Dog is Tasty

Apparently there's a village not too far from my town that serves dog every Friday (the market day). It tastes like a cross between goat and pork. Delicious.



25 cents of dog. The pink coloration was from the sauce. This initially disturbed us but it was brown on the inside so we figured it wouldn't kill us (update from three days later: I'm still not sick, must've been fine).



Me losing the ability to run for elected office.




There were paws in this pot a few minutes before I took the photo but someone ate them all before I could get my camera out.

Elections and Kanakoo

There will be municipal elections held this weekend. I'm probably not supposed to talk about that much. All it really means for volunteers though is that we can't travel anywhere.

In other news, the government telecom company turned on the internet-via-cell-tower thing in the two biggest cities in the region. Already a new cyber cafe opened up which is 25% cheaper than the satellite ones (a satellite connection costs over $400/month, the new thing is slower but costs around $50/month). This is pretty cool because a lot of NGOs and government offices have computers but until now there's been no economical way for them to get on the Internet.

Riots and Inflation

There have been some riots to due rising food prices in a lot of West African countries recently. A few volunteers in other countries got rocks thrown at them, but that was supposedly because they went out to go watch the riots. Benin has so far avoided anything like that, though prices are going up and there have been some mild shortages - notably of wheat flour. The government has started to sell subsidized rice but otherwise not much has changed other than rice ladies refusing to give me the normal four scoops for 100 francs.