Crouching spider, hidden lizard

Sorry for the gap in posts – I was too busy having fun in the U.S. this last month to bother updating the blog.  I left Benin in late August and traveled overland by taxi through Benin, Togo, and Ghana to Kotoka International Airport in Accra.  (That was a very exciting airport for me since Kotoka can handle more than one plane at a time.)  I boarded that evening, changed planes in Amsterdam, and got into Dallas the next afternoon.  The U.S. was fun, with a week in Norman, half a week in Boulder, another week in Chicago, and a final half-week in Norman again, doing laundry and getting ready to leave. 

I’ve heard of many volunteers having severe reverse culture shock on returning to the States, but that was really never an issue for me.  (I think I was too focused on my list of American Foods To Eat.)  My only moment was coming in at the Dallas airport, when my parents and I took the shuttle from the terminal to our parking garage with all my luggage.  My dad floored me by handing a five dollar bill to the shuttle driver.  “What’s THAT?” I asked.  “A TIP?”  That bill represented a week’s salary for most Beninese people.             

In Norman, I caught up with some old high school friends and got over jetlag.  My brother is in Boulder for school, so we went around the town a bit and drove up into the Rocky Mountains for some hiking.  In Chicago, I met up with M and we saw The Dark Knight in Imax, Amadeus from the Chicago Shakespeare Company, the Art Institute’s Benin exhibit (Benin the kingdom in Nigeria – not Benin the country), visited my old campus and my old co-workers downtown, and went to the wedding of two of his friends.  I worked hard on my American Foods To Eat list and got through all the items by the time I had to button up my Benin pants (not so easy) and head back to the Dallas airport.

Now that I’m back in Benin, everything’s about getting ready for the school year, which will start on either October 6 or October 13 – they haven’t actually decided yet.  I’m in Cotonou right now for my mid-service health exam.  I tested clean for intestinal parasites and – as far as I know – for everything else.  These last few days were also Cheesecakefest Benin in the Cotonou medical unit thanks to the Philadelphia cream cheese and graham cracker crusts I brought back from the U.S.  (Cream cheese is one of the foods you just can’t find in Benin, no matter how hard you look or how much you’re willing to pay.)  At my post, I’m only halfway done cleaning out my house after my long absence; that task will keep me busy all afternoon when I return today.  It’s hard to explain to people in the U.S. how unbelievably FILTHY a house in Benin gets after only a few weeks.  The mounds of dust everywhere all come down to the lack of glass in the windows.  The hordes of spiders and lizards that moved in while I was gone and left their waste everywhere haven’t helped, either.  Last Wednesday, I moved around the house with my broom, chasing out all the critters, knocking down all the cobwebs, and scraping the globs of lizard droppings from my walls.  Then followed dusting, moving and washing down all the heavy, solid wood furniture, and hours of sweeping. 

The end’s in site, though, and soon (tomorrow? Monday?), I’ll be able to invite my new postmate over to see where I live.  He’s not actually posted at my site, but he’s only 5 km or so away, so we should see a lot of each other over the next year.  It’ll be nice to have another English-speaker so close.  This past year, the closest volunteer to me was a forty-minute motorcycle ride away over bad roads, and I didn’t see much of her.  Until next time…