Back at post!

Hello again! I'm back in Kandi after a little vacation to America - the land not of milk and honey, but in my case, tortilla chips and brownies. Before I get to today's topic, I'll sum up the return trip. In Paris, I had a ridiculously long layover of six hours, in which I would have liked to have slept (and even found a lounging chaise, if you will, on which to do so), but alas, could not fall asleep. I spent approximately $30 on a Coke Zero, a large Evian, and a (really) delicious airport pasta salad. Paris, even your airport alone tempted me to stay. Someday I will venture outside your doors and get to see the actual city. I don't know what it is about Air France, but it's just better. I felt right at home finding my seat on the Paris to Cotonou flight: some Beninese guy was sitting in my seat and I was like, um, excuse me sir, I have that seat. "No you don't," he said, "I specifically reserved this seat on the internet." "Okay, well you can see 18D is right here on my boarding pass, and I know it's slightly weird that it goes 18E and then 18D, but 18D is definitely the aisle." He huffed and puffed enough to make me calmly concede to sit in the middle, but then I pointed up to where the seats were clearly labeled, and said, "tu vois?" and the three men behind us started laughing enough to make him move. Were they laughing with me or at me? I will never know. And then like so often happens in (or on the way to) Benin, I felt like a jerk, even though I was right.


Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac in Cotonou (which for some reason always feel more dignified than using a jetway, probably because I pretend I'm the President leaving Air Force One), I thought about a book I read before Peace Corps, the annoyingly named Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. It's a memoir which, if I recall correctly, takes place in what is today's Zimbabwe. The author talks about returning home and how, even if she hadn't known where her plane had landed, she would be able to recognize Africa by smell alone. So I took a few sniffs to see if this were really the case, and no, it just smelled like an airport. Still, I decided, West Africa must have its own variety of smells that are slowly inching their way into my memory. And that turned out to be true, just not to be found in Cotonou. On the bus ride back to post, I knew we were close to Kandi when I started to smell whatever herb (perhaps mint or sage, although I once tasted it and couldn't tell) makes the whole town smell clean and crisp when the wind blows right. When it doesn't, it brings one of my least favorite smells ever: goat being cooked. (I wasn't too torn up about missing Tabaski this year). The mustard cakes that are added to sauce (mustard in the form of patties that look like cow poop, in other words) have a similar nauseating effect. Perfume selection in Benin, I would have to guess, is not terribly varied, so every time I smell my host mom Juditha's perfume, I assume she's right behind me. This happens at least twice a week. Also, I've never figured out if it's cologne or what, but there is a very particularly strong (cologne?) that our Peace Corps Niger assistant, Boubacar, used to wear that's both nostril curling and not entirely unpleasant. Whenever I catch a whiff of it (usually at the market), I always get to wondering if that's some sort of El-Hadji (a Muslim man who, like Boubacar, has been to Mecca) trademark.

I don't know who to ask, but it seems like it's going down as one of my Great Unanswered Questions, just like "who sells those gorgeous silver rings with the Arabic phrases? I want one!"

Because I'm pretty sold on the idea of aromatherapy (is anyone not?), I had brought five or six of my favorite Way Out Wax candles to Benin last summer. Best thing I packed, for sure. They certainly help make my concrete oven/prison cell of a house more like home. Perfume was this trip's most valuable player occupant of my suitcase. It will remind me of home and that before too long, the (relatively minor, comparatively speaking) hardships of sweat, constant grime, and feet that would make a pedicurist scream will be things I laugh about at dinner parties. So I'm going to try to continue to enjoy my time au Benin, but from now on, I'm going to smell better doing it.