Girls Roadtrip- Our Tales & Trials of Possotome :)

Hop in and fill up the gas tank....we are going on a roadtrip!

( A typical gas station)

Suzanne, Lauren & I are sitting in our chairs about 6am watching the sun come up over Lake Aheme in the small village of Possotome. Its one of 45 tribes around this fresh/salt water mixed lake. Canoes are gently gliding along the shiny, glass water. Fisherman checking their lines to see what the night brought in the baited traps. They teeter around the edges of the lake's circle of sticks, outlining where the lakes "divinity" lives " a spirit hippo" the guide yesterday said, like its common knowledge of course. If one casts his net in there, it is sacred and will upset the God, causing the Chief to have to heavily tax him & put a curse on him. Once a year each of the surrounding villages adds their own sacrifice to the whole to please the God so he will continue to provide fish.

This morning as we sit and sip our coffee we hear canoes first from the loud chanting and then from the sights of large huts they have built into the canoes loaded with as many people as they can possibly fit. It is a "game" they say... that is only done when there is a robber or dignitary in town. The game is played by the adults of the villages in which one man goes into the canoe's hut and is said to cause magic and turn into a snake!! Others are celebrating by dancing around with pillows. Thats about as much as I could understand of this story told to me by a Beninese?

(Canoe going past the lakes Divinity in the 'circle of sticks')

With a little more concentration I can tune into many more sounds around me...roosters crowing for the last of the members to wake up, laughter of staff, palm trees being swept on the ground to clean, birds chirping, water gently lapping as the locals go into bath and check crab traps near shore. It is so peaceful this morning.

Looking back, the past two days have been perfect. None of us speaking French and many charades later, we took a moto, got a taxi, and then foot arrived at our nice hotel. We spent the first afternoon passed out under a palm tree from the busy week. We woke up to drumming and I decided to see where it was coming from. We followed it to the village right next door and found a great delight... 20 some kids in their underwear from 2-6 yrs old dancing like freebirds!, older boys drumming and giving them their beat. Their round bellies and beaming faces COVERED in sand from their sharp, joyful dance movements on the beach. 20 soon turned to 30 kids and we took the beat and turned it into a swirl of "wear the kovos out" (kovos pronounced YoVos- is white person) ha. We played tag, duck duck goose, head shoulders knees and toes, and mass tickling sessions. We ended back in the drumming circle where we started - now time for the younger ladies to show off and perfect their dance moves. Every once in a while they took my hand and led me in the middle of the circle to try to imitate. Complicated feet patterns puzzled me and after several minutes of goofy attempts I sat back to watch in wonder again.

We sat that night, us three girls, with the full moon rising over the lake, a glass of wine, african food, and good conversation until our candle burnt to the bottom and mosquitos came buzzing.

Friday we wondered around the village road passing some children practicing their special dance for their Easter service. (Videos on Facebook) Their moms sat underneath the tree practicing for the church choir.

(This goat was tied to a sleigh of rocks underneath the tree where they were practicing. He is literally the "lawnmower" for the church courtyard. He does a darn good job eating the leaves that fall off the tree above as soon as they touch the ground. The poor goat hobbles over to it, and not a scrap is left!)

We were found by a eager teenager entrepenuer who is working with the French to start ECO-BENIN tourist excursions. We glady decided to be the guinea pigs as they were offering exactly what we were looking to try....catch some fish.

The next Usher himself- Our tour guide

We head out on Piroques (boats) to the middle of the lake. Instead of paddles we are pushed by long palm tree sticks that hit the shallow lake's bottom. HARD WORK! Each of us gets our turn learning how to properly wrap the long net in our hands before casting...1....2.....3....and we give it our best arm. Waiting several minutes for the weights to sink to the bottom and the fish hopefully entering, we are cheered on by the sweet old African men in the boats as though we were pros. They offer to cook us a meal with whatever we catch.

(Whadd think Pops?! :) Thats my throw- thank goodnes for softball throwing sessions in the backyard!)

Unfortunately we all strike out, but the Africans don't! Suzanne and I jumped in the water with them to cool off and they are even catching shrimp, crab and fish WITH THEIR HANDS! and dumping them in the boat for our lunch.




After an amazing meal we took a tour of their Hotel they are building in hopes of helping them along and promoting it to our lot of shipmates back in Contonou and increase business. Its exciting and hopeful to see the progress being made in the country to generate income, even in a little village.

As we checked out of our Hotel Monday morning, my friend realized sometime in the past day around $60 was stolen out of her purse, leaving our ability to pay our bill extremely short. We knew this was not good..... in Africa there are no credit cards, ATMs, etc, We explained our story to the owners, prayed, and told them we were women of our word...we would be back with the money somehow. God is good, and the day before on the boatride we had met 2 French men working with the NGO - ECO BENIN. We took a chance to visit them to see if we could borrow the money from them and pay them back when they came to our city next week to fly out. Not only would it have been extremely difficult for us to get back to the village again, but we knew it caused the hotel managers much stress as they simply can't take the chance on absorbing the cost like in the US worst case scenario. The 2 wonderful French men happily consented to lending us the money and every one cheered when we arrived back at the hotel. God provided and we were SO thankful. We had a great trip.

.... Other adventures are better left untold for awhile mom! ha. We are back safe and sound :)