Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Leaving Lokossa...or really hippos

As the title suggests, I will be leaving Lokossa on Sunday for my post, the tiny Fo-Bourée. I am excited and a wee bit nervous/rather freaked, but I think it's about time for our stage (training) to be over. Anyways, on another note - since I really don't have much more to say about that - Last week me, Rima and Lauren tried to go and see the hippos that live near Lokossa. To do this, we had to first leave around 5:30 and catch Zemis to the tiny village nearby. When we finally managed to find zemis - no one is up at 5:30 - the only ones we could find tried to charge us about ten times the price to get there. They saw of course that we are yovos (foreigners), and that there were clearly no other zems arround, so they figured they'd charge us a crazy price and we'd pay it. We got them don to only double the real price, and settled for that. We finally got to the village, and had to go and find the chief, who in turn had to go and find the person who would take us to see the hippos - all at about 5:45 AM, when it was still mostly dark out.When we were finally ready to get started, our sketchy Zemi drivers decided to follow us and the guide along the path to see the hippos. Ah well. The path was kind of its own little mini advernture. It was maybe three-fourths of a mile long, and was almost entirely made up of mid-calf deep mud, that was covered further by a layer of water from the torrential downpours of the night before - gotta love the rainy season! Not to mention that it is almpost certainly infested with hookworm... Anyways, we got to the lake where the hippos live, and the guide took us out in a dugout canoe, called a pirogue, (not to be confused with a pirogie, though wouldn't that be wonderful right now...). Basically as soon as I sat down, I was bitten by a tiny little bug that hurt more than I could possibly imagined from such a little thing. anyways, my whole knee swelled up, but it didn't spread to the rest of me, so I figured I was good to go. It was a stunning lake,



. we stayed on the lake for about an hour, maybe, didn't see any hippos, though we got to see their various haunts: where they eat at night, where they eat in the morning, and where they eat during the rest of the day. But, although we didn't actually see any hippos, it was still worht the trip, I'd say! Though the walk back through the mud was a bit of a downer, when there was no prospect of hippos to keep us going. But, its ok, since when we got back to the village, the chief brought out a basin of I'm sure pristine water, and our zem drivers washed our feet for us. We werre then treated to a nice early morning pick me up of sodabe (Beninese hard-liquer, think almost everclear. It's that good, and we were on our way home.... Later...

ok, I thought you might like to see me and some of the group in traditional clothing, so enjoy...