Benin by www.born2travel.it

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08.03.2014 Djougou (Benin)

After a long journey, passing through remote villages and a few roadblocks that manage to get nothing out of us… we see in the distance a sleepy Togolese flag; it does not flutter, perhaps it is too hot here even for it! Two soldiers listlessly carry two benches next to a desk… all of it under a wonderful mango tree, where a very diligent but also very slow policeman begins to register every single passport… his boss, in local dress, is lying on a wooden bench and now and then issues some order. Nobody passes through, apart from the occasional rare moped… we are the only ones on the register for 7 March. A glance at the yellow fever booklet and they send us to two plump, sweaty policemen… we are in Benin!

We arrive in the much-longed-for Djougou. We meet the colourful and jovial Father Brice… I expect a lot from this meeting.

Father Brice spent 3 years in Padova, speaks excellent Italian and, among other things, coordinates an orphanage near Djougou.

After a brief stop at the post office we go to visit the museum curated by Zoumarou Alassane, which prepares us for the visit to the Taneka villages. We climb up dusty red little roads… the first children with big eyes, dressed in rags and with swollen bellies… we hand out toys and soft toys… they jump around mad with joy.

We are received by one of the three Taneka kings, who gives us his blessing from an old wooden chair… then a king of another tribe, then another still. This ethnic group from another world strikes me deeply; I cannot believe that populations exist who in 2014 still live so primitively; they live in mud-and-straw huts, pound millet and have no idea what the world is like outside Copargo.

We all lose ourselves wandering among the huts, in that peace broken only by the festive shouts of the children playing with the balloons we brought.

But now it is time to go and visit Father Brice's orphanage at Tchoutchou; we are welcomed by all the children, about fifty of them, singing a welcome song… a girl, beautifully made up, welcomes us by pouring a basin of water onto the ground in front of us… water, the most precious thing for them, used to honour important guests.

Seated among them on the benches, we listen and answer their questions: “what work do you do?” “what is the Italian flag like?”… we melt when they ask us “which neighbourhood do you come from?”… We hand over a few little gifts, clothes and the van's water pump that they had asked us for. We leave the orphanage, even if a little piece of our heart stays there…

[Stefy]: “We return to our mission. Today is Women's Day and here it is celebrated all together, cooking, eating, resting in the shade of the mango trees and then gathering in the courtyard to discuss the condition of women. We immerse ourselves in their culinary world, we are enveloped by their colours, so vivid that they shine in the sun… their smiles lit up everything around us”.

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