A Boutique with Potential

Hey everyone. Last week Brig and I had the opportunity to visit our homestay family's in Benin's capitol, Porto-Novo. As expected, our families gave us mountains of delicious food in which we could hardly even make a dent, but they were happy to see that you could literally see the effects in our considerably expanded midriffs. It was great to see that my homestay mama was continuing her dress designs (see post: Turn and Face the Strange), and she had some really intricate new examples to show us. Brigitte's mama owns a boutique, which she uses to finance her five daughters' educations. These girls have managed to be extremely diligent in their studies, especially given the plight of young women in this country.



The boutique contains (mostly used) handbags, dresses, shoes, and perfumes into which she injects some new life. But the shelves of this boutique seem sparsely populated.




Here's how you can help. Gather up some unused (in relatively nice condition) clothes that we could put in her boutique to help her gain money to finance the education of her girls. If you're sending a package, you can just add one or two items to the envelope so we can donate them to her cause. She's really appreciative and a great example of what a single woman can accomplish if she sets her mind to it. Thanks in advance, everyone. And even if you can't donate, thank you for reading about this amazing woman.


Happy spring!

Benny's New Glasses

So Benoit, one of the smartest students I had at CEG Ikemon last year, lives in Parakou now. We see each other often, usually to cook and for me to give he and another student their living allowances. But Benoit has always been a noticeably squinty student. He would always ask to be moved closer to the blackboard, and it never seemed like he could open his eyes very widely. I feared the worst. So we took off to an amazing clinic today that's run by a Scottish ophthalmologist, at which he is able to see around 150 patients every day. Yeah... Here's our morning through the most honest of methods of reporting:

We started our journey by taking a moto-taxi out into the bush. The clinic is located a few km north of Parakou.
The complex is sprawling, and Benoit didn't know what to expect from an eye doctor, but he seemed composed as we approached the clinic.



We had to wait in a sizable line, but we had nothing but time this morning.

Although it appeared that others had a bit longer to wait as they camped out in the shade.


We finally got in to see the doctor.


And they gave him an old-fashioned check up.



End result? Styling! This was all relatively fast and really cheap. Overall, a very impressive organization.

Postpone for Democracy

It's an arduous task, holding fair elections when the population being asked to choose is poorly educated and access to information consists of pictures on billboards and word-of-mouth. The presidential elections, held every five years, have so far been pushed back 2 weeks due to insufficient distribution of voting cards. But they've been peacefully delayed, so there's no cause for alarm. From what I can tell, there are two main candidates in the north, although I've seen smatterings of support for other less-funded aspiring presidents. Up until about a month ago, there were very few billboards or pamphlets being distributed for any candidate. Now, billboards like this for the incumbent, YAYI Boni, are common in larger cities.



While there are plenty of little pieces of paper being tossed around by little kids supporting this candidate, ABT, some people still choose to campaign the old-fashioned way: by painting blandly on as-yet-unfinished buildings.




And then some people are so devoted to their local candidates that they can't bare to physically separate themselves from him (or her).


Music's in the air, people are registering at the last minute, and you can feel the buzz of an impassioned crowd. Some pundits are (correctly) labeling this an extension of the fete season. Others are calling it a triumph for West Africa's Latin Quarter. No matter what, this should be an interesting weekend. That is, of course, if election day isn't again prolonged...

Online Presence

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that this isn't the only blog I'm maintaining. Take a look at my other page, though you'll see that it's presently in French. Use google to translate the entire page if you want to see what we've been up to over at the music museum.

Museum of Music, Parakou

We've just started to set up our exhibit concerning ancient and modern communication methods among the various tribes in Benin. Pretty cool stuff! Anywho, enjoy. We're putting another blog for the Beninese Volunteer Corps active sometime this week, also.