first impressions - premières impressions

I’m in Africa! This was clear from the very first moment when we went by bus from the airplane to the customs. This is what we do in many airports in Europe you will think – but not if the distance between the plane and the customs are about 20 meters and the bus ride takes 50 meters… Some things have different meanings in different worlds.

Today, I went out to get a mobile phone chip and some money. The idea to do this be feed gave me the possibility to learn about tropical rainfall (and it became a strong TROPICAL RAINFALL). Streets turned into streams and there were plenty of passages which became impossible to take. Sometimes I just lifted my trousers, sometimes I had to go back and try a different way. Cotonou looked a little like Venice – just without boats and a slightly different architecture. But it was nice to feel the warm rain, stop under a small roof to get some rice fish and a spicy sauce to eat.

To get the money and the chip took almost the whole day. Especially it wasn’t easy to find a way to get money with a Visa card that has no PIN. I went from one banc to the next and there was always at least one reason why they couldn’t give me money: no machine, machine out of order, the responsible absent, not responsible for these problems… But this way you get in contact with many people and most of them are really friendly. A street seller I talked to was asked by a mixed African-European couple if he knows Roger (a quite common name in Benin). The answer was that Roger is his brother and that he moved to France recently. So the conservation started… The ways people meet are so different.

As distances from one bank to the next became too large I took the famous Semi-Djan Motorcycle-Taxis. The streets are full of small motorcycles which fly around like bees - I am writing quantity-wise AND organisation-wise. They have to take care of puddles of holes and the other vehicles… always a little adventure – luckily they never get that fast…

The evening I eat in a restaurant a steak for the price of a Döner-Sandwich in Europe. Thinking about the day I realised: It was a really nice day, a welcoming à la Africa. I arrived…