this was writen on May 7th

Last night I got home from Benin and Togo. I was expecting to have to jump the gate to my house, which I have already had to do twice, but my lovely host sister Rachel was there in the yard to open the gate and greet me with a hug; I got home a day early to everyone's surprise! They were all happy to see me, and I them and my bed, which I needed! My roommate came home, I told her that I didn't pay any money to stay in Benin, she asked me how and told me she was jealous, and we went to bed. Before all of this it was Sunday and I was boarding a tro tro at 8 in the morning to go to Lome, Togo. As I boarded the car I was stuffing my face with Kosi: a doughnut like food with onions and salt and some times spring onions. Lauren, the friend I traveled with was eating Bo fruit, which is a legit Ghanaian doughnut. Doughnuts in the morning, there is nothing better! As we were getting settled a man came onto the tro to preach the word of God, because those who were traveling where missing the Sunday morning service. It was hilarious; the majority of those in the tro tro were Muslim and then there was Lauren and I. He kept saying "Can I have an Amen," and all of us would grumble into our shoulders! Finally he got off the tro and we got on our way. At the border I had to fill out a million forms, buy a one week Togo visa, and dodge the rain as it began to pour! We finally got a car going to Coutenou and through the rain we drove. I was convinced; as we drove along side the ocean through Lome, that it was a gross city, but Lauren assured me that it was beautiful in the sun (she has been there many times and should know.) In Coutenou we found some food and tried to find a phone, as our Ghana phones no longer worked. We needed the phone in order to call the person Lauren had talked to on Couchsurfing.org about a place to stay in Coutenou. Alright, I must explain: Couch surfing is a website where you can find a place to stay for a night for free in any place in the world. What happens is you go on the site and you look up the city that you want to go to. Then you look at the people listed who are listed for that city and thus willing to give you a place to stay for the night. Those listed have a place for you to sleep and are generally willing to show you around their city if you want. The idea is that you will surf there one time and maybe these people will stay at your place or someone else’s place another time and it all evens out and everyone creates a smaller world where you get to meet and stay with interesting people create friendships all over the world and not lock yourself into a hotel room to not learn about the culture. I think it is my new favorite thing. The first night we stayed with a lady on couch surfers, she is Italian and speaks perfect French. She teaches school in Coutenou and is pretty cool lady! Also, her house rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The second day, the first real day we were there we went around Coutenou ON MOTORCYCLES instead of trotros or taxis (those don’t exist in Benin) saw the city and ate a lovely breakfast of French bread and coffee and egg. The Beninese are so French! Then we wandered to markets and parks and when we got hungry, more French bread and this time amazing avocado salad and fruit. This is when I started to need to work on my French, and quickly, because even asking how much a zemmijean (motorcycle) ride cost required French! We had also planned to go out of Coutenou to see another city, as we had seen the city a bit the day before, but my ATM card failed to work many times over and Lauren’s ATM card got stuck in the ATM so we were stuck! We were only stuck till three though, because the Bank ended up being really quick to retrieve it (Unlike in Ghana where it would have taken three days) and that evening we were on our way to Porto Novo. Porto Novo is the capital of Benin and completely cute. It’s covered in churches and small pink houses with small wood shuttered windows, think Portuguese or Spanish! We were dropped at a hotel, which people swore up and down was the cheapest of the cheap, but let me tell you, for a college it was crazy spendy. We told them we couldn’t stay there and we went to stay at the other hotel they recommended. L’Hotel etait ferme!!!!! They were doing road work in preparation for the 50th anniversary or Benin’s independence and the hotel was closed because no one could get to it. So as we talked in very bad French, which did get better as the trip went on, Lauren continued to refuse the expensive hotel and before I knew it we were invited to stay at one of the contractors rented houses for the night. I say rented because he is from Coutenou, but has been working 6 days a week in Porto Novo for a few months so he rents from a family that lives there. That night we went from stay in the Italian Lady’s palace to staying on a cement floor in a guy’s rented three-room place. It was not bad though, we got to play with a bunch of funny French speaking children, eat what seemed like Spanish rice, and I took out my Ananse braids that were killing me. They were cornrows and I had a fro, it was great! In the morning, after not sleeping at all: I was on cement; we went into town and got coffee. Beninese people are obsessed with the stuff! We saw churches and some of the most beautiful Mosques I have ever seen. We got lost, and then found by too many men who wanted to marry me or thought I was gorgeous, which just gets annoying after a while! And then we got ripped off when we went to a stilt village that didn’t even need to be on stilts. It was nice to be on the water though!!! Then to a museum we didn’t actually go to, bought some music, ate some strange yogurt/ ice cream stuff and a ton of fruit and then back to Coutenou to call Sir Rubin! I call him Sir because the first time we saw him he road up to us like a prince in dress clothes on a motorcycle to save us from the horrible men who wanted all of our contact information! Rubin is in his late 20’s from Benin, recently graduated from the University there, and the best couch surfing host in the world. He was super nice, has great friends that we got to meet and chill with, has a huge bed that Lauren and I got to use, helped us with our French, which was getting much better by that point, and we helped him with English. He took us our to dinner with his friends, where we ate something that reminds me of white Jell-O, but did not taste that way, with peppa (pepper) and had a generally great time, and then road back to his place, on a motorcycle. It had rained again and that night driving back dodging the puddles was like motocross! So much fun!!! The following day Rubin stuck us in a shared cab heading to Quidah to meet up with his friend who would show us around. It was so funny, in all our time so far in Benin we had only seen maybe five tourists excluding ourselves, in Quidah the count went up to 11 in one hour. His friend was really nice and showed us the sacred forest that had many modern shrines to voodoo gods and many many mosquitoes, he also showed us the auction site, slave walk and the launching point for the slave ships heading to the Caribbean. He said, “vous ne allez pas parler englais aujourd’ hui,” and we tried our hardest to only speak French. Forced to remember in order to communicate I got really good, again. Don’t ask me to speak when I get home! When we got back from Quidah we were going to make Guacamole for Rubin and company but the avocado went bad, so they cooked us a dinner from Cote d’Ivore a cassava cous cous with sautéed tomatoes and onions, peppa, and fish. It was delish and super easy to make elsewhere. I taught them the card game spit, Lauren taught them spoons, which they loved and then we went back to his place in order to sleep and be up again in time to catch an early car to Lome. We spent only a day there and that was really enough. We went to a voodoo market and looked at it from the gate. We really didn’t want to pay to look at a bunch of dead indangered animals. We saw Lauren’s boyfriend’s mom and walked on the beach, and then it was time to head home. On the border the man checking our passports, when Lauren went to the restroom asked if he could follow her there. I said No way, he said he was a man of power and an African man. When Lauren got back he insisted that we stay at his house when we come again to Coutenou, hell no, and that I was the one he really liked. Armed with good bread with amazing avacado salad in it, and fanyogo vanilla (frozen vanilla yogurt) we made our way back to Accra.