flashes

so many things happen all the time that it's hard to keep the blog up to date. and what's even more important, it's easy to describe surprising, wonderful things you see while travelling, but once you start feeling at home somwhere, it's getting hard. how can you tell somebody in a few sentences your everyday life and all these tiny but meaningfull details. so for today just a few flashes

gwendine - about8, a good pupil, now on holidays, resolute, talkative, speaks french very well (not that obivious even though french is official in benin). knows 'millions millions of games'. showed me one. it was 'gra w klasy' (a hopscotch in english, i belive). during the holidays she rides her bike and hangs out with some of her 7 brothers. her mum is a hairdresser (there is plenty of them at every corner, each one with an oryginal, hand-painted sign)

theni - a small village at the bank of the river so. one of the so-ava comuunity's 40 villages. most of them are built on terrains often flooded or directly on the lake, like ganvie - best known of all of them. buildings in ganvie are built on high pillars, people travel on pirogues between the houses, marketplace is just a square of lake between the building whith boats full of fish, tomatoes, soap and all the other things you can find on a regular market here. but ganvie is now a touristic attraction while theni still is not in interest of anyone, even local authorities. the scholl in theni is a tiny cottage with thached (is that a right word) roof and bamboo walls full of holes. there are about 200 pupils. with a majority of boys. there is a nationwide action supported by unesco trying to convince people to send all the girls to school. it's working slowly. the school is often far. usually one falmily owns one pirogue, sometimes more, but generally it's hard to deliver children to school. often neighbours organize themselves and take turns. good news are that school's headmaster (and one of 4 teachers) is full of energy and love for this village and region. new school program is better, allows pupils to use local language in many situations. there's also hippolit - local activist and journalist. joung and full of energy. hard to list all the things he and his ngo do. one of them is publishing a magazin in french and toffinu (local language - the language of 'the people living on the water') and trying to seize peoples' attention to show the community's needs and problems. thanks to a well made reportage the school in theni's received help (books and money to repair the roof).

sto lat sto lat

szlam sobie wczoraj ulica nasza czerwona, zakurzona i pelna smieci i straganow i uslyszalam 'sto lat sto lat'. tak mnie teraz wita Elizaier-chlopiec ok 15, krawiec, teraz na wakacjach, grajacy z nami we frisbee. podlapal to na urodzinach Nathalie, sekretarki w Pantodon, gdzie wszyscy to jej odspiewali. troche lepiej im szlo spiewanie 'piwo prosze prosze piwo' na melodie happy birthday... generalnie polski swieci tryumfy popularnosci. ucza sie go chetnie wspolstazysci, dalmien i martial (martial naprawde lapie i prowadzi juz proste konwersacje). caly dom wola do siebie: dobranoc, do jutra, dobra woda, jak sie masz. kiedy damien chce cos ode mnie, wola 'piwo prosze'. dla paricka i alexa jestem 'kaszenka'. a no i cukierki teraz dla wszystkich to 'dobry dobry' /po franc 'bon-bon/.. dali sie nabrac i tak juz zostalo:)

a oto foto

photos at last!!! for my pictures you'll have to wait till october but for now i'll post a few photos of patrick, meike and lucia. just 3 for now.it takes ages to post them... taaadam:

cotonou. to the left and right dontokpa - the biggest market in west africa.

stands with everything you can think of (from cars in pieces to chameleons)

and people circulating in narrow alleys with more things on sale on their heads.
yellow shirts belong to zem drivers - motorbike taxis.

name comes from "take me there quickly" in fon.

our first meeting. we worked and worked and worked:)

from the left: patrick, meryas, the back of edmonde,

me, meike, martial, damien and alex

probably the first ultimate frisbee game in benin:)

we started to throw the disc around in 6 people and soon

ended up with a full-scale game and three teams!

