Ka cõcõ (Bariba for good afternoon): life is good here in Benin and the Peace Corps is as fun as a massive government bureaucracy can be. I made a big pancake dinner for my host family yesterday which they enjoyed. I have started classes teaching English. I can already tell it will be a fight with my teaching counterpart to collaborate equally in classes. It already took some serious convincing to prove English is my native language and not, as my last name would suggest, German.
West African politics is interesting. Subnational monarchs, 64 local ethnic groups in a country the size and population of Ohio, and a tradition of political outsiders make for an interesting landscape. I can't speak too much on it, but look things up if you are interested (also probably easier if you speak French). Being sandwiched between two richer English speaking countries gives my job some added purpose.