the search continues...

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.