Utter Chaos...

I woke up to a wonderful day.  I brought a pair of my smaller jeans with me.  They fit absolutely perfectly.  I thought I would lose a couple of pounds here.  Looks like I may have.

Joseph arrived early this morning so we could take a taxi to Benin.  We arrived at the market, men and cars were all in disarray, and the men were trying to shove people in cars.  Once we got into our taxi, it parked right next to a blaring speaker.  Blaring speakers seems to be part of African culture...let me rephrase that, bad blaring speakers are part of African culture.  It seems like all the old, outdated, 3 feet or larger speakers have arrived here. 

Anyhoo,  I was trying to explain to Joseph that I needed a Visa to get into Benin because I was trying to figure out how the taxi went straight to Contonou.  As it turns out, I did need a visa.  The crazy part is that Joseph didn't have ID and went through the border just fine.  I have a 48 hour visa which cost 20,000 CFA (a little over $20).  Now I have three pretty visas to display in my almost expired passport.

We arrived in Contonou about 3 hours later. This city is so polluted, I am barely able to breathe.  On the surface, it seems like Accra, Lome and Contonou are all the same just three different countries.  I managed to find a hair shop that did caucasian hair.  They washed and blow dried it.  I wanted to see how much I need to cut off when I get back to the US.  One of Bethel's friends' tried to help me when I was in Ghana and my hair got fried.  He met up with his sister.  Once again, I walked a few miles today.  Joseph is not always the best communicator, sometimes I walk and I have no idea where I am going, why I am going there and how much it's going to cost me once I get there.

Theresa and Betrand have opened their house to us and feed us dinner and dessert especially because we arrived empty handed.  I found them on Couchsurfing.com and seems to be a fine experience.  Theresa is from Maryland, so it's nice to ramble to an American. She is the first white person I have talked to here.  She has been patient because my plans have been constantly changing.

Not sure what our plan is for tomorrow.  Still flying by the seat of my pants (at least in my skinny ones).  I would like to get out of the city, there is too much smog and congestion.

I am looking forward to coming home on Friday.  I am still hot, sweaty and dirty.