Safari!

Alfakoara and Parc W
I spent the week before Christmas is Alfakoara, a village 65k south of me that is at an entrance to Parc W. Myself and five other volunteers helped Weihow run a tourism formation in Alfakoara and then we chaperoned his environmental club on a safari.
For the tourism formation we toured two different villages with villagers who have been trained as guides. We gave them pointers on things to say and things not to say for instance saying ‘faites attention’ instead of ‘doucement’ which is a word the Beninese use in place of ‘watch out’ or ‘excuse me’ and it means ‘gently’ so it really doesn’t make sense to westerners when the Beninese say it. But it was cool to see these villages, one had a crocodile farm and the other had a man who makes cool hats.
The second part of the trip was chaperoning the kids on the Parc W field trip. It was a really cool thing to do because these kids will probably live next to this Parc their whole lives and not have another opportunity to go into it. Entering the parc requires paying a fee and renting vehicles and both things are too expensive for the average Beninese person. Weihow got a grant to pay for the trip so it was completely free for the kids and they seemed to have a really great time even though we did not see that many animals just monkeys, baboons and a few different kinds of antelope.
We spent one night in the parc and most people slept in huts at the forestier campment at point triple where Burkina Faso, Benin and Niger meet, but Weihow, Melissa and I decided to sleep at a campement across the river in Burkina. This meant we had to cross the river after dark and then had to find the camp without really knowing how to get there, clearly it did not turn out too well. First off, Melissa lost her shoe while crossing the river on the rock dam. Instead of letting it go she stripped off her clothes and dove in after it. Luckily she was able to get it but since she did not want to get her warm clothes wet she then hiked around in her underwear. When we got to the other side we started to follow the trail. At one point we veered to the right on what looked like the trail but after a while we realized it was a game path so we turned around and found the real trail and followed it for about ten minutes until we got to a clearing. Naturally I assumed the camp was nearby so Weihow marked the trail with a pile of rocks and we looked around a little bit but decided we were not in the right place so we admitted defeat and headed back to Benin. The next morning, when we crossed the river with the kids and the guides we found the pile of rocks about 20 ft away from the Burkina camp…go figure, that’s what you get for hiking around in the dark. Back at the Benin camp, Weihow, Melissa and I decided to stay outside and we slept in an open pavilion near the huts. Weihow heard an animal in the middle of the night but it stopped making noise before he could wake us up but apparently it was pretty close to us. The next morning, the guide who hadn’t realized that we had slept outside, asked us if we had heard the lion walking through camp. Luckily I hadn’t because I probably would have peed in my sleeping bag. The next day we walked around in Burkina a little bit and then headed back to Alfakoara.
So I am now back at my post and I am happy to have electricity again after spending a whole week in Weihow’s village and the Parc. I am also happy to be sleeping inside again since we slept at the elephant viewing post every night while in Alfakoara. We did not see any elephants during the day but we could hear them bathing at night. They are pretty noisy. Right now it is a time of year known as ‘harmattan’ when cold winds come down from the Sahara and make the nights pretty chilly. Of course it is still around 95 degrees during the day but the cool nights are a nice change of pace. Christmas is in just a few days and I cannot wait to spend it in Kandi where most of my friends will be coming to celebrate the holiday! We are going to make cheeseburgers to celebrate!