We all got to try on a snake. One thing that was a bit traumatizing for Heather was a very cute grey baby goat that was tied up and very unhappy about it. They told us that the goat would become a sacrifice. What they didn't tell us is that they were doing the sacrifice right then and there so as we exited the temple and were on our way out, without knowing that they had just killed the very cute goat, we walked right through the crowd to the opening with bright goat blood and a lifeless goat. Heather gasped, turned around and hid. She had to have someone walk her out of the area with her eyes closed and face buried into our friend so that she could avoid seeing the very traumatizing scene. Needless to say, it was quite disturbing. Other than that unfortunate incident, the day was pretty good and we are seeing more and more of the country we will call home for the next 2 years. We are always learning something new too. That's all for now. Enjoy the pics!

Cheers!