Coming Home!

Hello all. I just wanted to drop a short note to say that I will be in the States from Dec 23 to Jan 6. I miss you all and can't wait to get home.

THE BIRD 

I was able to cook a full Thanksgiving dinner for 20 people in my small kitchen on my efficiency stove in hot African weather. Half way through the meal, I ran out of gas and had to go refuel the bottle.  

Not much longer... 

...And dinner is served! 

After swimming, we went to a bar on the beach where there was good drinks ... I mean dancing. And BBQ. Good times. 

 

I finally had time to go to the beach. The waves here are pretty strong. 

 

 

 

Here's my trip from the highway to the dirtroad, to the two track, to the dirt bike trail to no trail on a motorcycle through the corn field. Life is good! 

 

 

 

Here I am with my viel and sunglasses ready for anything the village can dish out. I'm on the back of a motorcycle, camcorder in hand filming the fields that the villagers planted 

Here are guides showing me the fields 

In several villages I was happy to see a large harvest which will be used for the school feeding program.  

 

 

I stopped filming for a while to watch some girls working at the well. I was in awe of their strenght and beauty. Here are some photos of them. 

 

Here is one of the girls that was by the well.  

Back from the villages

I am back in Cotonou. As usual, it is taking me a little time to get my pictures together. I am really making an effort to get more efficient at this but life here is often anti efficient. I am continuing to learn a lot - good, bad and indifferent about the way things work here and in development work in general. It is good education however much it frustrates me.

The villages and the villagers are beautiful. I have such a refreshing time while I am with them which warrants all that I put up with the rest of the time. Soon, I will the the photos themselves tell the story.

Stay tuned!

Back for a second...

I have returned from a 6 day tour of rural Benin. I went to make a short documentary of best practices that villages have come up with to provide lunch at school. Several villages have developed a community field that they use to grow food for the kids. Some fields have been incredibly successful. I went to these villages to talk to the people about what they did and how they organized themselves. I filmed them and am now editting the film to show to other villages who are struggling to feed their kids.

I will be leaving again for the villages on tuesday and will be coming back to Cotonou the following Sunday. I will post new pictures then. I was hoping to have time to do it this weekend, but I've been very busy editing the film.

Here's me working from the Hotel in Niger.  

Here are some goats in the village. I took the picture cause there were three birds that landed on their backs. 

(sorry these are out of order) This is the place where I held my meetings out in the countryside. It is called an SOS village. It is for orphans. There are villages like this around the world. Kids are taken in and assigned 10 to a house and a woman stays and cares for them as a mother. It is a very successful program world wide and all their villages look exactly the same. I visited one in Niger and two in Benin.