Easter adventures in Benin, part 2

In which we meet the horse and his boy, witness a shark on a motorcycle, dance wildly at church with the Christian Man, and narrowly escape several car crashes in the taxi of impending doom.

The next morning I woke briefly to a warm sunrise, a small inquisitive brown child who peeked into my hammock and whinnied at me ("He whinnied?" I thought, confused), and a mosquito net that had partly come off during the night.  I woke again, several hours later, to a humid and sunny day, and a quiet time rocking in the hammock, reading my Bible and enjoying the ocean view.

It was a leisurely and unplanned day, and altogether wonderful.  We spent a few hours attempting to body surf - a rather entertaining sport in the violent waves, which ended my surfing several times with a hard body-slam on the beach.  Despite a bucket rinse later, I still found sand in my hair and permanently ground into my skin for days after that.  The mangos we had purchased the day before were irresistibly ripe - oozing juice until I squished one up in my hands and drank it African-style out of a hole in the skin.  Our belongings, meanwhile, were guarded by a friendly pack of dogs who insisted on sleeping everywhere on the hostel grounds (including under the tables and in the bathroom stalls).

Later, walking along the beach road, the four of us saw a motorcycle coming towards us with what looked like a huge fish draped over the back.  With every bounce on the rocks and ruts, a tail slapped the dust in the road, and something that looked like a head came close on the other side.  It wasn't until the motorcycle passed and we all turned around to get a better look that we saw the gill slits along the head and realized our "big fish" was actually a shark over 6 feet long.  Sadly, by the time we realized there was a shark on the motorcycle, it had already passed with no chance of pictures.  Shortly after that we decided we were done swimming in the ocean for the day.

S'mores are an American thing, a campfire treat usually involving marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate.  Noel had brought along s'mores supplies with us, thinking that we could build a campfire on the beach to roast marshmallows.  By the time we reached Benin our chocolate bars were liquid and the marshmallows had fused into one large blob.  With a few hours in the hostel fridge, however, the supplies were solid enough to attempt some s'mores creation.  

In our search for firewood, Noel and Melisa were met by a small boy galloping along and neighing to himself.  Earlier in the day we had seen him around the hostel, mostly in the company of a rather bony horse tied to one of the trees.  In an urge to be helpful in collecting trash, the boy took all their firewood and threw it over the fence. Once he realized we were collecting things to burn, however, he started bringing in piles of palm fronds and pieces of furniture to throw onto the fire.  We tried to discourage burning furniture, and really were trying to wind down the campfire by that point.  Since no other languages were working we tried neighing at him...he neighed back happily, slapped himself, and galloped off into the darkness.

The whole evening we'd been a bit confused, as a friend of Justin's was supposed to join us for the evening and then church in the morning but hadn't ever come.  Early the next morning, however, Justin came back into camp and announced that a taxi driver had come, claiming that he was sent by "a Christian Man" to pick us up for church.  Of course, we packed up camp and hopped in the taxi!

We joined Emmanuel at the Apostolic Church of Benin for a service packed with prophecy and solidly enthusiastic worship. I felt slightly out of place, not because I was a different skin color than everyone else, but manly because I lacked the colorful headwrap, the apparently mandatory baby to tie on my back, and a set of hips and feet that could keep up with the wild double-clap rhythms of worship.  It was good to celebrate the resurrection of Christ with brothers and sisters of a different background and language, with all the color and exuberance and enthusiasm of West Africa - a celebration indeed.  After church we visited Ema and his family at his home in Cotinou, and enjoyed an amazing home-cooked meal of African food.

It was in the ride from Cotinou to the border with Togo that we all learned the word doucement. Ema had mentioned to us just before we left that if we needed the driver to go more slowly or carefully that was the word to use.  I repeated the instructions, then promptly forgot the word.  Our driver grinned and announced in extremely broken English that he would be taking us to the "frontier."  We started out slowly, but with a quick and reckless acceleration through the car traffic and swarms of motorcycles.  The man would have put a New York City cabbie to shame, as his driving commentary was not only complete with fist shaking and threats, but he also occasionally grabbed motorcycle drivers through the window.  As it started to grow dark and we continued careening around pedestrians and potholes and speed bumps, with frequent "chicken" matches with oncoming cars, we started praying fervently and trying to remember what exactly Ema had said to say.  Unfortunately, we remembered the word just as we hit a long stretch of speed bumps, so our driver then thought we wanted to go slowly just over the speed bumps.  We continued our mad rush down the road, but with each speed bump our driver would slow to the point of stalling the taxi, grin rather maniacally at us, and reassure us regarding his excellent driving skills, "doucement, doucement, doucement!"

On reaching the Benin-Togo border we offered up thanks to God for all the overtime our guardian angels had been putting in, and sincere prayers for the driver and his safety returning to Cotinou that night.

Our unpredictable, entertaining and somewhat dangerous Beninoise adventure concluded with a safe return to our ship home and quite a lot of plantain chip consumption while sitting on top of each other in the back seat of the last taxi.  Occasionally I start to wonder how my friends and I encounter such interesting occurrences with all our trips traveling through Africa, while others seem to go out and enjoy perfectly normal and boring trips to the beach or the mountains or the market...

I much prefer life lived every moment to the fullest; a life tiptoeing on the edge of the cliff, with my own safety carefully sheltered in cupped hands and then flung, open-armed with exuberant trust, into the wind.