[ Djougou, Benin ]
Bonjour/soir, World Travelers.
A lot has happened in the past few weeks, and I’ve been a busy boy trying to document as much of it as possible. Mostly? It’s been great: new friends and fascinating neighbors, a traditional African reception for an Islamic wedding, a bona fide evangelical Christian church service, and discovering the best barber in West Africa. In the minus column came a literal melt-down of my PC’s ever-failing power supply, and (drum roll please) a butt-kicking case of typhoid fever. Both of these negatives combined to keep me in town two weeks longer than planned…and counting.
To quickly put minds at ease, the typhoid recovery kicked into overdrive this morning, after a few days of unpleasantness. At each stage, I received great care at a local neighborhood clinic, and constant mothering and assistance and forceful insistence from my many new African sisters in the neighborhood (“Here, eat this soup. ALL of it. Do NOT drink that soda!” Etc, etc.)
And I’m able to type and post this story only because I met perhaps the world’s most resourceful electrician. A man who reworked the power supply connector three times in as many days until he simply replaced the offending connector with…a wristwatch pin. Genius. You’ll see. Eventually.
For this post, let’s limit things to new friends & neighbors, including the magic barber and the wondrous African Sisterhood who mothered me back to health.
As usual, the following image captions will fill you in on further details.
Without.
Further.
Ado,
—jim
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