Hanging with Dahomeys

Well.

This year's exile began when some sort of committee buried deep within the Ghanaian government decided, in is wisdom, that Kate and myself were Undesirables who shouldn't be let in, no, not even to look at their elephants. Thus our original plan - to spend two months teaching stuff to Ghanaian kids - is pissed up the wall and a protracted dispute with insurers begins so that we can prise our airfare from their grubby grasping hands.

Anyway, after a profound plan-change we're going to Benin instead, which older folk might have known as Dahomey after the 19th-century warrior kingdom of the same name. Country names in West Africa are confusing like that:

Imperialists gave BENIN the name of DAHOMEY; its territory is that of the old DAHOMEY kingdom and hasn't a lot to do with the BENIN kingdom in NIGERIA.

Imperialists gave GHANA the name of the GOLD COAST (in 1958 they dismantled the Gold Coast, loaded it onto a container ship and put it on the open market; some white-shoe property developers from southeast Queensland bought it in a job-lot along with a skip full of children's shoes and the rest it history); its territory is that of the old ASHANTI kingdom and hasn't a lot to do with the GHANA kingdom in MAURITANIA.

OK, I guess that's the only two.

This is really just a postette so that I can see what the blog looks like, so feel free to ignore.