After a horrible combination of procrastination, laziness and actually being busy I decided to start this blog of my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin, West Africa. I thought it would be cool to give an idea to my family and friends back home or anybody else who happens to be interested on the projects that I am working on and what my life is like in West Africa. Aside from doing my job, I am going to travel as much as I possibly can in order to get to know Africa the next two years that I will be here so this blog will be my journal of my African adventures.

So here is a little bit of background on me for those who do not know me, after giving up a pretty nice lifestyle, a good job and leaving my beautiful girlfriend of three years in order to pursue the crazy idea I had since I was in my second year of college of joining Peace Corps, after graduating from college in 2003 I got an internship in Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida for a year, I worked in EPCOT as a stocking/inventory assisting nothing glamorous and got paid below minimum wage, working for the Mouse sucked but it was the life outside work that was all worth it, I always liked Florida the night life is good, there is always something to do, the beaches are great, also got a chance to go into all the parks for free I also got my family in for free considering that its freaking expensive just to ride these suck ass rides and attractions. Yet, my biggest reward was finding my girlfriend. After my internship I returned to home base, Alexandria Virginia, and got a job working for the Department of State, Foreign Service Institute as a contractor employee, I really liked my job I got a chance to work with the coolest people who liked to party, met ambassadors from all over the world, important political figures and I also found my strengths and weaknesses, like my writing skills are atrocious. It also rekindled my interest in Peace Corps because a lot of Foreign Service Officers and State employees had done Peace Corps, I also could not imagine spending the next 60 years of my life as a paper pusher and not seeing the world like I also wanted.

So I applied and I here I am. In Natitingou, Benin, serving as a Small Enterprise Development (S.E.D) Volunteer. It’s more complicated then that but whatever. So here is the break down of my post, Natitingou. I have Internet cafes, there are vendors in every corner where I can buy just about anything I want, I have a big house with 2 rooms running water a toilet and electricity, I have it good and its exactly what I wanted, there are other volunteers who have to take a shit in a stinky ass whole in the ground with roaches and flies, they have to get water from a watering hole half a mile away, or have no electricity, fuck that, they can keep that. After a couple of weeks when the excitement of Peace Corps dies down life starts to suck and get hard that is the reason we have lost so many volunteers in the last four months we have been here. We started as 60 now we are down to 51 and there are more leaving, I am here for the long run and I am going to make sure that I will confortable.