I’m live blogging an NTIC conference at ENEAM! Just kidding. I do, however, have free wireless at a salon at ENEAM, which is cool.

All of the majors at the technical school got together and planned a huge festival with conferences, lectures, and of course, a trade show (and by trade show, I mean about two dozen booths set-up outside for anyone to pass by and buy stuff).

We (ONG People Online), don’t actually have a booth. We have a table in a corner at the end of a long row of booths, mostly because we’re too cheap to cough up the $300 participation fee. However, we’re offering free websites (blogs) to students, which is exciting, so we get a fair amount of traffic anyway.

Yesterday was a lot of fun. It was exhausting presenting in French all day against a backdrop of painfully loud music, but we generated a lot of interest in our blogging platform. I’m pretty sure that we’re the only people representing ourselves at the trade show. Most booths seem to be manned by students, who are ready to take your money, but less able to answer questions.

Bertrand and I aren’t aiming to make any money this week. We just want to build a critical mass of bloggers so we can stop doing so much damn publicity and start concentrating on what we do well: making websites.

Today, I hope to attend a presentation by some of my former students and a few lectures. I’m also going to take advantage of the free wireless (free wireless! in Benin!) to get some work done. We’ll see how it goes.

A few hours before the rain hits, the sky starts to darken as clouds gather and thicken. An hour before the rain hits, the clouds turn black and menacing, casting an eerie yellow shadow across the city. Twenty minutes before the rain hits, you can feel cool breezes on your face as currents of air swoop down streets and through alleys. Ten minutes before the rain hits, the refreshing breeze turns into gusts of powerful wind that kick up dust and grit into your eyes. Five minutes before the rain hits, a few stray drops fall, a sort of “this is your last warning,” sign for the few fools still outdoors. When then rain finally comes, it’s a huge sheet of pounding wet, soaking everything in its path.

The wonderful thing about the rainy season is that the brutal rainstorms cool everything down. It’s strange to me, but the non-rainy days during the rainy season are far more unpleasant than almost the entire so-called “hot” season. When it’s not raining, the sky is blue and cloudless. The sun pounds down with equatorial strength onto the cement parking lot that is Cotonou. There is no shade. During the less-rainy (aka “hot”) season, the sky is often overcast, and while the humidity can be killer, at least the clouds block the intensity of the sun’s rays.

Growing up, we always said, “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” After three years in West Africa, I disagree. It’s not the heat. It’s the insane strength of the sunshine six degrees north of the equator.

A few weeks ago, ONG People Online (my NGO) held its first press conference. To be more precise, one of the newspapers with whom we work held the press conference to launch their new site.

First, realize that despite Benin’s high ranking on scales that measure the freedom of their press, the press in Benin is neither free as in libre nor free as in beer. A few days before the conference, the newspaper sent out letters of invitation to the other major press organs of Cotonou, including the national TV and radio stations.

The day of the conference arrived, and we set-up in a conference room in my old work partner’s building, where the newspaper rents its offices. After several disasters, including no space, a filthy room, no power, and no internet connection, Bertrand and I were able to set-up the room, plug in our laptops, and test our video projector. The video projector didn’t work either. We were, however, finally able to get our Internet connection working. An hour after we were supposed to start, the television crew finally showed up.

Bertrand gave a speech. I presented the site. The paper’s editor gave a speech. There were three questions, only one of which was relevant. We thanked everyone, then gave out Cokes and sandwiches (food is obligatory at these sorts of things, apparently).

Turns out, before the reporters left, they had to collect their “per diem”. Their what?!?!?. That’s right. “To cover the costs of transportation.” Later, we learned that if you don’t pay the journalists, they won’t copy and paste your press materials into an article for their newspaper. In fact, for *any* news event, journalists receive a hefty “honoraria” just to do their jobs.

We were in all the newspapers, on several radio stations, and on TV. Only the paper hosting the event will be able to tell if it was worth it or not.

It’s amazing how bad you can get at something when you don’t practice. Like playing the violin. Or cooking. Or writing. I slacked off because I was starting a small business, and as when I was in college, it’s hard to justify reading and writing for pleasure when you could be studying or making money. In the meantime, the quality of my writing has slowly diminished.

I’m unhappy about that.

Fixing the problem won’t be easy. Writing and reading well take up a lot of time that I could be spending on other things. Like making money. On the other hand, I’ve dreamed about becoming a writer (but not a Creative Type, thankyouverymuch) since Mom gave me a copy of Anne McCaffrey’s “The White Dragon,” when I was in the forth grade. I loved it, of course, but there was this niggling voice in the back of my head, even then, telling me, “Carpenter, you could do better.”

I played around with novel writing during summers spent in Newport News with my grandparents. Early copies were given to my aunt to critique. After reading a twenty-page introduction to my novel, her only advice to my eleven-year old self was “A man and a woman would finish a wrestling match like that by having sex. You don’t know about sex yet, but you will one day.”

In high school, I put my journal on-line, for the whole world to see. I had exactly one reader. Myself.

In college, I kept my journal online, but had many more readers, and caused many more problems. With the advent of the now-defunct Bitter Club, I, several other women, and Phil, found an enormous audience for our occasionally-but-not-often well-written ranting and raving. Alas, with graduation, the Bitter Club was shut down without a bang.

I tried NaNoWriMo a few years ago, while in the Peace Corps. It was a lot of fun, but my efforts were forcibly interrupted by travel and work. And although I’d like to be able to handwrite 1500 words a day, I found it simply too time consuming.

I’ve been blogging for years now, which I swear is entirely non-fiction. Never-the-less, non-fiction isn’t the only itch I’m dying to scratch. We’ll see where this goes, but I’m certain that more writing is in my future, no matter how hard I have to work to fit it into my day.