Benin

The weather can get pretty crazy in Benin and Togo. The reason for that is just because there's no real sewage system or drains and so when it rains it usually floods and it can flood. It can block you into your apartment honestly, it can get pretty bad. Another weird kind of weather thing I guess is that from the months of December to February it's what you call a matin and it's a huge dust cloud that covers the entire country and so people get really cold. For us it would probably feel normal but they get really cold and it's kind of funny to see them bundled up and it gets probably 70 degrees and really dry.

The weather in Benin can get pretty nuts, so here's what we got. They're four degrees north of the equator, so it's basically really hot and really humid almost all year. Instead of having four seasons like most of the states does, they have two hot seasons, sorry, two wet seasons and two dry seasons. It's always hot. The whole year is the hot season. Two wet seasons and two dry seasons. During the dry seasons, there's very little rain. One of the dry seasons has what's called harmattan, which is where the wind blows in from the north off the Sahara Desert, bringing a lot of dry air and a lot of dust into the air. That's the coolest time of year. It's about February. It gets down to like 80 degrees instead of always in the mid-90s, and the locals start wearing jackets, which I thought was crazy, but you know. And then when it's the rainy seasons, get ready for some huge, torrential, massive rainstorms that come out of nowhere and just like flood everything everywhere. And it's actually really cool. The thunderstorms there were some of my favorite things.

The weather in Benin and Togo is mostly just two seasons. You have the dry season and the wet season. The wet season it just rains a ton and because there is no drainage system whatsoever it's that everything just completely floods. So there's many times where I just had to walk with my shoes get completely wet from maybe up to the knee just try to walk where you need to go. But then there's a special season in the dry season they call it Armaten which is this dust storm that comes in from the Sahara desert and it looks like the end of the world. It looks like it's foggy but it's just dust. Every time you breathe in your throat hurts and everything is just covered in dust all the time for this period of about a month in January. And that's the craziest weather I've ever seen. It makes for some really good pictures but some really bad sleepless nights and colds and whatnot.