Soul Stealing from the Back of a Motorbike - My New Weekend Pastime

Last weekend was like something out of a dream: I was on the back of a motorbike, on a dirt road, driving along the coast of West Africa. Unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is that fact that I actually took some photos! I know, I know. Very hard to believe, but I did. And I attribute this strange occurrence to the motorbike. Yes, things are getting very strange indeed. First, I was on a motorbike (remember, this is conservative me we're talking about), and now, I'm saying it was fantastic and is the sole reason for the photos you're about to see. Let me explain.

Benin is not an easy place to take photos. People are everywhere, all the time. Don't get me wrong, I love photos with people in them and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more photogenic people than the Beninese (especially the kids!), but let's not forget, this is voodoo country. You take someone's photo, you've stolen their sole. Luckily, most Beninese people will happily sell their camera-loving soul for a few francs; however, you do run the risk of running into the few who would rather throw a temper-tantrum and shout at you in Fon (local language here) than squeeze you for your pocket change. I guess their souls are worth more to them. Just the sight of your camera sends some people off; you don't even have time to ask them for permission. So needless to say, I'm not too keen on whipping out the camera.

Also, this means that you have to ask everyone in the general vicinity before you take a photo which draws additional attention to yourself and makes it virtually impossible to get those precious candid shots. The whole thing adds up to a less than ideal photo taking experience. You aren't going to be walking the streets of Benin with your fanny pack and your camera hanging around your neck.

I've tried taking photos from inside the car, but it's hard to get a nice picture through a dirty window. To top it off, the crowded, poorly maintained streets combined with the car's large size rule out any stealthy get-aways if someone decides to pull a crazy. Actually, you'd probably be better off on foot. At least then you could run for it.

So this weekend on the motorbike was a real treat. I could pull out T's camera phone (already much easier to disguise than my Sony Cyber-shot) and steal a photo (or a soul) on the run. And I did. And at the risk of being excessive, I've posted most of my shots here, not because I'm proud of them as photos, but because I'm proud that I finally managed to take them.

Let's start with the beach. Can you believe I actually live here? 20 minutes on a motorbike and I'm swimming in this ocean? No, neither can I.

But here's my proof :-) Obviously, I can't take credit for taking this photo.

See, T was there too, looking naturally contemplative in a sort of James Dean kind of way...

And this is how we got there, and why I am able to post these photos here... Can you tell I love the motorbike? Who would have ever thought! I think I might have to get my own now :-) That green and yellow jalopy behind it is a taxi cab. I think we've got the better ride, don't you?

This is the road that takes you to the beach. Yeah, I know it's boring, but that's what people do. They take pictures and then make other people look at them. I'm sorry. I can't be expected to break tradition.

And these are some of the things that got in our way and slowed us down... First, cows complete with herder. (Ah! There's the beef, Gondul!)

And then fishermen carting a giant net.

I wonder if this is their boat?

It could be anybody's boat really. There are lots of little communities of people living all along the coast, though they may be sparse communities compared to the hustle and bustle of Cotonou.

So sparse that this old restaurant/bar looks very out-of-business indeed. But I guess it was probably meant for Yovos anyway.

That's it folks. Slide show is over. You are free. Thanks for watching. Come again.

Expat Africa: At the Benin Marina Hotel

Sitting by the pool under a palm tree, on a cloudless day, cooled by the ocean breeze, you can't help but think, This is the life. And it is.

In a country where a person is lucky to earn more than $1000 a year, a $200 night stay at Cotonou's Benin Marina Hotel is, generally speaking, more than just a special weekend getaway; it's an impossibility - but for the expats living here the hotel is a weekend hot-spot.

For a surprisingly reasonable annual fee when compared to the room prices (though still much more than the average Beninese could afford), you get access to the most beautiful pool in the country, a small handful of tennis courts and a few other hotel facilities. In addition, circling the hotel is the most compact 9-hole golf course you could ever imagine, saved from it's size only by the fact that it's probably the lone golf course in the country.

Weekends are busy. As long as it's not raining, the kiddie pool is teeming with toddlers; the large, circular, adult pool is overrun by unruly pre-teens; and parents chase their children with bottles of sunscreen. When you arrive at the pool you flash your membership card and you're escorted to the umbrella of your choice (if there are any left to choose from) where you're given a fresh towel and a cushion for your chair. You can buy crêpes, ice cream and cocktails. You can even get a green coconut with a straw inserted for drinking the juice. Every Friday night the hotel hosts a themed buffet dinner by the pool for the outrageous sum of 14500 CFA (~ $30) per person.



