Week 1 – Part 1: Arriving and getting settled in Benin
Our arrival in Benin
Here we are, arrived in Benin! After a comfortable direct flight from Brussels to Cotonou, Benin (albeit squeezed in the very middle of the plane), we were hit immediately by the hot humid air. In the south of Benin, it is very humid, with temperatures at this time of year in the low 30s but feeling like 40C with the humidity – plus it doesn’t really cool off in the evenings, only going down to around 28C or so. It makes for hot and sticky days followed by hot and sticky nights.
We travelled here with a bigger group of students from various programmes at Odisee who are doing a 2-week immersion trip. It was very convenient and very appreciated from us that we could join them and thus have our first few days in the country so easily coordinated! While the bags and the transport were being organized, Femke and I nipped into an MTN communications kiosk to get our SIM cards sorted out for our stay in Benin. Within an hour of arriving, we had local numbers and access to the internet – what a luxury!
Cotonou
Our first night was spent in Cotonou staying in a group accommodation block at a convent. The rooms were as comfortable as expected, although we unfortunately didn’t have luck on our side as we ended up in one of the rooms without even a ceiling fan! It was a long, hot, humid night for our first one in Benin.
The centre cooked dinner and breakfast for us and so we got our first tastes of Beninese food. They use lots of herbs and spices which will take our stomachs some time to get use to. The heat from the first night hit me hard, so for the first couple days I struggled with some nausea and didn’t really get to enjoy the food beyond a few mouthfuls. They seem to cook a lot of rice and couscous, sometimes spicy and sometimes not, with mainly fish or chicken as a source of protein. We’ve had various vegetables from fresh salad to marinated onions, as well as a mix of veggies alongside beans. If you want to drink something here besides water, the main cold drinks are very sugary pops or else beer. Although with the heat the extra sugar from the soda is quite welcome! The main beer here is Beninoise, either in its regular version (about 4.5% alcohol), or the lemony version, the Panaché, (about 2% alcohol), which was a fast favourite for Femke.
Ganvié
Our first true day in Benin and we were able to follow along with the group of students as they visited the village of Ganvié. Ganvié is not far from Cotonou, and is a large village built almost entire on stilts above the water of the Nokoué lake. We spent about 3 hours touring around in a boat, seeing fisherman busy with making their catches and women selling food and supplies directly from their boat just like a floating market. We stopped at a hotel and restaurant/art gallery/giftshop for a cold drink and got to peek inside the rooms – it looked to be a very nice view to wake up to in the morning! All families here have a boat, usually one boat for each parent and then one for the children to share.
Ganvié is often called the Venice of Africa and was established in the 17th century when the people of the Tofinu village fled from slave traders of a neighbouring tribe. The religious beliefs of those in pursuit prevented them from engaging in conflict on this sacred lake, and thus the people of Tofinu established the new village, Ganvié, or “we survived”.
In the legend of Ganvié, after fleeing for several days across land, the Tofinu people come to the lake. The king transformed himself into a heron in order to find them a safe place to live. Then he became a giant crocodile and brought all his people to where Ganvié is now established. The slave traders reached the lake, and fearing evil spirits that lived within it, did not pursue the Tofinu further.
Today Ganvié has a population of about 30,000 inhabitants, the majority living on houses built on stilts above the water. There are about 3000 buildings including a hotel, bank, post office, school, church, mosque, and hospital. The school is built on land so that the children have space to play on solid ground.
Porto-Novo
We spent the night in Porto-Novo, the capital city of Benin and not far from Cotonou on the coast. The stay was at an agricultural project called Songhai, which was focused on sustainable living (everything at the centre was repurposed) and was home to many rescued animals. Here we finally had a room with a ceiling fan and even got to take a dip in the swimming pool to cool off from the humidity! We were, however, puzzled by our toilet that didn’t seem to flush… we kept having to fill the back of the toilet with water in order to get in running. Until we finally overheard someone talking about turning the water on for the toilet – aha! The tap that we were unsure of touching actually had a purpose. Apparently here if the washroom isn’t in use, they turn off the water to the toilet using a small tap on the side. Success! We had a working toilet. Live and learn, this knowledge would come in handy.
Enroute to Parakou
On Sunday morning we were up early and leaving the group behind as we caught a local bus north to bring us from Porto-Novo to our internship location in Parakou. As we waited for the bus to depart, there were women come on periodically to sell drinks and snacks. We had our own water with us, but not much to eat. But because we only had larger bills, we were unable to buy anything, as they couldn’t make change for us. So with only a few small things to eat, we made our way north for the 7-hour bus ride.
It was a lively bus – there was African music playing on the speakers for the whole journey, plus several times a man would board the bus and then spend over an hour regaling the passengers with tales of the healing powers of the wares he was trying to sell. Soaps, powders, oils, we saw them making good business on the bus with the locals. They were always very charismatic men, telling stories and getting the passengers laughing. The bus had no air conditioning, but the wind through the windows kept things comfortable. Although as the day went on, and we got further north, you could feel the temperature climbing!
When we stepped out of the bus in Parakou, we were absolutely swarmed by the local motorcycle taxi drivers (called zems), who were looking for business. However, we were waiting for our internship mentor to meet us there and didn’t know what sort of transport we would need. A couple of the drivers helped us move our things under a shelter to the shade and kept us company while we waited. It, of course, turned out to be good business for them, as our mentor, Eric, arrived on his own motorbike. So we needed to load up one zem with 3 of our suitcases, Femke and the 4th suitcase went on another zem, and I was with Eric as we rode about 20 minutes to the north of Parakou to the hospital of Boko (Hôpital Saint Jean de Dieu). Finally arrived at our accommodations for the next 11 weeks!
Settling into our new home in Boko
The hospital director was there to meet us and helped us get settled into our house. Brightly painted in blues and pinks, it was funded by the Foundation for their international guests and interns to live in while visiting Boko. Our rooms are simple but comfortable, and we have ceiling fans to keep us as cool as possible! Luckily up north in Parakou the heat is dry, and while it gets very hot midday (around 38C), it goes down to 20C overnight, making the climate much more manageable than in the south.
It was 4pm, and as we hadn’t eaten almost anything all day (our own fault, of course), the director took us to one of the hospital restaurants to eat. Just a small building on the edge of the hospital grounds, with a few tables inside and a large terrace. The woman responsible, Perpetu, immediately took care of us and set us up with some dinner and began organizing everything so that we would also be set for breakfast the next day! By the time we settled back into our house for the night, she had come by with a hot water kettle, coffee cups, bottled water, a basket of bread, cheese (la vache qui rit), and powdered coffee, hot chocolate, and milk. Not to mention she would drop by in the morning with a couple of fried eggs for us as well! The hospitality in Benin is clearly present!
All over the hospital campus are salamanders running around; small ones from about 8cm up to large ones that are about 30cm in length. I would say they are like the mice of Benin, but apparently there are mice here too! When Perpetu was helping us get set up for breakfast, she found a salamander living in our cupboard and it was immediately – whack! – with the broom. Apparently if their stool get into your food it can be quite toxic, and so in between everything this week we will be busy washing all the dishes and kitchen surfaces in the house. For the most part though, as long as they don’t bother us, then we won’t bother them.
With that we headed to bed early to get our sleep before our first official day of the internship.
