BenIndia: Do You Know the Way to Parakou....

Rebecca and I bouged ( that is Franglish for traveled) in Benin this past week. And really I must say that you have not lived until you've experienced an African bus. We first traveled from Porto Novo to Abomey, to stay with the missionaries there. Abomey is about a 3 hour drive north of here. I was privileged enough to find a seat that the back quarter of it was missing. Let me tell you it is quite the gift to keep yourself balanced on 3/4 of a seat while riding down a road in Benin. My talents prevailed and I stayed on the seat the whole time. We arrived in Abomey and had to hire zim drivers to take us the 7 kms to the missionary homes. After

Our Gourmet lunch with the missionaries

we had argued over a 40 cent difference in price for about 20 minutes we hopped on the back of the motor bike with all our luggage. You can imagine how wonderful we must have looked when we arrived at the missionary home. My guess is we resembled homeless people. The missionaries acted like we looked just fine, and hugged us and welcomed us, with a fantastic gourmet meal. We attended the family study that night and felt like we too were part of their family.
The next morning we went with a young missionary couple from Quebec in their territory. They preach in the local language of Fon. They pick up a local brother with their car every morning. This brother is unable to walk due to a debilitating disease, but he is a full time volunteer, pioneer. Eric, the young missionary carries him to the car and out of the car. He sets him up along side the street and lays out all of his literature and the brother preaches to everyone passing by. Rebecca and I were truly humbled by this brother. What strong love and faith he must have in Jehovah.
We stayed at the missionary home for 2 1/2 days and then boarded another bus for what was supposed to be a 3 1/2 hour ride to Parakou. Our bus was having difficulty and broke down along the way. Our very resourcful chauffeur fixed it and we were off again. We arrived 5 hours later, and we might have looked a little worse than when we arrived in Abomey. Once again, our friend that we were staying with, Aurelie, welcomed us with open arms into her home. She is a French sister who has been doing missionary work here for 6 years. She definitely marches to her own drum! We enjoyed staying with her and getting to know her. She has a motorbike that she zips around town on, and everyone in Parakou seems to know her. All we had to do was say we were staying with Aurelie, and people immedietely liked us! We went preaching with the Parakou French congregation., and really enjoyed meeting the local brothers and sisters.
We ate the local specialty of igname pile. It is manniock root beet with these huge rounded sticks. They fry cheese and mutton in a peanut sauce and serve it all together. It is quite tasty, if I say so myself (even though I had to skip the cheese). Needless to say we left Parakou with a good taste in our mouth from the food and association. Our trip home was completely uneventful, thankfully, and we arrived back at home sweet, home, Porto Novo.
posted by Katie