For me, the Benin Marina is a great place to swim laps. The pool is round, but on weekday mornings it's deserted and you can swim along the buoy line that floats the diameter. I slather on sunscreen, put on my swimsuit, pack my beach bag, and trot down the "Marina road" to the pool. In less than 10 minutes, I'm in the water. On my way home, I give the same guards I passed earlier another round of hellos, this time with wet hair and goggle-marked, raccoon eyes.

On the weekends, the Marina stands in for the garden T and I don't have. When we're too lazy to drive all the way to the beach we walk to the Marina with our books and bottled water and precede to get sunburned. Once, I tried to write my thesis by the pool, but even under the shadiest umbrella the glare from the sun made it difficult to see the words on my laptop screen and I didn't end up working on much more than my tan.

As much as I'm thankful to have the Marina so close, I always feel as though I've sneaked into someplace I'm not supposed to be when I'm there - like it's a secret club and I'm only pretending to be a member. The excess of such surroundings, of the African expat life in general, is something I'll never quite get used to and somehow I feel thankful for that. A strange mix of awe and guilt sets in as you admire your surroundings and realize how lucky you are. Outside the Marina, construction workers toil in the heat, mixing cement and digging foundations to build government-funded housing units for politicians visiting Benin during an international African conference next year. A little further down the road, children walk through rows of vegetables with metal watering cans that are probably twice their weight. Polio victims hobble between parked cars at traffic lights, tapping on windows for a spare franc. As you float in that giant pool, you know there are people in the north dying from drinking dirty water.

Once, someone asked me if it wasn't hard to live with poverty right outside my door. To be honest, yes, it is. But the reality is that poverty has always been right there, it's just harder to ignore when you're in a place like Benin. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe everyone who's ever been lucky enough to float in a pool ought to be forced to witness real poverty first-hand. Maybe then at least we would finally realize just how fortunate we really are.

This Is War!

We've been attacked!... by mold. There is mold everywhere - inside the kitchen cabinets, in the closets, on our shoes, growing on our clothes. Yuk! This whole place has smelled musty from day one, particularly the kitchen, but it's easy to ignore such things when you know that closer inspection will only bring unwelcomed news. So the mold made a major mistake when it decided to make an open attack on our clothes. There was a problem and we couldn't deny it any more. I had no choice but to declare war immediately.

The wardrobe was the first casualty. It is now a wardrobe skeleton, with no back panel or doors. All the clothes went straight into the wash and the closets and cupboards were doused with bleach. But this is going to be a on-going battle. Cotonou is extremely humid and consistently warm. It's paradise for mold. Even with the air conditioners running it's always damp and I'm finding mold in new places. Just yesterday I opened the night-stand to discover that the outside of my passport was fuzzy. My passport! I can't exactly soak that in bleach!

But it's not just mold that plagues our Cotonou residence. There are the ants. Tiny little reddish-brown ants by the thousands that go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah! On Monday the apartment was fumigated with insecticide to kill all the bugs hoping to infest our home. By that evening, the ants were back, marching in their little single file lines across the kitchen counter. I think the only living thing that suffered from the fumes was me.

Next, we have the rain. Apparently the late summer dry season lasts less than a month because we're back into the rain again (which probably isn't helping us with the mold situation). Whenever it rains the patio around our building becomes completely flooded and we have to use cinder blocks as stepping stones to get in and out of the front gate. We've got it pretty easy though. Many homes are under water and I've meet at least two Beninese who have had to move because of the flooding. If you've been paying attention to the world news you've probably noticed that massive flooding is widespread in Africa at the moment, especially for our neighbours in Togo and Ghana. Niger and Burkina Faso have also been hit hard. Benin is swamped and has been all summer but according to the BBC news maps of worst affected areas, Benin is one of the only West African countries not in (or almost in) a state of emergency. I can only imagine what it must be like for those around us. A Sunday afternoon drive around the Beninese countryside makes our flooded patio seem like a blessing. Next time I'll bring my camera and try to get some photos.

And then, of course, there are the mosquitoes, which all this standing water isn't helping with either. But we have our defences...

First, there's the trusty mosquito net. This usually works, though sometimes we wake up to find a mosquito in the net. Oh, how irritating! The net is supposed to keep them out, not trap them inside. I think it would would probably work better if we were able to tuck the edges of the net underneath the mattress, but T is too big! His feet stick out over the end of the bed! At least this makes it easier to get in and out of bed in the middle of the night. When you've got to go, you've got to go and trust me, you don't want to be stuck in a net.

