My surroundings...

The med unit is nice. There are three bedrooms with multiple beds (with spring mattresses!!) in each room. Each med room has it's own bathroom and A/C unit. Volunteers come and stay in the med unit for COS (close of service) exams, Mid-service exams, and general sickness (like me). There is a movie room with a large number of bad movies and, of course I have access to the bureau Internet room and library. Eating in Cotonou is expensive (and by expensive I mean 6-10 dollars a meal compared to .50-2 dollars in village) but volunteers get increased per diem (money allowance) for staying here. In Benin the currency is CFA, or West African Francs. It comes in coins of 10, 25, 50, 100, 200, 250, and 500 franc denominations and 1000, 2000, 5000, and 10000 CFA billls. It is different from Americain money (and other moneys of the western world) because American dollars have US symbols and pictures on them since they are minted and controlled by the US government. The CFA is used by many West African governments, so there is no symbols or pictures on the currency linking it to Benin, specifically. All the sodas here are made with REAL sugar...no high fructose corn syrup or anything, so cokes and sprites and especially Mt. Dews taste different. As far as NEEDING anything, I don't. This will be the second day of anti-malarial treatment and I had no fever yesterday so I am very optimistic. I am 90% certain I will be out of here on Monday. I went to a western-type super market (we call them yovo-stores) and bought some cereal and milk to eat with my medications (it says milk increases absorption) but the milk here is very interesting. Since they have little/no refrigeration and this milk comes from France or the Mid-East it is some special 'long-lasting' milk. It actually has a 1-year expiration date (if you don't open it) and you can ship it unrefrigerated. As you can imagine it does not taste quite like real milk but it was good enough for my coco chrispies (these were imported from the UK and they also did not taste quite right. Foods for foreign markets, even produced by familiar companies are formulated for that foreign market and their tastes). I'm here till Monday so if Kellie or any of her classmates have any questions just email or leave a comment, thanks!