the search continues...

Yovo means 'whitey' in the main southern Beninoise language, Fon. Little kids just love yelling 'yovo-yovo-yovo!!' every time they see one - occasionally in a jeering way, but usually they're just being silly, or want you to come over and shake their hand. We are in a fairly touristy town, Abomey, but you could still spend a few hours in town without seeing any other yovos.

It's hard to describe what people here are like without sounding cliched and patronising, but I have to say it: the women are really incredible. Yesterday a heavily pregnant woman walked past our hotel on her way to a ceremony nearby, carrying a big tray loaded with pineapple (they have little cylindrical hats to help balance stuff on their heads). Anyway she saw me eyeing the pineapples so we negotiated a price for one and she put the tray on the ground and cut up the pineapple for me. When she'd finished I helped her lift up the tray to put it back on her head and I couldn't believe how heavy the bloody thing was - it must've been at least 20 kilos and she was only a tiny little thing, and looked like she could've given birth the next day. Everywhere you see women selling stuff, carrying stuff, washing clothes, socialising or whatever, with little babies strapped to their backs like it was nothing. Sometimes little girls only 8 or so have a little sibling on their back too.

Yesterday morning we saw the biggest voudou ceremony so far, a resurruction. It was interesting, but slightly ruined for me by endless negotiation over the 'camera fee', and we didn't get to take photos of the good stuff anyway. But it was quite freaky seeing half a dozen men carrying aloft another dude all wrapped up in white clothes like a mummy. Then some women massaged him with palm oil for quite a while, and fortunately he did come back to life after that (apparently they sometimes don't) - he'd been 'dead' for seven days, although it's hard to know what really goes on, or why. I think it's a kind of initiation - quite different to the Haitian thing where they deliberately turn people into zombies.

Well well well. Things can be surprising here sometimes. Despite the renowned bureacratic tendencies here, Dave and I not only got our combined visas for Togo/Burkina/Niger/Cote D'Ivoire (defintely not going that last one though, don't worry mum) in record time - less than 24 hours - but we have also successfully applied for a one-month tourist visa for Ghana, also issued very quickly and with no fuss.

I haven't quite decided if we are going to go there yet - am slightly worried although technically it should all be cool. And it would be such a relief to speak to locals in English. There isn't much of a backpacker trail in this part of the world and most that are here speak French.

While waiting for our Ghana visas we had a couple of nights in Porto Novo, technically the capital of Benin but in reality, Benin's answer to Canberra - except that unlike Canberra, it doesn't even have much in the way of official buildings. It was just a small, quiet city and I didn't find it anywhere near as friendly as Grand Popo or even Cotonou. So it seems like small villages are the go here - I got to practice my French a lot more in that environment.

So now I'm briefly back in the big smoke to find that not only has Latham had a hissy fit and the ALP re-elected Beazley (I am kinda lost for words on this...) - but I forgot Australia Day! Oh dear...

So now we are heading to Abomey, formerly the residence of the most powerful kings from the Benin area. There are still quite a few kings in Benin - in fact we met one on the beach in Grand Popo. He had a special wooden staff with which people can touch rather than shaking his hand directly, although he shook hands with us in the normal way. He seemed quite chuffed with his status, afforded because of a patch of white skin on his arm (ie. that condition that Michael Jackson claims to have) which plucked him from obscurity as a newborn baby and into the royalty scene. He works as a photo journalist, and said there are about 152 kings in Benin today. So I guess we'll meet some more of them soon.

Thanks everyone for the comments and emails, I miss youse all lots! And shoutouts to Chris & Vicky on the arrival of Thandi, my mum for becoming a home-owner again, James for the splash and Michael - good luck with the wedding preps and the new blog :), I will find some voudou marriage tips for ya! xk.

Well Benin seems pretty cool so far, except for the main city Cotonou which is hellishly polluted. Just walking around here is like standing right behind a bus or a truck running on z-grade diesel. When we arrived the harmattan, a wind that blows once a year, usually in December, had been through Benin just a few days earlier so it was incredibly hazy as well.

Fortunately we won't be spending too long in Cotonou. The day after arriving here we went straight to Grand Popo, a beachside town and former slave port, although unlike most of the others this one is pretty quiet today, just a sprawling village with a couple of upmarket hotels and a few cheapo ones. We stayed at one of the latter, which was right on the beach and run by a moody guy called Doue. We met some of his family and lots of other people in Grand Popo, mostly men and boys as it seems the girls and women are flat out working all the time. The kids are very cute of course but about every third kid you speak to puts out their hand and says 'cadeaux?' - ie, they want you to give them money. But mostly people are quite friendly, especially outside of the city where everyone says bons soiuse (I can't spell in French but it means good evening, except here they say it any time after 10am), then often it's sa va and handshakes which, if you are a cool dude, involve a tricky little hand-clicking thing.

On our second or third day in Grand Popo, Doue's uncle took us on a boat to the other side of a big nearby lake, and we ended up in a voudou ceremony which involved lots of music, drinking palm wine and watching a couple of chickens being sacrificed (they got some palm wine first, at least). Then a local chief and his two wives turned up and approved someone's initiation. The voudou here is very very complicated and involved, and I probably only found out a fraction of it.

That afternoon a couple of Swiss girls turned up at the same guesthouse as us (we'd been the only tourists there) and thankfully one of them could speak very good English, as none of the locals can and I suspect we're not going to meet many Anglophone tourists. Last night we went to a bar and were taught a certain kind of dance which originated in Cote d'Ivoire called "coupe du calle" which means "cut" then something untranslatable. All the songs feature the same phrase and it's a bit like African trance. We couldn't do the dance of course, but it was fun anyway, and we ran into my other English-speaking friend who is a local drummer and works at the town's Finnish-Beninoise arts centre.

When we headed out of Grand Popo this morning I felt quite sad to say goodbye to everyone. A toute a leure.

After being bizarrely refused visas to Ghana about 2 days before we were due to fly out, me and Dave have decided to start our trip in Benin. We were seriously disappointed about not being able to go to Ghana, partly because we had some volunteering work lined up there. Also, it's the only really safe English-speaking country in West Africa, and I know bugger-all French.

But I do have a copy of "French in 8 hours with (the slightly creepy) Michel Thomas", which I am 1.5 hours through - so I can now order a glass of white wine and, if necessary, a second glass of white wine, which is bound to be useful as W.Africa is famed for its wine.

If anyone's wondering what the deal is with Benin, well it's the home of voodoo and is still practised by about half of the people there. It also has some disturbing slave-trade landmarks, ok beaches and houses on stilts. In otherwords, just like Queensland.