Solar Eclipse

I get to mark one more thing off the list of things to do before you die. I watched a solar eclipse of the sun yesterday. It was a 98% eclipse, you needed to be about 100 miles north to get the full thing. However, it was still incredibly cool.

People here are still pretty traditional so they had to warn everyone ahead of time on the radio about what it was and why it was happening. Still, several people were either afriad or performed religious ceremonies.

I went with some people from work to the beach. I drew in the sand what was happening for some of the kids that came by.

At its most complete stage, all that was visible of the sun was a little sliver at the very bottom. Still this tiny tiny sliver, was enough to still make it impossible to look at without dark sun glasses. I was quite astonished how bright 2% of the suns rays are.

I took a picture for you all:

Here's what food aid looks like 

These dudes love this guys 

Here's the tour bus, loaded with groupies and music 

Groupies 

Notice the green dudes... 

International Woman's Day

To all the women out there, happy international woman's day. Here, the day was well celebrated at my job. All the women wore white to work. It was very beautiful to see. We additionally had a party at the end of the day. A guest speaker came to speak about civil law - birth, marraige and death. It was interesting for me to hear what Benin law and culture is regarding these life milestones.

Counting the votes

Cotonou was very quiet yesterday. Silently waiting for the elections to pass turning out a new president. The country was braced in case of violence. There was none. It was quieter than it has ever been since I've been here.

The polling stations closed late last night. I live next one of the mayor of Cotonou's Office (one of the candidates) All his people showed up about 12:30 or 1am to party the close of the election and the campaigning. It was the only noise I heard all day.

It will probably be a while before they figure out the winner. If in this election a single candidate was able to take more than 50% of the vote. He or she will be declared president. If not, the two top candidates will have a run-off vote in 2 weeks.

My guess is that we will have a run off vote.

The problem has been that the budget for elections was reduced and they didn't have enough voting cards or other supplies for voting stations. On top of that there was record voter turn out. As such, many people didn't get to vote.

Here's an article with more details.

Article about elections

Here's an article that describes well the situation here in Benin. Still working on getting pics