Abomey: There Are Days You Get And Days You Wish For

I woke up. Sniffles. Dammit! I don't want sniffles again. I'm sick of this cold! I waited in my room until about 10am. Then I figured I better go out an tell them that I planned to spend one more day in Abomey since I had a cold and didn't want to travel to Parakou with a cold. I looked a few times and there wasn't a man working the grounds when I looked. Finally, after an hour of looking from 9am, I headed out and asked a woman "ou se trouve the gerant?" She didn't quite understand me. But she pointed to the man at the gate. I went to him. I told him that I wouldn't leave today because of my cold and gave him CFA 10000 for the room. He took the money but I didn't recognize the guy. Anyway, I headed out to see some of the other temples and palaces. They were all pretty much on the same model--big square buildings with walled courtyards and reliefs of animals and symbols of power.

I went back to make sure I gave the CFA 10000 to the right guy. I guess I did. I asked for the change so I could have some small money, but he said he didn't have change and just gave me the CFA 10000 back.

Then, I headed to Chez Monique. This is a hotel on the north side of town. It has a nice outdoor seating area and cold beer. At about 2:30 in the afternoon, about 20 white people all came out and sat at a table and ate. Some had T-shirts that said STAFF on the back. Some French humanitarian mission--IFVSVP or something like that. After they ate, one woman who was holding a sleeping African child sat near me. I asked "est-ce que il est malade?" but she said he wasn't--just fatigué. She explained why he tired, but my French wasn't good enough to understand. Then a really cute 35-ish staff woman came and brought tea to the woman with the tired child. She sat down and I was happy about that. But, in the end, they all went back until dinner when the all came out en masse again. After a while I met another American woman working for UNICEF. We talked about the election, mostly. She got roped into watching a voodoo ceremony so she went off to see that. The guy who took her tried to convince me to come as well, but it sounded too expensive. Like many hotels that cater to tourists, they have artists who sell stuff there. I bought a little cloth map of Africa. It was kind of fun because there were a bunch of maps and there were some errors. I helped them. One had Nigeria listed as Cameroun and Cameroun as Cameroune. One had Guinea-Bissau and Gambie swapped.

Finally, it was late and I started to my hotel. A few steps outside, I met a guy who sells stuff at the Motel d'Abomey. He asked how much I paid for my map (I'm not sure how he knew I bought the map) and told me he would have sold it to me for half the price. He kept asking how much I paid and I kept saying "je oblie." Finally he told me to hop on his motor-bike and he'd take me to the Bar Vulcain. When we got to the fork where he should have gone right, he went left though. I told him he took a wrong turn, but he said he didn't. I was starting to get worried. I steeled myself to possibly defend myself if this was a crime in progress. Finally he stopped in front of some place downtown. I told him that it was not the Bar Vulcain. Then he took me to the Bar Vulcain. He drove right into the courtyard where the owner was with his wife. Then he got off and sat down. He said the owner was his little brother. I asked him why he took me to the wrong place if he knows the Bar Vulcain so well. I didn't get a satisfactory answer.

Anyway, I decided to sit down with the owner and this guy and the wife. We started drinking palm wine in which pieces of wood were soaked. Pretty strong stuff. They asked me what all African men ask me. If I'm married and have kids. No and no. The motorcycle guy said he has 5 women. The owner said he has 2, "elle" he said pointing to the one next to him, "et elle" he said pointing to another woman. She eventually joined us. They asked me how many women I wanted. I said one. At that the woman who was the first wife of the owner started on this rant against the guy with 5 women. I don't know what it was about, but I can guess. I had a little bit of this crushed paste stuff in a fish sauce. And we all had more palm wine. The owner asked me how much a small computer would cost. I tried to tell him that big ones cost less than small ones but he didn't understand that. I started to explain that "la probleme est avec le chaleur. Une ordinateur petite est dificile à controller le chaleur...." But I figured that he wasn't going to understand me even if I could find the French to explain the thermal problems of computers and how smallness is harder to manage because you have to get the heat out.

His wife situation was interesting. The first wife was more well put together--her hair obviously done professionally. The second wife was more educated and when he wanted to make sure I understood something, he had her write it out on a tablet in French. I got the idea that of the three, only she could write French.

By the time I went to sleep, my sniffles were gone.

Monday November 10, 2008 8:25 Benin local time