I left Kandi last Wednesday for Cotonou and for the first time opted to not take the bus. My faith in the Indian-run bus line I normally take has tanked recently, so instead I called the 4am taxi man named Gouda - like the cheese - and arrived in Parakou by 7:15am. From there I scrambled into a rickety minivan where I was sandwiched between an obese maman and a semi-catatonic young man for the next nine hours. Despite a great fear of deep vein thrombosis and having to hold my helmet, backpack and purse in far too few square inches, I actually arrived in Cotonou before nightfall. That alone may have been worth all the hassle. My reasoning for an extended trip down south was two-fold: complete my mid-service medical exam and send Alex off to what he liked to refer to as "Murica." As I often like to remind people, I haven't required medical care since arriving in Benin, other than a brief looking over after my tussle with a motorcycle. My brown Peace Corps medical record, which looks extremely official in a military type of way, was much thinner than the other volunteers' that were sitting on our doctor's desk. Side note: our doctor do a passable job of respecting HIPAA laws, but at any moment I could have picked up someone else's file from the desk and flipped through it. Anyway, the exam itself was pretty pointless. Sadly the lab technician found some variety of intestinal parasite I've never heard of, but I'm pretty certain it's the same one I had last fall that happily promoted a little weight loss. The doctor said it would clear up on its own. And really, other than a "manque d'appetit," in the mornings, I don't feel any different. Other than that, I'm as healthy as a horse. An American horse, not the one in my neighborhood with pinkeye and a look of complete annoyance.
After the doctor dismissed me with a clean bill of health and enough anti-malaria meds to last me until next May (!), Nina and I took what was possibly the easiest and most relaxing taxi ride of our service to Grand Popo, a beach resort town about two hours west of Cotonou. Other than Parc Pendjari, Grand Popo's resorts are pretty much THE tourist attraction in Benin. For only the second time in my life - the other being last month - I showed up at a hotel without reservations. In fact, neither of us had done any research and let the taxi driver drop us off wherever he chose. Less than thirty seconds later, we were walking down a sandy, canopied path to a (classily) pirate-themed hotel, wondering how we managed to wake up from the taxi ride in what clearly must have been another country. A clean, American hotel-grade pool, a beach bar, a giant (life-sized?) chess set, and a tiled, pristine room awaited us. Oh, right, and so did the Atlantic Ocean. Birthday weekend perfection. Nina swam while I lounged in a pool chaise (they exist here!), my arm sore from repeated pinchings. Later we sat on the beach and watched the fisherman on the shoreline reel in their wooden boats using mile-long ropes. If it sounds like a lot of work, you'd be correct. It took a team of at least twenty men to pull in each boat, like playing tug-of-war with the ocean. Later we dined on pizza and fettucini and pinneapple and banana smoothies. When it came time to leave on Sunday, we put off flagging down a taxi on the roadside in order to stay for lunch. That's how good the food was, or at least how desperate I've gotten for something other than couscous and lentils that I don't have to cook.
But now it's back to reality. Five more weeks until a real vacation and break from l'afrique. Until then, I leave you with a pre-birthday picture of 3/4 of Team Niger - Mary, Kimie, and I - taken in Cotonou.
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