There’s a reason why I’m eating a turkey sandwich at 6 a.m. It’s lunchtime in Benin!

I taste the tart lemonade I found at one of the local supermarches along the drowsy lanes of Haie Vive. I hear the revved motors of the zemidjahns as they halt at Place des Martyrs. I see Suzanne dashing out to buy beans and rice.

She will have been up six hours already, have walked 45 minutes to her office near Etoile Rouge, have made phone calls and finalized arrangements for an upcoming business trip; she will have spoken with at least several friends who beeped her to say good morning, in the Beninese style.

Travel gives us many gifts, and one of the best is perspective, shaking us out of routines and habits, reminding us it’s a big old world. In this regard jet lag is a willing accomplice. It’s a souvenir of our wanderings, our body’s way of saying not so fast — you were really there, you know, living on Greenwich Mean Time, just six degrees above the equator.


(Street meat in Cotonou. No thanks!)