04.11.09
We left around 8.10am to go and visit some schools and also meet the kids adopted through the Association scheme. The important was to check whether the money sent to them were consistently be used for their education and care.
Today I adopted 1 kid met there.
I didn’t want to choose as it would mean discriminating the others, so I let my heart guiding me. I played with them and the most spontaneous bond that was created with a little girl, made the decision for me: Marceline Beware.
MARCELINE BEWARE
After we played and sang with the kids, another experience of a lifetime was in store for me…going to a very local ‘restaurant’ to eat African food the African way!
We were over 10 of us around a long rectangular table outside in a garden with chicken running around.
They first brought us 2 plates, one covering the other with inside a paste looking like the one we use for the pizza in Italy:-)…just a little whiter and thicker.
It is made from maize. After a bit, 2 more plates arrived, one with chicken and one with cheese…done on the grill same way as the chicken.
Randomly and scattered through the table, a woman came with a ‘thermos-like’ recipient containing a weird looking sauce with undescrible colour…The idea is to eat that sauce with the flour that I came to know it’s called Yam. Apparently yams are the main staple in Benin. They are a common species plants that form edible starchy tubers.
Another curious thing was that no forks or knifes, just our hands to eat:D.
On the table, a bowl of water to rinse our hands from chicken and sauce.
We then left and went back to the place where we were staying till 3pm when I had agreed to go near a river.
I jumped on a motorbike for a long ride of at least 40 mins on a very dusty/red road….after which I became the colour of the ground and very very dirty!!!
Never mind….I had my afternoon arranged for another EXPERIENCE!
I went to meet Aline, a friend met there working with the kids on one of our projects. She was taking me to a coiffure to get my hair done….
AndÂ
YES!!!!!
Now I got my braids finally-I LOVE IT!!!!!!
What an experience…today was packed with EMOTIONS….ahahahaha.
Arrived in this very small room with no water and lots of women, I washed my hair in a bowl with some water from a little cup (I even noticed some ‘company’ in the bowl…with insects everywhere by the way).
Got there around 6pm…started around 6.30pm till 9.30pm when Mark (another friend working on projects) brought me to join the others with my AMAZING HAIR done up!!!!!!
Dinner for the first time was some so desired vegetables…although with insects (which is a normal thing, I have realised); we had a short walk back to our place which was in between scary and funny.
The road was obviously completely dark without any lights..and we started thinking about all sort of things, such as snakes, mosquitos and so on.
Just to digress for a moment, another meaningful note is that I am in an African country with the risk of malaria that was my research area during my PhD in London.
I had dissected thousands and thousands of mosquitos (Anopheles stephensi) during my experiments.Â
Coming back to us, we were laughing while Anna was telling stories about how common is to find snakes hiding through the vegetation…..
Oh, well….SURVIVED:-)
Bed at 11pm.
Goodnight…A domani
