Adventure Day... Gone Awry

As part of a larger project I'm doing I had to visit a village near Natitingou. I need to find a few people, who I only sort of know. But they are known by a volunteer who lives there so it shouldn't be too hard to find. I was also going with another volunteer to make everything a bit easier. Going into a strange village alone is a daunting task. Later the person who wanted to go with me couldn't because of circumstances out of her control, and the person who lived in the village wasn't going to be there either due to vacation (previously planned, we just assumed she'd be there). So here is the task before me, go to a strange village, locate people I've never met and only know vaguely about, and research price quotes for my project. I have zero phone numbers, zero contacts within the community already, and zero names to go on. Excellent, this should be easy...

So I decide that since I can't spend the night I should probably take a zem out (it's like an hour via taxi). I find a zem who is willing to go out there but I only realize he's a zem until we're on our way back I thought I was getting a free trip out of it. So we drive out, it takes like 2 hours. I arrive sore from the moto ride but alive.

I then get there and ask for my friends house thinking that even though my friend isn't there, I know she has a neighbor that she works with, at least sometimes. I walk around and ask for a guy in a wheel chair. I get someone who says "yes I know him!" So we go to this guys house and guess what, this guy is a teacher, so he's at school. Therefore, not able to talk to me. Not a big deal there are numerous other people that my friend works with who I can speak to. So we go and talk to another friend of hers, who is also not there. On the way to the 3rd person I go to see my zem buddy gets a flat tire. Great. After about 45 minutes of dragging his moto to a tire place and fixing it, it's the heat of the day. I called a work partner of my friend only to find out this person was in Cotonou and unable to help me in any way. While waiting, a friend of a peace corps volunteer (not the one who lives in this village) comes up to me and says 'Hi I know your friend _____" We get to talking and he actually does know the organization that I'm looking for! Yay! He agrees after lunch to drive us out to this place. Lunch really did mean eating and leaving which was great. So we go out. On the way the tire place pumped up my zems tire too much and now he fishtails when going through sand. This wouldn't have been a problem had there been paved roads, anywhere. But there aren't. A few times we fishtailed pretty bad and I thought we were going to bite the dust. When I arrived of course it was during the three hours in the middle of the day when nobody does anything except sit in the shade. The man who I needed to speak to wasn't there. So I introduced myself and whatever, but I was unable to get price quotes. The whole was in vain. And the zem stole my sunglasses, and wanted a huge price for taking me around. After I bought his gas! grrr...... this could have been a good adventure but it just wasn't. To top it all I got a terrible sunburn.