kpotome

this weekend we finally went to see the farm. yuppie!!! it's not that far but there's always sth to be done in the office. it's a scrap of land on the verge of a huge swamp. a small house, ponds with tilapia (fishhhh) and lots lots of plants. hibiscus, manioc, bananas, papayas, craint-craint, cucumbers, zucchinis (how do you spell it?), corn, rice, bread-trees, pineapples and basilic (damien apparently can't live without it:)) it's wonderfull and full of surprises...

there was also a hunting house - the "observatory"- to spy on animals not to kill them of course. but it's not there any more... it collapsed with us inside. we landed in muddy water of the swamp coverd with a film of iron coming from the laterite soil. no injuries. no crocodiles.

then we worked. we've built a small fish-pool made of clay. we've survived a clay&mud battle and ate a well deserved meal - cucumbers and zucchinis from the farm and akasa (slightly fermented manioc thing). once the women from the village of kpotome notice poeple coming to the farm, they come carrying things on sale on their heads. we've spent a wonderfull evening in our UN group, as we call it (one german; one polish, one urugayian, two french; one frenco-spanish, two beninian) listening to stories of Leon (the guardian of the farm) and Damien.

next day without swamp-swimming but with snake-hunting. damien noticed a snake on the tree right in the middle of the farm. a few people from the village gathered and organised themselves to catch the snake. they threw sticks to make the snake fall from the branch and then beated it to death with clubs. hard not to feel sorry for the snake. it was almost 2m long, green and beautiful. i don't know the name in english. but there'll be more snakes. Leon's found a skin of a 3m long cobra.

next time I'll write more about the people as they're the highlight of my life here. it's hard to put it in words but i'll try:)

first steps in the morning

when i get up... first i have to crawl from under the mosquito net. it's blue:) the mosquitos are not that annoying. much less than in mazury, trust me...
then to the right - the bathroom. concrete walls and a lot of light thanks to a hole in the roof. shower is a bucket and a bowl. i have to bring the water from a well in the courtyard.
then to the left - the office of the entreprise. two computers and a fridge. apart from selling fish and aquarias the entreprise does some other little business too. as it's close to the uni, people come to the office to have some things typed and printed. in the fridge we keep water and ice in small plastic bags on sell. very few people here can afford a fridge. apart from cold water and ice you can get a bit of bissap (sort of ice tea made of hibiscuss flower) prepared by nathalie - little, beautiful woman working here as a secretary.
a few more steps and i'm in the courtyard. red soil and red, fleshy leaves of some tree that i don' know. to the left there are some bowls and buckets with fish and water plants and the entrence to the house of Martial (the boss:)), Norliette and little Peace (absolutely delightfull little girl, a month old, notice the name!). to the right doors of Prosper, Rodriguez, Marcel and some other people that i can't recall now. 2 toilets for us all. a tap with potable water. a well. a blue old pick-up - the new joy and pride of the entreprise. and a blue (you see why i like this place so much!) gate. always open

i'm there!!!!

2h of delay without any visible reason at paris and then another 2 at tripolis, common disapointment in the plane after the pilot announced the outcome of the final, lots of comments from his part in arabic, anti-mosquito spray in the corridor before opening the door (even though i can't imagine any insect flying in the air as humid and thick as this)... and we're there.

hard to describe everything...(not only cause the internet is incredibly slow and the keyboard is french:/) so the basic info first: for the moment we're living in the suburbs of cotonou, in the office of the pantadon entreprise. we're hanging out mostly with edmonde (beninian student taking part in the same project), damien (frenchmen, co-founder of the farm), alexandre and lucia (from touluse, also on internship here)...got to go...

off we go!!!

the very first real post

I'M LEAVING ON SUNDAY AT 8.30
warsaw -> paris -> tripolis -> cotonou -> zinve

no visa, no idea if I should worry so no real worries so far. I'll figure out everything there. I can't wait...



on the light green it says 'benin', I hope

so to give you an idea of where I'm going... check out the pantadon farm and the strange country to the left of nigeria. and what is it all about? the project


cu soon. next post'll be from benin