some details on benin

So as I mentioned, photos from Benin are up at the usual site or you can click here .

Benin was great. I would love to go back there and explore more (particularly the park in the north where you can go on safari and see animals!)

Crossing the border was a little chaotic , and confusing because the time changes ahead one hour as soon as you cross the border! The border is very easy to cross if you’re Togolese and you forgot your national identity card — just blatently hand the immigration officers 500 cfa and you’re on your way…. We, on the other hand, were obliged to fill out paper work and deal with policemen on power trips before receiving our 48 hour visas.

Our home base was Grand Popo, a beach town with several hotels and not much else to do except lie on a hammock in the beach or soak in the pool. I know, life is tough, right ?

Because this is “off” tourist season we were pretty much alone the whole time, and enjoyed ourselves eating good food and keeping good company. (We were 5 PCVs.)

The second day I decided to go to Ouidah because I’d heard it was the second most visited tourist place in Benin. I caught a car to Ouidah in the morning (about an hour or so away from Grand Popo).

Ouidah was fascinating. In January it has an annual voodoo celebration but even on non-fete days you can tell that you are definitely in voodoo Africa… First I went to the Portuguese fort which is also a museum. (OK, yes, I might not have gone to the museum if it hadn’t been a Portuguese fort haha.) The Portuguese never colonized Benin but they had outposts here for trade. There were lots of artifacts, maps, pictures, and interesting information on Portuguese-Beninois relationship and the slave trade and also the influence of voodoo on the Caribbean islands, Brazil, etc.

Afterwards I did the “Slave Walk”. You start at the location of the slave market. First the slaves would have been held at the Portuguese fort. Then they would have been brought the market to sell. (Or vice versa, I forget.) Afterwards, they would be marched the 4K to the beach where ships would take them across the Atlantic ocean. There is a monument there called the Point of No Return. Along the way, there are statues representing the different voodoo kings of Benin, and also pertinent points of interest, such as the location of the small building they would shut the slaves up in to test their endurance in cramped dark conditions before putting them on the ship.

I spent the day in Ouidah and really enjoyed it because of its historical and cultural significance.

In the early evening Fabiola and I went hippo watching ! A total tourist trap but I enjoyed it :-p

We paid a man who approached us on the beach to take us into the mangroves and watch for hippos. We went at a bad time so they weren’t feeding on the banks but we did see two or three surfacing and coming up for air several times. It was a little scary, particularly as we became more and more convinced that the hippos were a myth and we were going to get murdered by the Benin guides (why else would we need THREE men to take us hippo watching? we thought it would just be the one), but all’s well that ends well and it made a great story. We were pretty skittish, especially when Fabiola muttered in English, “Oh, we’re definitely going to die” and our guide, who didn’t speak English but wanted to copy our accents, echoed, “Oh, ‘re going to die…” Not exactly the thing you want to hear. But it was the perfect end to a great day — Voodoo, Slavery, and Hippos!

The next day we crossed the border back into Togo around noon and then it was a quick trip for me back to village (an hour? 1 1/2?). I would love to go back to Benin and maybe I will get another chance before I COS.