WARNING: really long post ahead..

well, mona, if i was looking for adventure, that's what i got.. i am safe and sound in benin and will hopefully have some photos soon.

for now, the past two days, play-by-play: my guidebook said "you have to be suicidal to ride the motorcycle taxis, whose drivers are like kamikaze pilots on crack"... which was too bad for me because the second i found kantos, my host, in front of the airport, we hopped onto some moto taxis and rode into the Cotonou night, through strangely quiet streets to a hotel. my room was nice but pretty lonesome for my first night in a foreign land, as kantos dropped me there and said he'd get me in the morning. in situations like these, i've always found it best to be colmpletely surrounded by people so you don't have too much time to think about why the hell you're so far from your family and friends. well, pas de probleme because in the morning, we climbed into a regular old sedan taxi (after riding zemis (motos) thru a total downpour) with 6 passengers on top of the driver! the totally smashed windshield was a reassuring bonus.... so i was reeeally glad when we got to lokossa.

lokossa is not exactly a city, or even a town by our definition... there is one paved road running through the center (or rather, it seems that lokossa just bubbled up outward from the road- it sprawls in all directions, so it's not quite accurate to call it the "center")- anyway, if you make a bunch of turns on dirt paths off the main road, you get to the path that runs up to kantos's family's compound. there is electricity, incl. a tv and light in my room, but no shower (a bucket behind the house)... and no toilet, just a latrine (aka deep pit in a cement room behind the house that reeks more than anything i have (or will) ever experienced in my life- the only way not to gag is to hold your skirt bunched up over your nose and breathe through it. it almost makes me look forward to my 2 weeks au village, where the great outdoors will be my bathroom.)

kantos is really nice, as is his wife, kristianne. they have 5 kids-- the oldest, olivier (whose name i can only remember as lawrence olivier) is 14, then another son whose name i keep forgetting who is 12, a daughter-- cynthia carolyn(!) who is 8, and baby twins adovan and naima, born last october. it is really nice living with kids-- they are so easy to talk to, and i'm pumped to teach the older ones ULTIMATE (the boys are already on summer vacation so we're starting today!). their compound is connected to that of a few other families, and they all seem to live like one big extended famille- tons of little kids running around. most people here speak either fon or aja (in fact, most speak both), but apparently one of the neighbor families speaks yoruba!!!

when we pulled up to the house, the women's cooperative was meeting under a tree right out front (about 20 or 25 women ranging from teenagers to old women, plus a bunch of kids), and by the time i put my stuff down, they were singing and dancing, so kantos brought me over to introduce me. a couple women were dancing in the middle of the cirle and then they asked me to dance for them (a la africaine!) so alors-- i had no choice but to dance!!! fortunately one of the women took pity and got up to dance with me, but it was quite an introduction!

after that, kantos took me for a little stroll around the "neighborhood" and reintroduced me to some of the women, in particular, a 22 yr old named emiliane, who is preparing for college entrance exams. i was instructed to help her pick these plants and learn how to prepare dinner. the traditional food is called igname pile- it consists of pate, a mush a bit like really smooth mashed potatoes (made from cornmeal) and la sauce, which is a mush of leaves/veggies and sometimes meat or fish. probably the messiest food you could conceive of to eat with your hands, but that's what they do. no stoves here- you cook in a pot over an open fire in a hut outside your house. it's the real deal, that is fo sho.

anyway, a bit of homesickness comes and goes, but i mostly have my eyes and ears wide opoen, trying to absorb this incredibly different, vibrant world i fell into and working on my far-from-fluent french. (i have a blog, http://rightnexttonigeria.blogspot.com/ , which i'll hopefully get to update every few days with pictures and news. right now all it has is this post, but i'll probs post my pics there because the internet here is reaaaally slow and i don't think i have the patience to upload them twice.) i miss you girls and hope all's well aux etats unis!!