Swear-in and move

Us and Grandpi

Note: The internet was down in Bohicon for the past three weeks, which is why this is so late.
We swore in as volunteers on Friday, 17 September, then packed up over the weekend and moved to Bohicon on Monday, 20 September.
We had a nice swear-in ceremony at the ambassador's house (there was a torrential downpour at the end of the ceremony so we had to cut the festivities a little short), then we did some shopping in Cotonou before heading back to Porto-Novo. That night, we had a party at a hotel across the street from our host family's house, so we partied at the rooftop bar for a while then slept in Saturday. We headed to the marche to pick up some last-minute things and then started packing.
On Monday, we made the big move. A taxi showed up at the house a little past 8:30am and we packed it full with our stuff and strapped extra stuff to the roof, including our mattress (which was folded in half) and bikes. We picked up another volunteer from the bureau in Cotonou on the way; fortunately, the extra passenger that our taxi ("mon frere") picked up on the way was dropped off on the side of the road halfway to Cotonou.
We made it to Bohicon unscathed, then we unpacked the taxi and got settled in.
Then on Tuesday, I fell off a zem. We went to the menusier to see if our bookshelves were ready (they were), and we haggled with them for a coffee table, then we went to the marche to pick up a few things and went back to the menusier to figure out the details to get our goods delivered. Heather and I flagged down a pair of zems while one of the menusiers strapped two bookshelves and a coffee table to the back of his motorcycle. Heather's zem knew where our house was (or thought that he did), and mine had no clue so he decided to follow them. We got about 50 yards down the road and a large truck was blocking our path. Heather's zem was able to find a space large enough in the street to pass, but mine slowed down and stopped. The truck driver waved us by, my baby-faced zem driver gunned it, and I, laden down with heavy bags from our marche-ing, saw my feet fly up in front of me and the bright blue sky above. Fortunately, I fell on my back (I was wearing a backpack which broke my fall and I am glad that I took the tomatoes out and gave them to Heather an hour earlier) in front of about 100 people, who all immediately started screaming and exclaiming in Fon. I'm not sure what they were saying, but it might have been something like, "Holy shit! Did you just see that Yovo fall off of that zem?" A few people ran over to help me out and dust me off but I knew that the zem didn't know where he was going so I gathered my senses and got on as soon as I could. We had lost the other two zems and were going the wrong way, so of course he got lost. Fifteen minutes later, we finally got home, where Heather was waiting for me with the unloaded furniture inside our concession. We patched up my wounds and brought the furniture inside.
We have spent the last few days getting settled in, getting groceries, and exploring the neighborhood. Yesterday we started a garden in front of our house! We planted eggplant, carrots, cucumber, corn, squash, tomatoes (three varieties), radish, parsley, oregano, basil, and cilantro (and a few others). We hope to have a little harvest in a few months.
A la prochain...