Around Cotonou

I appologize for not updating in a long long time....this would be due to spending time writing and trying to upload the time below and it not working and then my life picking up.....so here is a conclusion from november 11 or so...and i will try to bring you up to April 1.....

Well I can't say my week has been all that exciting. I gave my first talk about my project here to the Association Beninois de Pastoralism: Le Rôle des Guérisseurs Traditionnels Dans La Conservation des Ressources Naturelles ; Présentation Préliminaire, Natalie Ceperley, 19 Novembre, 2005, Association Béninoise de Pastoralisme, Laboratoire d’Ecologie Appliqué, Faculté des Science Agronomiques, Université Abomey-Calavi, Bénin. I was initiated into the American Community at Thanksgiving and then Saturday softball. - Amazing how many Americans there are in Cotonou. I went the beach. I went to class. I had some meetings with healers. I hung out with the other fulbright students. I took my first exam. And I am almost done with grad school apps. I tried to arrange to take some trips to forests and other research sites that interest me, but they are going to happen next week ( the unarrivable next week). I have been reading memoires of students who worked in ethnobotany and in Pendjari Park. I am excited for when I do field work - but I think its good for me to go through this process of refining my objectives and methods before I go. I am supposed to meet a Dutch couple this week who is doing my exact project. I finished reading Maryse Conde - Segu. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a feel for the reasons that West Africa is the way it is. I liked how it tied together the history of where I was last year with the history of where I am now. I have been thinking about how my experience here is so shaped by my Mauritanian experience. These are some pictures, not my own, from around campus. The man in one is Pierre who does research in Pahenco.