Foosball

From June, I think, but I forgot to post it.  

...

I arrived to the park on my bike, as usual, in the late morning.  I usually arrive at that time because I take my time eating breakfast and drinking coffee in the morning, and I like to turn up before it gets too hot.  We are in the rainy season now, though, so we have a constant low, dark cloud cover throughout the day with intermittent sun (like San Diego’s “June Gloom”).  It is cool.  I still go to work in the late morning, though, merely out of habit.

When I showed up, I saw Arimi, Denis, and another man huddled around a foosball table.  It was brand new, with the plastic still on and around it, and was still sitting on top of the cardboard box that it was delivered on.  I parked my bike and walked around to where it was situated, across a corner of the concrete slab by the office but still under the overhang.

“Good Morning,” I said.

“Good Morning,” replied Arimi.

“When did we get this?”

“This morning.  The mayor paid for it.”

“Oh, that was nice of him.”

“No.  He is not nice.”

I thought of all the things the mayor could have paid for, such as higher wages for the employees or to print marketing materials.  A foosball table was unnecessary, especially considering that we all had to come to the park early a few weeks ago—Théo, Arimi, Denis, Elie, and I—to clear out weeds because the mayor had not paid the groundskeeper in the past eighteen months—eighteen months!

As they fidgeted with the screwdrivers and wrenches and assorted metal and plastic parts strewn about the table, I started to look for the instructions.  They all looked clueless, so I thought maybe the instructions were in English.  But had there been directions only in English, they would have asked me to help (I hope).

I looked at the dark clouds hanging low, directly over us, and asked what they would do with the table if it rains.  The table looks too wide to fit through the door of the office, and if left outside it would just be ruined, like everything else.

“We will take it inside.”

“Where are the instructions?”

“We don’t have any.  You see, the mayor is not nice.”

Arimi and Denis moved the table to the side of the building, flush up against the wall so it was not visible from the street, and if it rains it would be unlikely to get too wet.  The group walked inside and Arimi and Denis laid down on the benches inside the office which line two of the walls.  Time for a break.  They would finish up with the table later, but for now, the mayor is not so nice.

West African Mania

 Craig had his post visit with his PC boss the day before we left to go south to head to Ghana.  Last year, it didn't leave Craig feeling warm and fuzzy, we'll leave it at that.  This year was a hundred times better.  He paid attention to Craig and what he was doing and saying, what he was working on, and genuinely seemed interested and pleased.  Not to mention that he not only treated Craig to dinner/sodas, but he got some to go for me.  How nice!  My post visit, which was after we got back from Ghana, the day before Thanksgiving, was very similar to Craig’s last year. 

So on the 15^th, we went down south to Cotonou then on the 16^th, we left for Ghana.  We got to the taxi station at 6am, but had to wait for the taxi to fill up and didn’t leave until like 6:45.  I was sitting by a really nice Beninese man who waited for us to get our Togo visas at the boarder with his cute little son.  When we got to Lome, which looks way nicer than Cotonou, he also helped us get a zem to the Togo/Ghana boarder, which he definitely didn't have to do.  Once we crossed over to Ghana, they were wearing really colorful green uniforms, much different than the normal khaki or army green that everyone else wears, and they all spoke English.  It threw me off a bit to have to revert to English since we're so use to speaking French in West Africa.  The two are linked in our minds.  We got into a tro-tro, which is like a minibus, to head to Accra from the boarder.  While we were waiting, I discovered that they sold guacamole sandwiches at the station.  Yum!  From the boarder to Accra, it is about 4 hours. 

Accra was pretty impressive.  There are some streets in Accra that you could confuse with a posh street in America somewhere.  It was really surreal.  We went straight to the airport to get Brian.  Dustin was already there so we all waited for Brian together.  When we finally saw Brian, it was a nice reunion.  

We went out for a drink that night to celebrate.  The next morning, we were supposed to leave bright and early for the coast, but we discovered that Dustin never got his Benin visa.  He had some issues with getting the Ghanaian visa since he had to send his passport from Germany, where he recently relocated, to the US to do it and wait for it to come back and it took too long.  He changed his flight to arrive on the 14^th in order to take care of the Benin visa before we even got there, but he didn’t do it.  So off to the Beninese embassy we went when we should have been half wait to Butre.  He did his paperwork and then was told that he can only pick up visas in the afternoon and he’d have to come back.  This really didn’t bode well with us.  I went outside to let Brian know what was going on when I ran into the Ambassador for Benin.  I explained our problem to him and he was very helpful in getting our visa to us within the next hour.  So off to the coast we went. 

It was a really long ride, very pretty though, to the coastal town of Butre.  Butre is a small fishing village and we were just outside of it in this secluded “hideout” called Ellis Hideout that was absolutely amazing and the best part of the trip for me.  It was pretty cheap to stay there, like $6/night/person and it also had a restaurant that served amazing food as well as happy hour.  The beer in Ghana is way better than the beer in Benin, too.  We hung out there for a couple days, enjoying their beautiful beach that made it seem that we were the only ones for miles.  The beach was small and was surrounded by lush green vegetation everywhere, but unlike Benin, there were hills and mountains included in this lush scenery.  It was amazing.    

After leaving amazing Butre, we went to Cape Coast.  There we saw the famous castle that was used to house captured slaves before there departure to the “New World”, as seen in Roots and other movies.  We also took a side trip up about 45 minutes north to a national park that had a canopy walk.  The walk was cool, but there were a lot of people and it was just a circle of connecting bridges a little high up in the trees.  Not really worth the money, in my opinion.  

