NO PREREQS

And so it begins… the beginning of the end. I thought of this new feature, “Top 10 Pictures” while keeping in mind that my time in Benin is slowly drawing to a close. For the next 10 days, I will (do my best to) post the countdown from #10 to #1 of what I believe are the top 10 pictures from my time here in Benin. By the end of this series, my time in Benin will pretty much have come to an end. 

I have taken more than 3600 photos during my time here in Benin so far. If my math is right, that’s operating at a clip of about 49 pictures per day. So although it will be quite tough, we’re gonna narrow it down to the top 10. The panel (me) will be selecting the photos based primarily on artistic sentimental value. Thus I will be choosing a group of photos that complement each other well and then ranking them.

However! If someone with a keen eye has any suggestions for how I could’ve made it a better picture, I’d really appreciate your advice in the comments! 

Anyways, let’s kick this off with #10, shall we?

#10

This picture originally squeaked into the top 10 contenders list based purely on sentimental value, but now that I look back at it, there are minor subtleties to it that made it too good pass up for the list. I call it “The Silent Plead”. Let’s take a bit of a deeper look into this picture and what it tells you about my time here in Benin:

The Expression

The first thing you might notice about this picture is the expression on my face, and rightfully so. They say the eyes are the window to a person’s soul, and that could not hold truer in this context. It was taken after my first week in Benin, with the initial intention of taking a weekly picture to monitor the progress of my trip (lol). 

This is the kind of expression I would imagine a prisoner in a cell uses to silently communicate their deep heartfelt “Get me the hell out of here!!” to everyone that passes by. Fortunately, I was not in a cell in this picture. I was in my bedroom, a simple structure made of four reinforced concrete walls, with a nice window (although with bars on it) and part of a larger complex walled by reinforced concrete, with the only exit being a heavy gate that I didn’t have the keys to. “Not a cell, not a cell, not a cell” I told myself throughout that first week.

It was a tough week that had me crying for mommy by the end of it. The first couple weeks were tough like that, but I can laugh at it in hindsight knowing that now I only feel like that 5 of out 7 days a week.

The Hair

There I was, so eager, yet so foolish in my inexperience with that hair of mine. It would’ve been wise to come to Benin bald to minimize the impact of the heat, but there I was, with a full head of hair. You can see my hair matted to my forehead with sweat and the unbearable heat that came with my first couple of weeks in Ouidah: unfortunately, this was a couple minutes after I had dried myself off from a shower.

It’s not only the hair proper that tells the story here, it’s the dishevelled facial hair – normally, I do the dishevelled facial hair much better than this, but that difficult week had reduced me to producing a meagre patchy beard worthy of being placed in the same league as a Sidney Crosby playoff beard. Shameful.

The Obscure Objects in the Background

Only further complimenting this picture, we’ve got my classic sky blue mosquito net hanging in the blurry background. Those were back in the days when I still needed a clothes pin to put my mosquito net up. Still the attempt was feeble, you can see how it hangs in a loose parabola... I’d say that’s like a 5x squared even. Sad. I was young, I have learned. Soon after, my expertise with the mosquito net would quickly eclipse any other skill I would learn during my internship for the months to come.

Finally, we’ve got the bottle of sunscreen with the conveniently blurred label. The best part about this bottle is that it still sits in that exact same position that it was in on that day. I haven’t used it since coming here. The problem is that the heat here welds the sunscreen to your skin so that when you take a shower, it doesn’t come off and you have to scrape it off your body like dirt afterwards. That being said, I probably should’ve used it anyways. Sunscreen offers protection from skin cancer, and I’ve had experience this summer with neglecting to properly use things for the prevention of diseases coming back to bite me (literally).

Stay tuned for picture number 9 tomorrow!