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).