catch-up

goodness. i have so much to say that i don't know where to begin. i have been regularly writing entries to post and, but i haven't been able to post them b/c i can't connect my flash drive to the state department computers. so i will have to summarize now and maybe post the others later.
so last week i went to porto novo, which is actually the capital of benin, but is a much smaller city than cotonou. all the embassies and most everything else are all in cotonou, but the legislative branch is still in porto novo. i got to see the national assembly and some other really beautiful buildings whose pictures i might be able to post eventually. the really stiking thing about porto novo is that since it was the original capital and the largest city at the time, the europeans who colonized it established their homes there. so there are a lot of really beautiful old buildings that are now unfortunately not in the best state of repair. it is hard to imagine porto novo as the capital after cotonou. porto novo is quiet and small. there seemed to be only one main road, compared to complete craziness and traffic everywhere in cotonou. to get there we rode in a bush taxi, which means a taxi that just picks up ppl along the way. it was a very, very old station wagon and at one point along the way there were 10 of us in the car together. however, it was only about a 45 min ride so it wasn't bad. we went to the house of the country's most famous musician whose daughter is a friend of ella's and she showed us around. before leaving her house, we ate pate which is like sticky mashed potatoes which you dip into a sauce, in this case a lamb sauce. ella, my host's cousin, said you have to eat it with your fingers b/c it tastes better that way. that's all fine to me, but here a lot of the time they don't wash their hands before eating or if they do they don't always use soap. so i am big on sharing the hand sanitizer.
one of the sterotypical images of africa is women walking around with baskets or pots or whatever on their heads. this is true. it is the easiest way to carry a heavy load or a large quanity of something so all the time you see women and sometimes men carrying their wares or anything really on their heads. however, i must admit i was more than a little surprised when a woman walked past me with a basket on her head and i heard a chirp. in the basket were chickens and chicks. yes, the was carrying a chicken coop on her head! not to be outdone, i later saw a truck full of baby chicks on the road into cotonou. how the poor things could breathe with all the pollution is beyond me. a lot of the time you'll see chickens just running around here. these are called 'poulet a la bicyclette' or bicycle chickens b/c they don't actually have much meat on them from running around all the time and scavenging for food. more than slightly disturbing was the sight of cows eating out of a huge trash pile. makes you want to think twice about eating the meat here.
i am jumping around horribly. so in porto novo, we visited a garden which is actually a remnant of what used to be the sacred forests. almost as soon as we stepped inside we saw monkeys! there was one high up in a tree and a couple more just hanging out on a fence. a little furthur in we saw another one and as i was trying to frantically take pictures of him and zoom in close, he suddenly came down right to us and was no more than maybe 5 ft from us in the tree. he came down to get his picture taken! the trees in the forest were absolutely astounding. they were huge. their girth was enormous and they seemed to reach up forever. it would have taken maybe 4 or 5 of us to link hands around the trunk. at the base of the trees, they used to perform voodoo rituals and sacrifices. these trees are very revered and some are ancient.
all along the roadway to and from cotonou, there are stands selling big jars of fluid. i honestly did not realize what it was until our taxi stopped bought one and began to fill up the car. these stands are selling smuggled gas from nigeria. there are apparently a lot of things that are smuggled in. you occasionally see motos with one person surrounded by strapped down plastic containers. these are used to carry in the oil from nigeria. i also saw some of the smuggling boats they use to sail down the river.

more to come!