It is
amazing how different my Peace Corps Response experience is from my Peace Corps
experience. Likewise, how different living in Benin is from living in
South Africa. I found two letters that I sent to friends and family from my 2000-2002 service in Benin.
Below is one of them for your reading pleasure (the spacing got messed up
somehow, blame it on the antiquatedness of Hotmail)!
Written and mailed on:
Sunday, May 26, 2002
I guess you kinda already
knew that (I lived in Africa), but I had one of those weekends, that was a
reminder of that and I figured I would share some of it with you. So we wanted
to go to Lomé this weekend, but every time you cross the Togo, Benin border you
have to pay a 10.000 cfa (approx. $15) and I have already paid 50.000 over the
duration of my service to Togo during my travels. Long story short, we decided
to cross the border by boat, which the Togoliese and Beniniese do all the time,
to avoid the border fees.
 |
| Hanging Out in Lome |
First of all we had to walk
a kilometer, with our bags, to the river in the hot sun. After which, we have
to climb down this muddy hill to get to the river (in flip flops), where there
are these dug out canoes waiting for us. Dugout canoes-let me explain this for
a minute. Little skinny boat dug out of a tree, no benches inside, and water
filling the bottom of the boat. We are struggling getting in there trying to
keep out balance, all of the locals are laughing at us and talking about us. Then
once we are in there, the thing is all off balance and then this old dude had
the nerve to get in with a bike.
We then pull off we are
sitting on the edges, because remember there are no benches and there is water
in the bottom of the boat. Our driver,
if that is what you call him, said he was 18, but looked 15 at most, and he is
pushing the boat along with a long palm branch limb, like a gandala driver in
Venice. The river, which they kill hippos in occasionally, the locals do
everything in (bathe, swim, wash clothes, etc.), needless to say we are just
like please don't let this thing tip over. In the end though, it was only like
a 10 minute ride, so i will admit it we kind of panicked for no reason. And the
locals were yet again laughing at us trying to get out of the boat and not step in the water (there is this
thing that you can catch from water like this, but that’s another email) and we
had a muddy hill after that to climb up, which was serious as well.
Wait though that wasn’t the
end of our journey, we still had to get in this Mr. Pickles van, where they put
16 people inside of, not including the driver. And had to be on this gatté
(literally spoiled, but run down is what we would say) road (im talking red
dirt road, with mud holes continuously throughout, and bumpy) for an hour and a
half. We finally did make it to Lomé, after all of that, we were just a tad bit
dirty and sweaty, but we got there safely. lol We had to go through all of this
again two days later to get back to Benin. What we realized from all of that
was that was an experience, we are glad we did it the one time, but ahhhh... we
rather just spend the 10.000 cfa if we over go to Togo again. :0)
Well I hope your weekend
went well and i wish you a good week as well.
Love and God Bless,
Mei
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