As part of the Dialogue of Civilizations program at Northeastern University, I took classes in France and Benin in May-June 2010. I was in France for one week taking language classes and going on site visits, such as to Medecins Sans Frontières and the Beninois Ambassador to France. I was in Benin for three weeks working with a women’s micro-enterprise collective, acting as a consultant, translating, and writing a grant to increase their capacity. We also traveled around Benin a bit, seeing Porto-Novo, Cotonou, Abomey, Ganvie, and the Point of No Return.
Posts on Benin.
The Songhai Center, the sustainable farming model where I lived:
Away She Goes 
How did you find Benin? And congrats on winning the Kerala Blog Express!
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Hi Kayleigh, thanks so much! I really enjoyed Benin, although because of various problems with infrastructure, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone run a group program anytime soon. It is a beautiful country and I met some amazing people and visited some hard working NGOs.
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Thanks for the feedback. What about solo travel?
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I think that would be fine. It’s a pretty typical West African country as far as difficulty level to travel, and of course is Francophone (with MANY local tribal languages throughout.) There are some expats, mostly current or former peace corps, but few enough that every person who was foreign, white, Eglish-speaking or all three made a point of coming and saying hi.
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Thanks very much for the reply!
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