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West African country opens its arms to make a traveler feel at home

Sunday, December 16, 2001

By Steve Urbanski, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

COTONOU, Benin - On an afternoon in June, a motorcyclist was speeding down a smoky street of Cotonou on a 50cc Yamaha with a deep freezer tied to the back seat.

The wide-load freezer was tied to where a passenger usually would be more comfortable and certainly more talkative. The Yamaha's back springs strained under the freezer's weight, and the driver wobbled ever so slightly as he sped away.

The bizarre tandem seemed perfectly compatible, and no one but me appeared to notice.

		If you go...

I soon learned that scenes like this -- in the Atlantic Coast city of Cotonou -- were part of the beauty and challenge of traveling in West Africa. The region of Benin and Togo is for travelers, not tourists.

Daniel Boorstin describes experiences like this in his book "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America: "When getting there [is] more troublesome, being there [is] more vivid. When getting there is 'fun,' arriving there somehow seems not to be arriving any place."

In other words, if your idea of a vacation is Disney World, seven-course meals and constant smiles, then by all means enjoy the realm of the tourist. But if seeing a mix of the picturesque and the ugly while experiencing a different culture piques your curiosity, then visiting the Third World -- in this case, on three flights totaling about 24 hours -- may satisfy your desire to be a traveler.

The demographics of Benin (formerly known as Dahomey) would interest even the most ardent traveler: Although French is the official language, 42 other traditional African languages are spoken in this country of 6 million. The literacy rate is about 20 percent, and the unemployment rate (according to guesses from locals since few official statistics are kept) hovers around 80 percent. More than 200 political parties compete for a voice in a nation that has been a democracy for only a decade.

Fifteen percent of the population is Christian, another 15 percent Muslim. The majority practice other African religions, voodoo being one of the most prominent. This voodoo is not the doll-and-curse form portrayed in movies, though vendors sell dolls at markets and some believers apply curses. This voodoo is rooted in fear, raw human fear, which begets results as minor as bad luck or as serious as death.

An occasional deep freeze on the back seat of a motorcycle should have been the least of my worries.

About a year ago, I had sent an e-mail to Andre Quenum, a Catholic priest, native of Benin and fellow student at Duquesne University, asking if I could visit his country to help satisfy my graduate school language requirement. In exchange for room and board, I would offer my 20-plus years of journalism experience for use as he saw appropriate.

	A canopy of blue haze hangs above a main thoroughfares in Cotonou, Benin. (Steve Urbanski/Post-Gazette)

His reply, as I would learn during my stay, was typically African: "That's a wonderful idea! We will make it happen."

And we did, for 50 days beginning in early June.

With the help of donations from individuals and corporate contributions from Lexmark, DHL and Three Rivers Rotary Club, we gathered 18 used computers and 35 color printers and shipped them to Cotonou. Then, for three weeks in July, we held newspaper design seminars for 45 journalists at which we compared journalistic ideologies, learned from one another and forged life-long friendships.

Andre and I also were tormented by mosquitoes, interviewed by television, newspaper and radio reporters, ran out of gas and had flat tires -- three times! We ate goat, fish (with head and tail still attached), pounded yams and amazingly sweet mangoes and pineapples, and drank a liquor concoction made out of palm sap (called sodabi) that went down like rubbing alcohol, yet tasted really good.

On that stiflingly humid afternoon, I could not help but wonder as I stared at the motorcycle and its deep-freeze passenger: Aren't there laws against that sort of thing? Where are all the cops?

Not long after, I saw a police officer, nonchalantly waving traffic through another clogged, smoky intersection. Cars with broken headlights, hanging bumpers and shabby paint jobs seemed pressure packed in a bumper-to-bumper mess with dangerously overloaded, equally tired-looking trucks, fuming motorcycles, and smoking taxis jammed with so many people they looked more like a '60s fraternity prank than reality.

Throngs of people struggled to cross this gridlock. They squeezed between cars, between trucks. They argued and laughed and squinted from the dust, the ever-present choking blue exhaust and the searing sun.

Legions of intersection entrepreneurs competed for any open car or truck window, selling telephone calling cards, lamps, toilet plungers, razors, fans, electricity converters, pictures of women in bikinis, toothbrushes, sneakers, belts and laminated maps of the world. A legless man wheeled from car to car on a skateboard contraption seeking loose change "in the name of Jesus Christ."

Some nights, my dreams were more of a tangible reality than the reality I experienced during the day. One night I dreamed my wife, Leslie, and I were in Las Vegas with my brother, Dan -- a vacation we had actually taken a few years earlier. In my dream reality, the casinos, complete with jangling slots and glitzy lights, had such a real feel and sound.

I awoke with a start in my sparsely furnished room at the Archdiocese of Cotonou, ceiling fan whirling above. Outside were the buzz of motorcycle taxis (called zemidjans) and the bickering customers negotiating in French for bread, cigarettes, gasoline and roasted ears of corn. I was in a developing country, a long way from Las Vegas and even farther, it seemed, from home.

