Benin Bound

Hello friends, family, future/current/past PCVs, the curious,

      Next Monday, June 23rd,  I fly from JFK airport to Cotonou, Benin, to begin an adventure of service and education. I have been invited by the Peace Corps to serve as a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Teacher in the Education Sector. 

      This departure becomes more real in writing. The past few months have been full of anticipation, emails, packing lists, blogs, anxiety, doctors' visits, excitement, french, goodbyes, all in attempt to ground this future in reality. Within the necessary preparations of moving to a new hemisphere, there is a presence of the enchanted in this new work. 

      But this opportunity comes with serious responsibilities. This blog will serve as one those responsibilities.  I intend for this space to serve a two-fold purpose: 1) I want to tell you, my reader, about a people you may be unfamiliar with, and 2) I want this to be a place where we can meet.

      This may be your first encounter with Benin. Perhaps the first time you had ever heard of Benin was through me. When John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961, the institution was founded upon promoting world peace and friendship to all people. To achieve this end, three goals were established:

• To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans

For my American readers, this blog will serve as an attempt to provide that understanding of the Beninese people. For my future Beninese reader, I hope this can provide an understanding of the American people as well.

     If all goes well, I will be in Benin for 27 months, until September 2016. I want to thank my mother, father, brother, cousins, grandfather, grandmother, grams, uncles, aunts, teachers, my friends in Baltimore, Annapolis, Ocean Pines, and those scattered on the earth. You, my reader, you hold a high place in my heart. I could not have made it here without you!

      I am still young and for me, 2 years is a long time (I have been told it is not). In my absence, imagine this blog as a front porch on a summer evening. Let us speak long and leisurely.