Next, there are the bug sprays. I brought my deep-woods-New Hampshire knowledge to this one. We've got Avon Skin So Soft for the low-mosquito evenings when we don't feel like coating ourselves in DEET and showering when we get home. And then there's the high-DEET super spray for the long haul nights outside.

For a long time T was a fan of this insecticide spray. I think he liked that he could chase a mosquito down with the can and watch it meet its end. There was a huge stock of this in the apartment when we moved in. I hate this stuff. It gives me a massive headache. Luckily, we don't need to use it much any more because we've found something better...

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The plug-in, electronic mosquito destroyer. Plug it in at night with a fresh insecticide tablet and you've got up to 12 mosquito free hours. It even smells nice. And the best part, no headaches.

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And last, but certainly not least, is my personal favourite, the POWER RECHARGEABLE MOSQUITO-HITTINGRACKET! All I have to say is Thank you China! A curse upon all those that say you can't innovate, that you only produce cheap knock-off's and total junk. They have clearly never encountered the glory that is the power rechargeable mosquito-hittingracket.

This beauty plugs directly into the wall (with an American prong no less) to charge its internal battery. The instructions indicate that the battery can be recharged over 200 times. It's been two months and we've only charged it once and it's still going strong! Why does it need to be charged? Because the metal strings of the racket are electrified. Yes, you electrocute mosquitoes. You dance around your house swinging and swatting your beautiful racket, sending the little buggers to their the doom with a little spark and a satisfying crackle. This is my new, all-time favourite pastime here in Africa - mosquito hunting. I'm thinking of sending one to everybody for Christmas.

Where did you come from, where did you go?

The street people are gone. They packed up and left. Gone. Just like that.

The dirt road in front of our house is empty - empty but for a few heaps of trash still burning, the only evidence they left behind. Foul-smelling smoke permeates the neighbourhood and forces our windows shut. Even then I can still smell it.

I might not have noticed at all if it wasn't for the smoke. I don't usually walk that way and they moved so quickly. It must have been less than a week before they had disessembled their shabby homes, burned everything, and disappeared. Where did they go? And why? Did the children get to bring their toys? The tires the boys raced, where are they? Burned? Or rolling down another street, someone else's street?

But for that matter, where did they come from? Who were these street people? I never really knew. There is so little I know about this place - this country - its people. They were my reminder of all that I didn't and still don't know. Now their absence is my reminder. I miss them already.

Free as a Bird... with a Broken Wing.

Until very recently, I've had the worst time creating a mental map of Cotonou. This is particularly painful when you consider that city maps are hard to come by - so hard to come by we haven't managed to get one yet- and that there aren't any street names posted on the roads. As a result, I might have been to a particular shop or restaurant 3 or 4 times and still be unable to find it again. There was no point in trying to give me directions because I couldn't get to the landmarks you were naming. And when it came to remembering those names later, I was hopeless as I couldn't even repeat the French when I was hearing it at the time. Until I've navigated a city on my own - by foot, bicycle, car, etc. - I never get the hang of it.

Totally relying on other expats to either drive me around or give directions to the company driver, I wasn't feeling very independent or free. But the prospect of hopping into the company car and driving off into a city of outrageous traffic when I hadn't been driving regularly for over two years was too daunting. And the fact that I hadn't driven stick shift in nearly four years didn't help either, especially after watching T struggle with the car's bad clutch to get it out of our tiny garage full of strange angles. I feel the need to add here that T is a very, very good driver.

But you reach a point where enough is enough and you realise that today's as good a day to dent your boyfriend's company car as ever there will be. I had T get me out of the garage and from there I took it on my own. (I also feel the need to point out that even though T had never seen me drive, he let me, in a twisted knot of nerves, take off on my own with his company-issued car. You be the judge.)

There are some things you never forget. Apparently, driving is one of them. Behind the wheel again, I felt at home in Cotonou like I never expected. Since that night I've been zipping around the city - including in and out of our garage - on my own quite a bit. The other afternoon I went for a drive around some of the busiest parts of the city and encountered some of the worst traffic I have seen here yet. Traffic jams and road construction forced me to take alternative routes, but my mental map of the city must be finally taking shape because I never felt lost or concerned that I wouldn't make it back.

