Busy in Benin

Being busy is quite a lame excuse but all the more true for not having entered anything for such a long time. But travelling is and I hope the pictures will compensate for having waited.

I was in Benin for 2 weeks together with 2 rwandese colleagues to explore experiences with the community based health insurances there. Though I was not entirely happy to travel at that point since I had just started to settle in Rwanda really, I think I made the best of it and here are some impressions.

"etoile rouge" in Cotonou

Benin was an ally of the Soviet Union in the Cold War and you didn’t need your history class memories to realize it. Here is one of the most obvious signs of that heritage, the red star round about, although you can’t really see the star itself as it forms the base of the monument. But I think the rest of it is impressive enough and somehow made me feel at home :)

Other than that Cotonou is not a thrilling town, but very busy and reminded me a lot of Ouagadougou - in relation to Kigali that is. But one of its advantages is of course the sea, if you don’t count the humidity that comes with it. We had to go a bit out of town though to see a prettier part of it, see the difference?

beach near the harbour and our hotel




Hertilan, one of my colleagues, who saw the sea for the first time in his life

Travelling with Africans in another African country was definitely quite an experience and although my amazement was manifold here just a few notions on that. Of course “we” – as in white or western people – like to afford more expensive places every now and then - cos we can – whereas they - my colleagues in this particular case – quite understandably save their precious per diems for something else. On the other hand, if “we” decide to mingle with locals and reality often only the really shabby places would do, heralding the prospects of real Africa. And here our ways part, although I haven’t quite understood where they draw their line between dirty and acceptable, they tend to avoid the dark and dirty to look for “proper” places – but still cheap! I almost collapsed hearing one of my colleagues wondering aloud that there could be a place like Cotonou where women cook their food at the roadside on open fires in the year A.C. 2006 (O-Ton!). Then they asked me (and that must have been about the only personal question ever addressed to me in these two weeks) how I liked Benin in comparison to Rwanda and here I was thinking, well, we have been around all this time pumping loads of money into this continent to “develop” it but, you know, actually we quite prefer the chaos (or liveliness, as one could say) and dirt (aka not so proper) cause its just so unlike our own orderly and saturated society. But hey, of course I chose the more diplomatic answer.

after an "exhausting" meeting with my other colleague Alice

The whole trip was nicely and almost evenly divided into work and free time - is it too hard to spot the sarcasm here? - we spent 5 days travelling, had 3 days of weekend, one holiday and hey, 6 days of working! - and we enjoyed all aspects of it.

With the mutualistes, members of the insurance systems, in Bori, near Parakou...







...and in the fishing (tourist, more like)
village of Ganvie, little Venice of Benin