As suggested in my last post, the first thing I noticed about Benin was the heat. According to the internet it was only 32C, but it felt like at least 10 degrees hotter than that.
The city, Cotonou, is clean and reasonably modern, but still with some of the rough buildings that are so typical of Africa. Within the city the roads are good and the traffic is well-behaved.
As you leave the city, though, both the roads and the buildings quickly deteriorate. Bohicon, where I am staying, is approximately 130km north of the city. The towns we passed through on the way were mostly rough buildings, with a lot of open country in between.
One of the most noticeable things is that there are not masses of people walking along the roads, as there are in the East African countries. There are a few, but not very many.
As in most African countries, there are plenty of roadside sellers, usually congregated around speed bumps where traffic has to slow down, allowing them opportunity to flock around the car pushing their wares. Pastor Roland bought us some fried banana chips – very thin slices of banana, obviously by the taste fried in vegetable oil. They were quite nice, but it occurred to me that doing the same thing using coconut oil instead of vegetable oil would produce a really nice result. Must try it when I get home. He also bought us some fresh pawpaw slices, which were tied in plastic bags. Yummy.
One thing that has been disappointing on this trip is that in most places the pastors have not been able to host me in their homes, but have put me in hotels. This means that I don’t have the same chance to interact with them and get to know them. The hotel I am in here is nice, quite western, with a good fan for which I am very grateful, and a firm mattress on the bed for which I am doubly grateful. My back is reasonably happy for the first time since I came to Africa.
I arrived late afternoon Wednesday, and had my first meeting yesterday morning. It was only a small gathering, and half the people looked as if they really didn’t want to be there. There was a group of teenage girls who kept talking through the entire time, but amazingly one of them responded to the altar call for salvation. She pulled one of the younger girls out with her, but I don’t really think the little one knew what she was doing.
Today we had a long drive out to a church in the country. Once we got off the sealed road, the condition of the road went downhill badly. This road did not have potholes, it had crater lakes! Along the way the car overheated, so we had a lengthy break at the roadside while it cooled down. Then back to the jolts and bumps along this dreadful road. I’m so glad I don’t suffer from car sickness these days, or there could have been a terrible mess!
The building where the church meets is a tiny, temporary structure that seems to be out in the middle of nowhere. The congregation was matchingly small, around twenty people at most, including kids. There was not the disinterest and distractions that were in the meeting yesterday, but I didn’t feel my message was getting through to them. Nobody responded to the calls for either salvation or recommittment, but pretty much the whole congregation came out to be prayed for for “prayer requests.”
Afterwards they had a time for questions. The first one was would I come back. “Not this time, but next time.” The second one was, would I help them build a beautiful church. “Sorry, I don’t have money.” I am so, so, so tired of the African mindset that all westerners must be rich! The third one (from the pastor) was, does God allow a woman to preach. “Yes He does. The passages that are used against women are terribly misinterpreted.” Excuse me, I am a woman and I have just preached in your church. If you don’t think God allows a woman to preach, why am I here?
Sadly, the whole thing left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
The good, and totally unrelated, news is that I finally have an official bit of paper saying that my Visa on Arrival for Ghana has been approved and paid for.