And in Cotonou traffic, you don't have time to be too worried about where you're going. The roads are full of obstacles to avoid: giant potholes and puddles, trash, beggars, people selling odds and ends, old tires, and stray cement blocks. Thousands of mopeds crowd the streets, dashing in and out and around you all the time, often with whole families - including infant babies - piled onto one bike. And of course no one wears a helmet. Zems, or moped taxis, are the craziest. The only thing worse than driving a car surrounded by zems, is being on the back of one.

But all in all, driving in Benin becomes much easier once you completely accept that the only rule of the road here is that there are no rules. If someone were to ask me on which side of the road the Beninese drive I would have to reply, "Well, it depends on the situation." Technically, people are supposed to drive to the right, but this doesn't appear to be as mandatory as it is most elsewhere. Traffic lights are few and far between, and more than half of the existing ones aren't functioning. So intersections operate on the only rule I've been able to identify: the rule of bigger. As in, "I'm bigger than you, so it's in your interest to avoid crashing into me." It seems to work most of the time, though it makes me wish we had a bigger car.

We've currently got a well-worn Peugeot 406 sedan that, in my non-expert opinion, probably needs a new clutch. At the very least I'm quite positive that it needs a new battery. Yesterday morning, I awoke to find that the car wouldn't start. Luckily, or maybe not, the driver was here anyway to clean the car. So he used another company car to jump start it and then he sent me on my way to the horse stables after a short protest from myself. As I hadn't left the lights on or anything like that the night before, and over the past few days I had noticed that the car was suspiciously lacking power in first gear (pedal to the metal and still hardly any movement), I was certain that a new battery was in order. But, as I was already late and I knew there'd be jumper cables in the back, I drove off without much fuss. Good thing I had those cables, because less than two hours later, on my way back from the stables, it wouldn't start again. It took two jump-starts and a friend in pick-up truck following me to get home, but I made it. Needless to say my plans to go to the neighbouring city of Porto-Novo with a friend that afternoon were cancelled.

And just like that, my new-found freedom was gone and I'm back to riding zems for awhile. Boy, do wish I had a helmet.

First Day of School

Volunteering at the children's center was an experience. The children are great and the center itself is new and much nicer than I was expecting. But I won't be starting there any time too soon. I just don't have enough French for it yet. None of the staff there speaks any English, and I'm pathetically behind where I ought to be with my French considering I've been here for a month and a half now.

But all that's about to change as I've started lessons with a teacher today. She's great and her prices are too so I'm able to afford 6 hours of private lessons a week. Getting myself set up with a real teacher hasn't been an easy task and I feel lucky that I happened across her. Another two months down the road and I'll be well on my way. Then maybe I can start helping out with the children.

The center is a temporary stop for kids whose families, for one reason or another, just can't care for them at the moment. Many are refugees whose families are having difficulty getting settled. Some have lost their parents to disease. Others are victims of abuse, and a few were abandoned all together for reasons westerners might find difficult to understand. One boy at the center was expelled from his village because his top baby teeth came through before his lower ones, a very bad sign of misfortune.

Most of the children are between 3 and 10 years old, with a few younger and a few older. The daily schedule consists of two baths, lunch, nap time, afternoon snack, and down time in between. It's up to whoever is helping out that day to fill up all those empty spaces with activities. And that's precisely why I need more French. I'm great at swinging the little ones by their ankles, scooping rice and beans into bowls, painting faces and sculpting little animals from modelling clay (I practically filled Noah's ark with all the requests I got). But if I had to get a kid to follow directions and behave, or if I were left to lead a large activity - as I most certainly would be - I'd be up a creak without a paddle.

So it's back to the ABC's for me and then, when I'm ready, kindergarten.

Yovo! Yovo! Bonsoir, ca-va, ca-va bien merci!

Just looking at this photo I can almost hear them singing, "Yovo! Yovo! Bonsoir, ca-va, ca-va bien merci!"
Yovo means foreigner in Fon, the dominant local language in Southern Benin, and children giggle and shout to all the yovos they see, running up to touch the funny white people and be photographed. And their shrieks and laughter triple when you show them their image on the tiny screen of your digital camera.


This little song is still ringing in my ears from our trip to Ouidah weeks ago; after I volunteer at a children's center tomorrow, I'm sure it will be etched into my eardrums forever. One of the girls I've been travelling with volunteers at the center and, though she's leaving for home on Sunday, she's introducing me to the center so that I can get more involved here.

