Picture tour!

The start of a picture tour...

The road... and the side of the road

The side of the road where you can buy bread and fruit (mostly oranges and some pineapple)

Again, the side of the road

The paved road and the side of the road. I was on a zem while I took a lot of these pictures. The guy in the purple/yellow shirt is a zem. They wear different colors in different cities. In Porto-Novo they just wear baseball hats to identify themselves as zems. That was scary at first.

Most people buy gas like this. Real gas stations are few and far between, but people should really use them instead of this. It really isn't legal. It seems pretty unsafe to me, too. C'est l'Afrique! (See the salesguy?)

The bus gare- when there are buses, at least, that road is where they stop.

The bus gare again. There was a lot of rain before I took these pictures, as you can see!

Random construction project

A building on the side of a road to my house

A road to my house. When the road is not paved, it's called "terre rouge," meaning "red earth." There's a lot of it.

That's a primary school. I'm pretty sure it's primary- on the same road pictured above.

Getting closer to my house. We've turned off the road pictured above.

You guessed it! On the way to my house...

Directly to the right of my concession- the buvette!

The gate to the concession that contains mine

What you see straight ahead upon entering the concession

What you see to the left upon entering the concession

That gate on the right leads to my concession!

The smaller concession with my house- straight ahead!

That's my house! The window to the left of the door is the dining/bike/clothes drying room and the window to the right is the living room. Don't ask about the bench below the window with the stuff on it- not mine.

A glance to the right upon entering my concession

This is where cooking happens in the concession and wood storage is to the left under there.

See that wheelbarrow? That's where I put my trash (if I'm not compelled to throw it down the latrine to be sure people don't look through it). And I dump the waste water from my kitchen in the dirt behind that 'V'-shaped curb.

Another shot at where I toss the waste water. You can also see another angle of the wood storage/cooking area.

All right, well I know these haven't been the most exciting pictures but unfortunately it's taken a few hours to upload them. I've got a lot more to share; obviously I shouldn't have taken a whole lot of pictures in the span of two days to upload! I will continue the picture tour soon!

Love to all!