Back In Cotonou

I have been in Cotonou for the last 9 days and will be finally going home on Monday. I will not bore you with my medical details, but rest assured that it’s nothing serious. While I have been in Cotonou, Craig has been in Porto-Novo at his quarterly training (IST), which is what I had in December. There have been a few other volunteers with maladies in the med unit with me in Cotonou so we have been having a nice time all week making dinners and watching movies. I have been trying to get some work done here, but rather unsuccessfully since I have had appointments almost every day. One really exciting thing that I did get done is I have begun to help change someone’s life. Let me back up.


When I was working in property management in El Cajon, we had a lot of refugees from Iraq so therefore, we worked quite closely with Catholic Charities among other organizations who help them. I made a friend (Tim) towards the end of my two years there who works for Catholic Charities and used to live in Benin working for an NGO. When I found out we were being sent to Benin, he was one of the people that I talked to for insight. Before I left, he asked me if I could help him find his former chauffeur and friend that he had when he lived in Cotonou because he promised him that he would help him start his own chauffeur business by getting him money for a car. Since this is Africa, you can’t just send money like that because people find out about it very quickly and try to reap some of the benefits and Tim couldn’t fly out here and buy the car for him. Naturally, I said I would love to help. So I have taken on the role as the middleman. I have been trying to coordinate a time when I could look for him while I’ve been in Cotonou. I tried in December but had some mishaps and this week, I took another shot at it. I printed out all the information that Tim sent me along with a couple photos and headed out with two other volunteers to the area that the NGO is in.

I got to the NGO and talked to the head guy and asked him if he knew him. He said he did and called him up to tell him that friends of Tim were there at the NGO looking for him. He showed up on his moto about 20 minutes later. I quizzed him on some trivia to make sure that I had the right guy and then broke the good news to him that is surely going to change his life. Needless to say, he was thrilled and called it a miracle that Tim remembered him and that we were sitting down together talking about a promise that was made six years ago. When Craig gets back to Cotonou, we are meeting up with him and his wife/wives to give him the details on the process of completing this promise and to get to know each other better. When I left the office to go find him that afternoon, Tim had no idea that I would actually be conducting my search that day, so when I was successful, I couldn’t WAIT to get back to email him and tell him the good news. Clearly, he was ecstatic. I am thrilled to be a part of such a wonderfully good deed.

Craig comes back to Cotonou on Sunday and then we’re leaving for Bohicon with one of the Peace Corps staff members, which means a private air-conditioned car that isn’t crammed with marche mamas. I’m sure Craig will have an update about how his IST went. I cannot wait to get back to Bohicon and continue to work on all of our projects.  A bientot!