I can't wait. It will be a way into the culture and reality of this strange country, a contribution I can be proud of, a new network of friends and contacts, a place to practice my French in action, and not least of all, a welcome break from my thesis a couple of days each week.

Besides, Beninese children are about as cute as they come!

Trees of a Sacred Forest

I promised pictures, and unfortunately that's all I've got. I had written out a nice, lengthy blog but somehow it didn't get saved properly on blogger. In about five minutes I'm leaving for the bus station for a week in the North so I can't write now, but when I get back there will be explanations for these photos and many more to add. For now, let's just say that tree is a king, I got to see a Voodoo ceremony and meet a King in human form crowned with a lampshade topped with a plastic ducky :)

Update: Here are those explanations!

Once upon a time in West Africa, there was a small kingdom of people called the Xweda. Unfortunately for the Xweda, their neighbours were the ruthless people of Dahomey, whose king followed a strict policy of expansionism and employed Amazons as his personal bodyguards. So, naturally, when the Xweda got wind that the Dahomey were marching their way, their king, King Kpasse, did what all sensible leaders would do in such a situation; he ran into the forest and turned himself into a tree. Sensible indeed. The Dahomey were fooled by his disguise, though I doubt this helped the rest of the Xweda, and King Kpasse still stands in the sacred forest that bears his name. That's him above, standing in the middle of the ruins of his home in the sacred forest. He could have fooled me.

But the sacred forest is home to more than just leafy, old kings. Statues of Voodoo deities loom everywhere. Meet the god of smallpox, to the right. I guess you appeal to him if you've got enemies. Voodoo does have its component of evil after all and it's not difficult to see where Hollywood got its inspiration for the fictional Voodoo doll. The only dolls here are carried by those who have lost a twin (there are lots of twins born here) representing their dead sibling. They must carry these dolls until they die and when they do it is said that they have gone to the sacred forest to look for their lost twins.

After meeting a number of deities, including our guide's personal protector, the god of thunder, we found a comfy bench and waited for the afternoon's Voodoo celebrations to begin. Luckily for us, we happened to be in Ouidah on a very special day in its history, July 14th. Again, a tree was involved.





























The story goes, one night a man from Ouidah had a dream in which two leopards told him that he was meant to be king. And he believed them. Unfortunately, the current king of Ouidah did not. On July 14th, 1985 they were arguing for the throne in the Sacred Forest of Kpasse when a storm blew in suddenly and unexpectedly. It was so strong that the giant tree next to the temple was torn from its roots and fell over, postponing their bickering.

Exactly one month later, on July 14th, 1985, the men returned to the forest to pick up where they left off. Another, even greater storm, interrupted them yet again and this time the winds and rain were so violent they were forced to lie on the ground. When the strange weather had passed, they stood up to find the tree by the temple had righted itself as though nothing had ever happened. It was clearly a sign from the gods and so the lamp-shade crown, complete with plastic birdy, was passed on to King Kpassenon, sitting on his throne in front of the temple in the photo above. Kind of reminds me of that story about the emperor's new clothes...

And so we waited for the celebrations of the King's coronation to begin. And we waited. And we waited some more. Even the children had run out of games to entertain themselves with. But finally, all the metal folding chairs were in place and a line of women came dancing in, literally.
Most of the real action involved mixing crushed seeds and gin in little bowls, a bit of singing, and a whole lot of kneeling in front of the king. The real stuff was happening inside the temple so we couldn't see much, but there definitely weren't any animal sacrifices or people in trance. Not sure whether I'm more disappointed or relieved about that. And as you can see from the photo above, we weren't the only one's eager to get a peek at the action, though we were all surprised at how relaxed the ceremony was.

It was so relaxed in fact that the three of us westerners weren't sure when the festivities had officially begun and officially ended. Throughout the entire affair, those in the audience chatted to their friends, ate snacks, and even got up to purchase snacks from little stands set up in the forest especially for the event. The last 45 minutes or so lingered on as a man from the national television news interviewed the king and nearly every priest (there's a priest for every deity) on the stage. And after he interviewed us! My lack of any significant French language abilities saved me, but one of the other girls had to tell the nation what she thought of their traditions and beliefs. Talk about being in a tight spot.

GUARD #1: You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together. ARTHUR: So?

Yesterday I made what will probably be one of my last big weekly trips to the market with Elisabeth. When we go to Ganhi, the smaller of the city's two big markets, every street vendor carrying sunglasses, flip-flops, desk lamps, kittens, etc. comes running for us. This makes my presence a real burden when we already have to buy a week's worth of food in the crowded stalls. And I have a tendency to inflate prices. Elisabeth is put in the awkward position of negotiating for the best deal with a "rich" person beside her. Plus I feel absolutely awful about haggling in the first place.