After Cape Coast, we went back to Accra, changed minibuses, and headed directly up north along the Togo boarder to a monkey sanctuary in a place called Tafi-Atome.  We paid about $12 to have a place to stay, dinner and breakfast, food for the monkeys, and a guide that took us to feed the monkeys in the early morning the next day.  It was really pretty up there and there was actual forest around in the area.  We walked to where the monkeys usually congregate in the morning to feed them.  They were completely wild and we called them with making kissy noises to get them to come closer.  Soon enough, they were jumping all over us, using their little hands to peel back the banana and eat their breakfast.  It was really cool. 

Right after we were done feeding the monkeys, we took a zem to the boarder of Togo, where we had some problems with getting Dustin and Brian a visa.  They had to pay a “guide” to take them to a nearby town where there was a consulate to get a visa since they didn’t give them at the boarder up there.  This took much longer than we thought but the ride there was through hills and forests and it was really pretty.  We waited around the taxi gare for them, getting something lined up to take us across the boarder.  We all got into this tro-tro that was like a Flintstone car.  Every time we hit a bump, the side would sway one way, the back would sway another, and so on.  I thought it was going to fall apart around us.  The road was a bumpy dirt road, which made us very dirty by the time we got half way across where we switched to a taxi.  We thought it’d take 2 hours total to cross the country of Togo (it’s so small!) but it took over 3 hours just to get half way.  Then it took another 2 or so in a taxi to get to the Benin/Togo boarder.  From there, our taxi took us to Azove, which is south of Bohicon.  The night marche in the taxi gare in Azove was crazy and their first look at Benin.  Very different from Ghana and Togo.  By this time it was night, and we were a bit nervous in traveling at night, but the road was good and paved, so it worked out fine.  We didn't get home (after a pit stop for dinner in Bohicon) until almost 11pm at night.  Silly us thought that we may even get home by lunchtime.  That was before we realized that that distinct line on the map that seems like a very nice road was all bumpy and dirty.  

We spent a total of one week in Bohicon, showing them around, seeing voodoo stuff, introducing them to people, and hanging out.  We also went to the local artist's house, Julien, to see his art, buy his art, and make new art with him, which was a really cool experience.  It reinforced what I already knew about myself though; I am not artistic.  Ha!  Everyone was super excited to meet Brian and they all commented on his size compared to Craig.  They would say things like, "He likes the fastfood, huh?"  Ha!  It was funny to watch their reactions.  We all had Thanksgiving together and invited some other volunteers that came from around the area. We had a total of ten people.  I made pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and a brownie cake with a glaze on top, in addition to all the other normal Thanksgiving food that you normally eat (no meat though).  It was delicious!  Right as the dinner was about to be ready, Logan, our CD’s son who is doing film work in Benin, called to say he was in town and wanted to know if we could hang out, so we invited him to join us, which made our tenth person.  And he was a great addition to our group.  Since Brian brought all the food except for some stuff, like potatoes, that we could get in town, we had all the out of towners bring a bottle of wine.  We ended up with 4 bottles of wine, which was just right for 10 of us.  It was great.  Dustin and Brian also got to see both of us in action at work.  Craig gave them a tour of his park and I had a World AIDS Day event, in addition to taking them to our two English clubs so our kids could ask them questions.  It was fun. 

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we headed up to Parakou because they were giving mandatory flu vaccines and we wanted to show them Parakou anyway.  We hung out the first day and on the second day, went on a tchouk crawl.  Like a beer crawl, but with tchouk stands.  The tchouk marche that we went to was the biggest in the world.  It was really fun and much better tasting than I remembered.  The next day, we headed back to Bohicon and had a super fast driver for a taxi driver.  It didn't take the normal 4 hours to get back to Bohicon; it only took 3.  

We were back in Bohicon for a day or two before we headed back down to Cotonou.  The PCVL (volunteer who is in charge of the workstation, basically) in Cotonou was nice enough to let us stay at her house the whole time.  Once we were almost in Cotonou, Craig and I realized that neither one of us remembered to pack our passports.  Craig went back up to Bohicon that evening to get them and came back down the next morning.  That next day, we went to a village called Ganvie.  It’s in the guidebooks and we’d never been so we thought we’d go with our visitors.  We rented out a whole taxi to take us there and when we got there, discovered that the boat ride to the village was ridiculously expensive.  We ended up paying it anyway since we were already there, but it wasn’t worth it in my opinion.  That night, Logan was nice enough to invite us over for dinner to thank us for having him over for Thanksgiving.  It was a delicious dinner with homemade ice cream and pumpkin pie for dessert.  Our last full day in Cotonou, we spent at the beach, then at the Ambassador’s house for swimming, then getting ice cream, then at happy hour, where it was last man standing.  It was a lot of fun.  The next day, we headed to Ouidah, where there is a python temple and the gate of no return and more slave stuff.  They didn’t want to go into the python temple since they were tired, but we saw the gate and continued on to Grand Popo. 

We spent two days in Grand Popo laying around on the beach, reading and relaxing, as the last part of the trip before having to get them back to Ghana for their flights.  We played the “Inglorious Bastards” game, as we call it (where you’re giving a name to put on your forehead and you have to guess who or what you are), but often the geography version, which we usually enjoy more.  It was a lot of fun.    

By the end of their stay with us, we were super low on funds, so I decided to go straight back to Cotonou to save money while Craig took them back to Ghana.  He’s on his way back to Cotonou right now, as I write.  Our time together was great.  We like traveling with Brian and we anticipate that we’ll be traveling with him again soon, I’m sure.  We were sad to see him go, but we realized that we are pretty compatible travel companions and when we saw Brian again, after not seeing him for over a year and a half, it was like no time had passed at all.  Things just fell back into place.  

On a side note, I have been obsessively reading through the Twilight book series.  I finished the first three in 5 days and have the 4^th one waiting for me at post.  I really really wish there were a movie theater here that showed American movies so I could watch it when I finish the book, but I guess I will just have to wait.