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The most surprising thing that I’ve found in Benin the past two months that I’ve lived here is happiness.

Not the happiness of the Beninise. Put on the most recent release from Akon, and they will dance circles around you.

Mine.

There are times when I am struck by overwhelming feelings of pure joy at the relatively mundane task that I am currently completing. I first discovered this phenomenon in high school. It became more frequent in college. Walking to class. Driving around Columbia. Sitting at my desk.

That I would ever experience this feeling in a developing country where peeing on the side of the road is relatively common occurrence was lost on me.

Yes, this is without a doubt the hardest thing that I have, and I’m betting, will ever do in my entire life.

But there are also those times, bursting out laughing with my brothers, dancing to Calvin Harris on the roof of a house that overlooks two teams of Beninese children playing soccer on the pitch below, listening to LCD Soundsystem while I bike to school, that I am one hundred percent sure of the decision that I’ve made for the next two years.

That my life appears to exist here, is the strangest thing to which to I’ve become accustomed.