On the Road Again

So Mark and I took to the streets this week on our bikes to work out our itinerary for the upcoming Borgou Bike Tour. This is what we knew about where we were going: nothing. Didn't know where we'd eat, where we'd sleep, or whether or not the roads we were relying on even existed (the best map we have was drawn in 2000). After an exhausting taxi ride that placed us in Tobre, where a volunteer presently resides, we took off at 3:00 to try to make it 40 km before finding a place to sleep in a town called Sinende. Here's what we found:

And our room for the first night...

Apparently there's a fete every year at the start of the dry season where people take to the streets to swing burning tires around, effectively lighting all of the dry brush on fire. A very eerie experience and quite a surprise given that it was going on outside of our window.

Dichotomy

This is my father. He begrudgingly still lives in upstate New York. Here's a little song he created to express his feelings on this matter:

The the tune of "Oh where oh where has my little dog gone?"

Oh why, oh why do I still live up North?

Oh how, oh how can it be?

We were sposed to move when MJ retired,

But our house wouldn't sell if twas free

Oh why, oh why do I still live up North?

Winter's hell, I'm sure you'll agree,

But we're stuck up here, no place to go,

Because of the e-co-no-my!!

Here's a picture of me, taken the same day, out front of my house. This is the cold season. I don't have a song, but my face says enough. (Don't worry, I'm eating well...)

So the December weather is indeed the coolest that Benin has to offer. It's called the Harmattan, a word invoking images of twirling dust clouds and Beninese dressed in hats, gloves, parkas, and yes, even scarves. The West African trade winds blow south from the Sahara to the Gulf of Guinea, where I am. Yes, visibility is severely impaired. Yes, even your toothbrush will be covered with a thin layer of dust between uses. Yes, it does actually get cold enough that some mornings you don't want to shower. Wait, scratch that, you don't feel an overwhelming urge to take a shower to remove the sweat. You do want to shower... and you do shower. It's just not compulsory.

Here is our guard, Pedro, in the later hours of the morning. Meaning some key elements of the Harmattan getup have been discarded.

In short, I want to wish everyone a happy December. Us, we're listening to Merle Haggard and rigging up the lights just like the rest of y'all on the other side of the sea. So, on behalf of the men of Parakou, I'd like to wish the happiest of holiday seasons to you and yours.

...December?

Not sure what happened to November. Between amped up work, traveling, and visitors, the month seems to have slipped through my fingers in what is unfortunately going to be the probable trend for the next year.

Been souping up the workstation over the last month with fans, lights, compost piles, new security measures and, hear this, wireless internet. High speed, no less. Unfortunately I'm presently without a computer charger, so the wireless aspect is lost to me. Thus it's "same same but different" encore.

Been working a lot with the new "Institute of Fine Arts," not yet opened, which is located next to the workstation and aspires to be the largest museum of ethnomusicology this side of the Nile. It's there that we are going to celebrate at the end of our three-day Family Planning Borgou Bike Tour in February. There is toooons of work up here in Parakou, entirely different from my life last year. In short, life is ideal. As events approach, I'll provide more specific details regarding particular endeavors.

I may be asking for some financial assistance soon for a series of youth camps I want to help organize in the Spring. I'll keep all y'all updated as I find out more. Yeah, this is vague. This is vague. Sorry.

Julie Ann Clark, one my best friends from college, had the opportunity to visit Benin for two weeks last month. It was really awesome, and I took the opportunity to visit 2 places I'd been meaning to visit for a year. For the most part, we stayed in Parakou and saw some of the sites around the city, but our village sorties were memorable. She's a trooper, that one, and she's off to visit our other friends in Senegal before (hopefully) continuing on to see her old village in Mauritania. Godspeed, girl.

Will upload photos as soon as my comp's back up. Somehow, all of my electronics were recently reborn, like an early Christmas. Thus, I have a camera again for the first time in 2 months.

Happy Holidays!
-Dave