Premièrement, je veux dire "au revoir" a tout le monde à Lokossa, c'était une palisire de rester chez vous pendent 3 mois, et je promis de bientot aficher les photos.
Once again I realize it has been a reeallly long time since I have posted, please forgive me if you have been anxious for news, but with a busy schedule, a new city and inceredibly slow and infrequent internet access, it's been tough to keep as up to date as I would like. Also, since it looks like most of the computers at this internet cafe don't have USB ports there will be no photos in this entry, so I will do my best to convey my recent experiences with whatever Enlish writing skills I have left after three months of living in a francophone country.
After three months that passed much faster than I thought they would I left Lokossa, Benin. I got an amazing send-off from Les Elites, where the students performed poetry, skits, and traditional dances, all to say "Au revoire, notre chère Miss Carla" (they sang those actual words while dancing). After so much traveling I've made lots of friends on the road, and it is always hard to say goodbye, this time particularly so because I had been in one place long enough to really get to know people. I left the public school (CEG 4) I was teaching at with a promise to try and set up some sort of correspondence between them and students at my old highschool, something I have still not done due to busy schedule and lack of internet time. (If by some chance Mrs. Falls is reading this... if I have not contacted you yet, feel free to send me an email if you are interested.)
I also said goodbye to my soccer team... really just a group of any girls interested in playing soccer that a local coach has stared to train. I sarted comming out to practice with them a few weeks ago. I felt bad leaving them right before their first real game, so I bought them three new soccer balls as a parting gift, (or footballs, I should say).
During my last couple weeks in Benin, I managed to get out on a couple more field trips, including one more to Grand Popo, this time with Bill and Julie and their son, Paul. It was honestly a little strange driving down to the coast in their air-conditioned car listening to country music and chatting away in English - like being in a little bubble of North America floating along the African highway. It was a wonderful day of relaxing at the beach and lounging in the pool. The next weekend I went to Ouidah with Antonio (the Dalmeida's son) and two of his friends, Romaric and Blaise, and two girls from the soccer team. We all cramed into a worn out taxi that I rented for the the day - a bit of a splurge but nowhere near as expensive as it would be back home. (And I would say it was worth it compared to the stress of driving the distance myself - as far as I can tell the only sure rule of the road is to yield to the bigger vehicle. Not always easy to do quickly due to frequent, and large, potholes). We saw the Door of No Return, marking the spot where most slaves from the area were shipped off to the Americas during the slave trade. The day was fairly relaxing as well, though frustrating because my phone was stolen at the beach (hence the 'new phone' bit in the title of this entry).
As sad as I was to leave friends and the familiarity of Lokossa behind, I was eager to go to a big city, and now here I am in Lomé, the capital of Togo. It is big. And a bit dirty. And the traffic is a little crazy, to put it mildly. (Any details of my daily transportation might cause cardiac arrest in some of my elderly relatives - but maybe they will breath a little easier knowing that at least I wear a helmet). However if you need to you can find most things you can find in any modern city, you just have to know where to look. I have a very friendly new host family, with quite a nice house, and a cat. (He had no name, so when my host mom found out I had cat named Max she said that is what we'll call him. I hope my Max doesn't mind). And if I was happy to find a fan in my room, it was nothing compared to the joy of discovering that I would be working in an air-conditioned office! I work at WAGES (Women and Associations for Gain Both Economic and Social) an NGO that specializes in micro-finance for individuals and groups with small businesses. It was also nice to meet other STAESA volunteers soon after arriving, inlcuding one Canadian, one American, and one German who speaks near-perfect English but with an Alabama accent because of a year-long high school exchange there. My French has improved lots since coming here, but there is still nothing quite like talking to someone in your native language and who shares your culture.
In Lomé, Working at WAGES, and a new Nokia phone - New city, new job, new phone. Though perhaps you noticed the 'S' in brackets after "job" in the tittle. A few blog entries back I mentioned an events management company in Australia I was hoping to work at. Well, I managed to get a Work Experience Placement with them. The company is USM Events, and they manage big sporting events like triathlons, as well as cultral events and conferences. The good news is I will get to be involved in big events like the ITU Triathlon World Championships. The down side is that anyone hoping to see me back in Victoria within a year of when I left may have to wait a little longer. I will be working at the USM Brisbane office at least untill the middle of November. On the bright side, I am pretty sure I will at least be able to find a decent internet connection there when I need one.
Before I sign off I just want to send out a mass "Hi! How are you?" to all friends and family back home, and let you all know that I am often thinking of you, even if my cyber-silence doesn't make it seem that way. When you are thousands of kilometers away, and have been away for months, even the most mundane news from home becomes relatively fascinating, so go ahead and flood my inbox. And because I haven't been great at keeping in touch with my travel contacts as much as I would like either, here are a list of some (I can't list them all off the top of my head) travel acknowledgments, people who may have fed and housed me for a week or simlpy traveled along the same path for a while: Adrienne, Laura, Carin, Joe, Johny (Belfast); Mike, Paul and Paul (Scotland); Unai and Aser (Edinburgh/Spain), Julia and Richard (London); Vinny, Kate and Nicole (Paris); every single one of my relatives in Germany, plus Doreen, Annette and family, Jacob and Charles (Germany); Magdi (Budapest); Kirtsin (Italy - Sorrento!!); Rowan and co. (Nice); Guillaume (Biarritz); Taylor (Barcelona) - special thanks to him for being my body gaurd while I walked around Barcelona with my entire volunteer fee for STAESA - in cash - hidden on my person (living proof that there are trustworthy people in the L.A. entertainment industry); Ellen, Esther, Bill and Julie, Loenard, the Dalmeidas (Lokossa).
Till next time,
Carla
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