I just recently was able to travel outside of Burkina Faso to a country that is just southeast of Burkina, Benin. I did so because a good friend of mine was on a school trip there for nursing students and engineers. So I hopped on a bus at 6:30 AM and 20 hours later I made it into Porto Novo Benin. Wow, I'll be honest in saying it was a long long bus ride. But I knocked out some reading and did some thinking. I was along so I didn't have a partner for any of those fun or pseudo-fun road trip games. Plus I guess there aren't tons different state license plates here to spot, so like I said, I had a good thinking session. And on top of that, it was a bit stressful because the bus dropped me off in Cotonou, which was about 40 Km from Porto Novo, and I had no idea how I was going to get there. I'd never been to Benin before and didn't really know my way around Cotonou or Porto Novo. But I made it after negotiating my way on a moto taxi and then another taxi. But I could tell that my French was on the decline after way too many hours on a bus and not nearly enough sleep.
But nevertheless, I made, and for the next few days I got a chance to hang out with 15 college students and had a blast. Plus because they did a few touristy type things, I tagged along for that seeing a museum and going through the market. It was fun for me since I have never really did tons of the typical tourist type things that many people do over here. So it was great to see another country in Africa, see a different climate and meet some pretty cool students from Washington.
After Benin my friend and I took another 20 hour, actually with a few extra stops was really more like 22 hour bus ride back to Ouaga. The next few days we just spent some good time in my neck of the woods and had a lot of fun. And really it was special for me to have someone from back home see my life here, someone who knows me from high school as "Washington Ben" not "Missionary Ben". So all in all the last few weeks have been unique and different and a nice change of pace. And now as I'm sure most of you are aware, school will be starting sooner rather than later and with that my work with the youth group will start picking up again which I'm really looking forward to. Until next time, stay classy friends.
Oh and that is a cool church down in Benin, which from now on will only be known as "The Candy Cane Church".