But West Africa does its best to welcome visitors, and I soon felt at home. Andre's friends and relatives opened their homes, offered us cars, fed us, gave us gifts and took us on several sightseeing tours.

I once mentioned to my friend Annick Adegnika, who works for Agence Benin Presse, how hospitable Africans seemed.

"We have a saying in Africa," she said. "If you have enough for one, you have enough for two."

Soon I ceased to be a traveler. I felt more like an African. This transformation involved a willful suspension of my Western mindset.

Pittsburgh has a beautiful skyline, for example, especially when viewed from the mouths of the Fort Pitt or Liberty tunnels.

Cotonou has no such skyline. It sprawls for as far as the eye can see. A few buildings are perhaps a dozen stories high, but the vast majority are two or three stories and many, many more are mere tin shacks.

The major streets of Cotonou are paved, but all of the secondary streets are packed sand. The city -- Benin's largest with a population of more than 800,000, although the capital, Porto-Novo, is about 15 miles east -- is a few feet below sea level. When it rains, standing water of near biblical proportions pools in any and every indentation.

June is the wettest month. Although it does not rain daily, frequent showers can make driving a plunge into the unknown.

Every day we would snake our tank-like Peugeot in an S-pattern down pothole-riddled side streets, carefully keeping two tires on dry land as we made our way around the flooded areas, only to find an impassable lake-sized moat at the street's end.

We would turn around the Peugeot, wind our way back, go to the next street and start the whole process again. Usually we would arrive at our destination late.

After a week or two of such episodes, it became easier to go with the flow.

The longer I stayed in Africa, the more time seemed protracted. While driving to the village of Calavi, about 12 miles from Cotonou, we had to leave the main paved road. The secondary road, though a bit rocky because it had rained all day, was quite good in most spots. The farther we traveled, though, the more the road began to look less like a road and more like a path -- and the pools of water kept getting wider and wider and deeper.

It was late in the afternoon, and soon daylight gave way to dusk and then to pitch dark. Before dusk, we had a flat tire. No problem. We changed it and were on our way. Soon my Western voice of insecurity whispered: That was our only spare. What if we have another flat?

We didn't. We did, however, almost float in one of the final oozing, mega-potholes. I kept muttering: "I am with a Catholic priest who is driving a Peugeot. Nothing bad can possibly happen."

And nothing did. Shortly thereafter we arrived at Andre's cousin's home and had a wonderful dinner of chicken, fish and rice. Walking out into darkness was like falling into an abyss. Squinting my eyes did no good. I could see nothing. For a few minutes

	Residents of Benin make ends meet in creative ways. Gasoline is purchased on the black market from oil-rich neighbor Nigeria and then resold in Benin at a cheaper price than service station's charge. (Steve Urbanski/Post-Gazette)

I stood there, held in the darkness of Africa. It is one of the most vivid memories I have. During our return trip, I could not resist asking Andre: "What would have happened if we'd blown another tire?"

"Hey, this is Benin," he calmly replied. "We'd have given someone a few dollars, and they would've fixed the tire."

My Western hang-ups were gone for good.

Benin is a nation of contrasts. Cotonou has very wealthy and very poor people often living next to one another in the same neighborhoods. Mansions are surrounded by tin shacks. Goats share the same streets with a Mercedes or Peugeot. In the extreme northern part of the country, about a seven-hour drive from Cotonou, are the national parks of Pendjari and "W" which are inhabited by lions, monkeys, elephants, hippopotamuses and other African animals traditionally associated with the continent.

On the way north, in a green Eden that's in contrast to the dust bowl of Cotonou, is the historically rich village of Abomey, the former capital of the Kingdom of Dan-homey. Remnants of the reddish wall that surrounded the kingdom are still visible. According to legend, human blood from the many battles to preserve the kingdom was used in the construction and maintenance of the wall. Some of the most exquisite examples of West African art can be viewed at the Musee Historique D'Abomey (The Historical Museum of Abomey).

In the 16th century, West Africa was known at the Slave Coast. Many of the 20,000 slaves captured each year were led down trails to villages such as Ouidah and Allada, then packed onto slave ships bound for the West.

Today the poverty of the region forces some parents to sell their children into slavery on plantations in other African countries.

The democracy of Benin is still too new for any national pride to flourish, yet the residents fully understand the meaning of free elections. With 200 parties vying for power, charges of corruption are volleyed after every election.

I saw the contrasts between a dictatorship and a developing democracy during a day trip to neighboring Togo. Although a democratic movement is under way in Togo, dictator Gnassingbe Eyadema has led the country since 1967.

In Togo's capital of Lome, police officers seemed to be on every other corner of the main beachfront street. Traffic moved efficiently, and motorcycle riders wore helmets. The beach-front street looked like a scene from a South Florida town, complete with the Hotel Palm-Beach.

But the apparent prosperity was deceiving. In the back streets, the tin shacks were a constant reminder of Lome's ever-present poverty.

The unifying presence of poverty gives West Africa an ominous distinction, but the hospitality and happiness of the people offer the region endless possibilities.

Steve Urbanski is a Post-Gazette page designer.