Out of Africa

Some of our neighbors on the military base where we lived and worked.

Street scene from Parakou, the big city where we stayed on the weekend.

A local gas station.

A typical village with cooking charcoal for sale.

On the way to school.

Typical room at the Visiting Officers Quarters. Neither the light nor the air conditioning worked in my room.

Our favorite local restaurant.

The kitchen of our favorite local restaurant.

The well just outside our rooms. The water looked a bit brackish.

Our "office".

The bathroom in one of the "visiting officer's" rooms. The far left corner is the shower. We actually had water for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.

The Visiting Officer's Quarters from the outside.

The last supper at our "upscale" weekend hotel in Parakou. "Upscale" meant the air conditioning worked, there was water all day and the showers had shower curtains.

If you haven't already figured it out from all of the pictures, I have just returned from Benin on one of my exciting globe-trotting trips. Why are these trips so exciting? Because you inevitably get the trots, and that's pretty exciting when there are no toilets available as is often the case at the places I end up working. This post is my farewell (for a while at least) to Africa. All that globe-trotting has given me pause (as well as chafing), and I'm taking a break at least until January from my job training peacekeepers. After that we'll see.

Why Spotted Salamanders Don't Make Good Pets

Our 6" long eastern spotted salamander.

Despite having a ready made pet name, namely "Spot", the eastern spotted salamander does not make a good pet. Sad but true. We researched this extensively after finding one in our yard doing a little gardening. In the spirit of David Letterman, here are the top ten reasons why spotted salamanders don't make good pets.

10. They live under ground most of the time.

9. They only come out at night when pet owners are usually asleep.

8. They only breed in ponds, making the mating trek to their breeding pond one night in the Spring when conditions are just right. (Not sure why this disqualifies them from being a pet.)

7. Their yellow spots can make a baby cross-eyed.

6. Since they're black and only come out after dark, it's easy to step on them when you get up to go to the bathroom late at night.

5. They're cute (for an amphibian) but not as cute as a golden.

4. They can regenerate a limb should they lose one, and that's just creepy.

3. If threatened they can secrete a poisonous fluid. Creepy and disgusting.

2. It's very hard to find salamander kibbles in the pet food section of the supermarket.

And now the number one reason spotted salamanders don't make good pets:

They can't be trained to fetch a stick if you throw one in the pond.

In other unrelated news, Nella our mutt caught and killed a squirrel out on the deck today. One down, millions to go. We have finished gutting and remodeling our upstairs bathroom without a.) a heart attack or b.) a divorce. It looks very nice, but the project kept me from posting to the blog, and for that, I apologize. Tomorrow I'm off to Benin for a two week stint in order to pay for a portion of the bathroom remodel. The irony of this is really quite stunning. I'm going to work in a place where there is running water only 2 hours a day (no hot water) and only pit toilets, so I can pay for the super-duper bathroom remodel. I can only pray that I don't get cholera.