Sic transit gloria, ou bien.

My training class swears in tomorrow and on Monday I leave for Kemon.
I managed to pass the written test on Beninese culture, though I learned that “aborb large quantities of alcohol in order to validate masculinity” does not count as a “typical male responsibility” in Benin, nor is “petrol boofed from Nigerian pipelines” one of Benin’s “two largest national sources of revenue.”
I was glad, though, that my answer to “How do you say ‘good morning’ in Fon?” — a random jumble of letters followed by “ou bien” — earned me an extra credit point.
I’m looking forward to post but I’ll miss my host family — add them to the long list of people I miss. Among the many children is a two-year-old named Honore. When I arrived she couldn’t walk or talk. Now every day she charges across the compound at me while screaming “Meeee-shellll!” She doesn’t understand French but enjoys mimicking the funny faces I make at her.
A six-year-old girl — named, like all other Beninese females, Marie — has the same problem as my dog in America: she knows how cute she is. She’s incapable of saying anything without melodramatically acting it out and is always armed with a sarcastic reply to anything I say.
A ten-year-old boy, Oné, persistently asked me to teach him English and mostly learned things along the lines of “Whaddup?” He once chased a gaggle of children down the street while brandishing a machete after they yelled racial slurs at me.
Really, the only complaint I have about them is that when summoning me to the nightly lecture on my inadequate appetite, my host mom is accustomed to yelling my name in the same tone of voice she would use in informing me of an extraterrestrial invasion.