Into Africa

October 9: Making New Friends

I have taken a very important step in my adjustment to Cotonou: I have officially taken a zemi-john three times. I put my life into the hands of these yellow-shirted moped taxis to bounce me over potholes, jerk me over sand road dips, weave me in between cars, whiz me into traffic whirling round-abouts, and speed me to and from home at only 15-30 cents a ride.

They say talk is cheap; taxis are cheaper....

Today, Muriel and I are going to a school for physically and mentally disabled children to vaccinate them. They are often forgotten. The polio teams come around to each house in each city and in every village.They came here to vaccinate Sabine [her host sister] because she is five years old (the cut-off age). They marked a "V" for "vaccinated" on our front gate. Their campaign is very important – to vaccinate every child in Benin. This has been Rotary’s project since 1988 – to completely wipe out the disease by 2005. There are twenty countries left in the world where polio still exists; fifteen of them are in Africa.

On Tuesday I went to a classical quartet concert at the Centre Culturel Français. I sat in the front row, in the first open white plastic chair next to reserved signs for the French Ambassador and important folk. I offered a mint candy to a guy sitting by himself, two chairs down from me. He asked if the acoustics were good in the spot where we were sitting. (Are acoustics ever taken into account in Africa?) I told him that I wanted to be able to see the first violinist because I am a violinist. This dude, Hakeem, is half German and half Nigerian. He is the West African reporter for die tageszeitung, a national German newspaper, and is married to a black American from Hawaii. After the concert he invited me to go with his German friends, who had also come to the concert, to a maquis (cafe).

Since then I have hung out with Hakeem and his friends, having wonderful discussions with these very travelled folk: Germans, Nigerians, French, Quebecois, Iranian. It is great to be invited someplace. The Beninois always say, yeah, we should do something together. We’ll get together, but never follow up. We Americans are often reproached for doing exactly the same thing. For this reason, I have really enjoyed my week, going out nearly every day either to a cafe or to the beach or to someone’s house. I also met a German professor at the university where I will be going who is a scholar in West African French literature. He gave me some leads on Beninois authors. I went to the biggest book store here, run by the Catholic church, and spent $25 on books and a map of Cotonou (that’s a huge amount of money here!). But it is worth it. I will never be able to buy Beninois literature anywhere else.