Donc, Wednesday past, the T.E.F.L. volunteers left Porto Novo to go and visit the sites where they'll spend the next two years teaching.
Toucountouna is absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, beautiful. It's a small village of about 4000 people, nestled among an Appalachian-esque chain of mountains. What's more, the village itself sits on the peak of a mountain in said mountain chain. If I look in any direction, I can see clear across other mountain chains for at least 100 miles--even on rainy days.
At night, the stars can be seen right down to the horizon. The sky in general is so clear, appears so close that one gets the urge to reach up and grab a star. Even better, I can see not just one but several planets on any given night.
The homes of the villages are exactly like you're thinking. They're colored a deep tan brown with straw or tin roofs. The major highway of Benin runs right through my village, and the offshoot roads are made from a kind of stone gravel including brown and red stones. The village and the homes look exactly like the places on the pamphlets trying to entice people to visit strange and exotic lands. In fact, there's a national park about 17 miles away from my town, complete with elephants, lions, gazelle, antelope, and of course crocs, a waterfall 13 miles from my town and a huge lake about 3 miles away.
My home is on a dusty road. 3 rooms, and an external area for doucheeing and bathrooming. It's a cement structure--I will not be huddled in some small dank dark pit pooping :)
Admittedly, I had a very low point during my site visit because it finally dawned on me that I am in Africa and will be here for 2 years and the people I love are back in the States--talk about breakdown. Thank you Rob :)
2 comments:
Beautiful pics
I remember some time ago and then again later on,Clay and Chanda related to me a time they had walked railroad tracks in Chambersburg. The goal was to reach that single point of convergence. They told me they had walked, so far out. "We weren't getting any closer to it and realized we better turn back. "We had been gone too long", weary legs, doubt crept in and night fell as the unknown around them closed in. They had each other, a true, point of convergence.
I was home, unaware of my childrens journey, only the slightest of doubts, that they were in the best of care.
Hey! baby boy, my guess is, you have pressed on beyond that, that single point
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