Lost in Benin

AKA - Paul and Jennifers Excellent Adventure

I saved a story from last week just in case nothing much happened this week. Guess what? Nothing happened so you get to read the best story from last week.

On the way home from our post visits last weekend several of us stopped in Bohicon for a night. There are several volunteers posted there, and near there, so we spent some time with some of them. Saturday night we all, seven of us, went to a restaurant for dinner. After dinner we decided to go to a buvette (bar for you Anglophones) to have a couple of drinks before retiring for the evening. Also, the buvette had slot machines, what fun!

As I have mentioned before one of the transportation options for us is zemidjans, mopeds used as taxis. Leavng the restaurant after dinner we all got on zemidjans. One each, seven of us, seven zemidjans. The zemidjan that Jennifer and I got on lagged behind the others. By the time we got near the intended buvette we could not see any of the others and our drivers did not know where the buvette was exactly.

Jennifer and I decided to go back to the volunteers house where we were to spend the night and wait for someone to come and get us. We thought this to be a sound plan. The one flaw in this plan was that it was now dark and we could not see some of the landmarks we saw during the day.

We left the zemidjans when they got us close to our destination. We figured that it would be easier to find our way walking slowly instead of driving fast. Jennifers french skills; better than mine; and my sense of direction meant that we were never too far from our destination. After some time, about an hour, we had finally found the one landmark that would have led us to the house. Right then the volunteer drove by us on a zemidjan on the way to his house. He had been looking for us as we thought he would.

Everything turned out OK and in the end all that happened was that we lost some drinking time. But at least we can now say we have been lost in Benin. I'm sure it won't be last story I have to relate while I'm here. Hopefully, they will all turn out as well.