Samuel Benoit

During the summer of 2005 I did an internship with the Olinga Foundation in Ghana, West Africa.  Most of the time I lived and worked in Accra, the capital city, but I also spent several weeks at the field office in a small town called Bawdie in the Western Region.  I was there right after one Anis Sobhani had relocated to another region after being there for several months working with the local Baha’i community.  I had never met him, but according to the children who pointed at me and said “ANIS!” – I looked like him.  We eventually met in Accra for one glorious day right before he finally returned to Canada.  By September we were both in Ottawa at Carleton, and not being confused for one another.  We had many more glorious days together through Carleton’s Association for Baha’i Studies. 

Tonight I will be hopping on a train to Bangalore to pick up Anis and embark on an epic journey where we plan to visit 10 cities in as many days,  4 nights spent on trains or busses and 6 major works of Indian architecture.  In exchange for having to look at a bunch of old buildings with this aspiring archicitect I will be dragging Anis to some of my favorite places like Dharwad, Belguam and of course, Panchgani.  Now they say that plans are God’s jokes, and I think this is especially true in India where God has a huge audience of other gods with a great sense of humour.  So come back in a few days and expect to find plenty of new pictures and stories as we hilariously try to follow a plan.