In fact, sometimes there's no deal at all. Take, for example, the pineapples. Elisabeth had warned me that the pineapple lady might not want to sell the pineapples to us if she saw me (she's actually a pineapple wholesaler so she sells at a lower price than in the market and she's rather particular about who she sells to). So I tried to duck down in the back seat of the car as we drove up to the stand. It didn't work. Elisabeth had to call the lady's younger sister (I guess they are friends and that is why Elisabeth can buy wholesale pineapples in the first place) and come back by herself today to get them.

For these reasons I've been kindly asked to stay home on market day. I'll still make it out to the markets, just not to do the weekly food stocking. And then there's all the things that we get at the regular supermarkets that I can still buy myself. Cornflakes, milk and that sort of thing. There are a number of small supermarkets in the neighbourhood and everywhere else for that matter. The selection isn't like Whole Foods or Hannaford (USA), or even Bilka or Føtex (DK), but I will say that it's better than your average American "Mom & Pop" grocer, or Netto or Aldi in Denmark. All in all, finding things in Cotonou has been much easier than finding things in Copenhagen. Very counter-intuitive. Oh, another funny thing: yesterday when we were at a rather nice supermarket, we had to wait a little extra longer at the cheese counter. The reason: we were in line behind the Beninese President's wife, and no one rushes her. My first brush with celebrity in Africa.

But we got everything we needed and now we have a nice pile of pineapples to top it off - as you can see above. Now every morning we can rotate between freshly squeezed orange juice and pineapple juice. We also picked up a "green" coconut on the way home so that T and I could try the milk. Very tasty. I wonder about the fat content of that beverage though. Isn't coconut milk supposed to be very fatty and bad for you? Or is that just the milk of the "dry" coconuts? I just learned the difference between the two yesterday so I obviously don't know much, but Elisabeth told me that the milk is supposed to be very good for your stomach. Well, as long as you don't combine it with yoghurt that is. A few minutes after finishing my glass, she came running back to me to say that she forgot to warn me about it's interaction with yoghurt. Apparently the combination leads to frequent and inescapable trips to the loo. So now I'm trying to figure out if we should put coconut milk into our morning rotation (but not on mornings we eat yoghurt!), or avoid it like a heart attack. Are there any health-nuts out there who can help clear up all these coconut rumours and provide some scientifically-based advice? For all I know, the people I'm listening to could be suggesting that coconuts migrate ;) Well, we do have African swallows here...

*Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Ready? Drum Roll Please...

So finally, here they are: the promised photos, sure to disappoint, but posted nevertheless. The movers still haven't shown, but things are nearly in order now because I broke down and moved all the stuff they were supposed to pick up into what we charitably call the dining room. It's not as though we'll be eating there any time soon anyway; we have no table. Maybe, if we're lucky, we can snag one from someone who's leaving in September.

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But back to the stuff you really want to know. We'll start with the view from the balcony:

As you can see, we've got lots of palm trees. The thing about palm trees is that even when the wind is hardly blowing their tops swing back and forth outside your bedroom window with such ferocity that it gives you the impression that there's a hurricane in the making. I suspect this might just be my personal bias though, as most of the palm trees I've seen in my life, until now, have been on Weather Channel special news reports. Now, if you look closely you can make out a few of our neighbours in between the palm trees (click on the photos to get to larger versions).

This is the living room, followed by the bedroom and the study. Got to love the bars on the windows. If the wall surrounding the building (can be seen in views from balcony) complete with guards didn't already do it, this last finishing touch really drives home the prison analogy. The really funny thing though, is that none of those windows or the sliding door are ever locked. Ah, the appearance of safety. I also like how the bars reflect onto the framed lion photograph hanging above the bed to make it look like a zoo animal.

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As you can see, our place is a bit empty at the moment and would benefit greatly from some real artwork. Not that I don't love the lion (a leftover from the former tenant), I just think he's better suited for a game room or a bar than above my bed. I'm hoping that maybe I can convince my artist sister to send me some of her paintings. I'll have to do it fast though. Judging by the way her work is starting to sell I won't be able to afford it before long.

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Well, I should go now. The water isn't working so I've got to call the plombier. Too bad that's the only plumbing-related word of French I know. This should be interesting...