Going back to post was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I had to lug all of my baggage and find a taxi to take be back to Bohicon, argue for 30 minutes with the driver to get a fair price and spend 4 hours stuffed in a van to get back to post. When I got to my house, I noticed an awful smell. I opened my back door to find a bucket laying on its side with a dead animal fully decomposed except for its hair and bones. Upon further inspection I realized it was a dead cat. And apparently rats had a feast on the cat and left the most amount of rat droppings I have ever seen on my floor. Why?! How?! Ugh I was so angry and disgusted I had nothing to do but cry. This blog is going to get brutally honest but yes, I cried and called my mommy. First time in Benin. Anyway I finally cleaned it up and apologized to my neighbors because they said that something smelled terrible about a week ago. Now they know why...
My post mates Katie and Margaret and our French friend Delphine invited me to dinner that night, so I felt better to see people who understand. Delphine and I stayed at the restaurant a lot longer and were chatting until about midnight then we both went home. I forgot that I had broken the key to my gate a few weeks ago and one of my neighbors locked it, so naturally I thought "Jeff just jump the gate, you've done it before." Well at the top of the gate there are these metal spikes to deter people from doing what I did and when I got up there and jumped, my sandal got caught on one of them and I basically dived into the cement head first. Thank God my neighbor heard it and came out. I was knocked out for a few seconds and have never seen stars before until then. My neighbor took me to the local hospital (it was scary by the way) and I called my doctor in Cotonou. I spent the night in the hospital and they watched me during the night and in the morning I my neighbor arranged a car and I went to Cotonou. I felt so bad because my Peace Corps doctor, Dr. Lomo was really worried and was calling me all night and my neighbor Gilles was really worried.
Anyway so now I am in Cotonou and I saw a neurologist and surgeon and everything looks okay. I had a CT scan today (there is one machine in Benin) and should get the results next week but everything should be normal. Looking back at what I did, I know that was really really really stupid of me and I should have just knocked and woken up someone. I guess that it took me falling on my face to realize that my neighbors are really the best...and my Peace Corps doctors is the greatest and took really good care of me so don't worry Mom and Dad!
