What3Words is basically a system of coordinates, only instead of using numbers to specify a particular point on the globe, it uses three words to specify a particular 3 meter square. (This is where my map nerd friends tell me I'm wrong since coordinates are in order--1 degree north is next to 2 degrees north, and so on--whereas the three words are assigned to a square more or less at random. But this is my blog, my rules!)
Entry.grief.disposal are the three words for the three meter square in front of our front gate. Properly, we live at 216 Rue 969A, Lot 11, Cocotiers, Cotonou, but if I’m giving directions to someone here, it’s easier to tell them “Take Airport Road until you pass the BSS supermarket. Take your first right, and then another right. We’re the blue gate on the corner.” Nobody uses street names here.
We moved into our house at the beginning of March. It’s an older two-story home, cement block walls and tile floors throughout. (Tile floors are surprisingly hard! We’ve broken like three glasses already…) We have a salon, with screen doors on two sides that we keep open most days for the breeze, a playroom downstairs for the kids, and three bedrooms upstairs. Our kitchen is small and utilitarian. There’s a patio out back where our laundry dries and a small garden out front where the kids like to play.
We live in Cocotiers, a neighborhood on the western side of Cotonou. It’s one of the more well-off neighborhoods in the city, which means there are a number of other foreigners who live here—mostly diplomats and other aid workers, it seems, though curiously few other Americans. (To be honest, we haven’t met very many other Americans and have no idea where they all live). The intersection we live on is quiet and the kids love riding bikes and scooters in the street after school. Some weekends, a group of older neighborhood kids set up a ramp and skateboard off it. The kids love to watch.
The houses here are generally
large, and generally hidden behind walls, though the neighborhood itself is relatively
green as many of the houses have large coconut, mango, and oil palm trees.
Bougainvillea and other shrubs spill over the top of the fences, showering yellow,
pink, and white flowers on the sidewalks.
Our streets are paved—though I gather that this is relatively recent, a project of the current Beninese President Patrice Talon—and they are well-lit by tall, LED streetlamps that are powered by solar panels which were installed shortly after we moved in.
To our north is Haie Vive, another well-off neighborhood where Evie’s daycare is located. The boundary between the two neighborhoods—at least in our mind—is Piste Amalco, which has a bunch of restaurants, as well as the market where we get our mangoes, avocados, pineapples, and other produce.
To the south is Airport Road which (appropriately) runs between the airport and what we consider to be more or less “downtown.” Continue south and you’ll arrive at Boulevard de la Marina which runs by the French school, the Nigerian School, the American, Chinese, French, and Russian embassies, and (also appropriately) the port before heading downtown.
The airport itself borders our
neighborhood to the west, but it’s not that busy and planes are rare enough that
it’s still exciting when we hear one. Beyond that is the neighborhood of
Fidjrosse, and beyond that the city just sort of peters out into forest and
scrubland and an expanse of beach that runs unbroken to the border with Togo at
least.
The bulk of Cotonou lies to our east and our north. A paved two-lane road teeming with cars, scooters, and motorcycles heads north out of town before it catches the highway west towards Togo. Kellan and I cross this road every day to go to school. It’s rush hour, so we usually have to wait for a gap in the river of traffic to open up before dashing to the safety of the median (no crosswalks in this part of town).
Following this road the other direction—south/east—takes you to downtown and eventually the river that runs through the eastern part of the city. Dantokpa market—said to be the largest outdoor market in West Africa—lies along the river, as does the Missebo fabric market. Two bridges cross it—the big new one and the tiny old one. Either one will lead you to a highway that takes you out of town, past the car park and, about an hour later, to the border with Nigeria.
And that’s basically it—the mental map we’ve conjured up to orient ourselves here in Benin’s biggest city. There’s still a lot of blank space that we have to fill in—both in Cotonou and in Benin as a whole—but part of the fun of living here is finding a new place and marking it down, situating it in relation to everything else, and expanding the edges of our known world bit by bit.
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment