Abomey

This past weekend I went away for one night with a few friends to a town about 3 hours up country called Abomey. Abomey is a town rich in history and stories and interesting places to see. We left on Friday morning been driven by one of my new friends John, he is a day volunteer worker on the ship and is from Benin and he offered to help show us around and translate a bit for us. Once there we went and met John's sister in law at her house which is where John had organised for us to have our meals while we where away. Her name is Clementine and she has 2 sons Mike and Jeff, but her husband is away the Ivory Coast working. It was really easy to see how deeply rooted into society that women are worth less than men still just by the fact that John who is a Christian didn't even know Clementine's name and just referred to her as "Mama Jeff" (Jeff's mother).

After our quick visit we set off to see what we thought would be one of the main attractions of town, the old palace. Well I don't know how many places would class this place as a palace, it is an old mud building with a large courtyard and a big mud wall around it, but none the less it is the palace of the king of Benin. The king these days is more of just a figure head and hasn't really had any power in the country since the French invaded and took over. Even so we felt very honoured to get to met the king and have an audience with him that resulted in about a 45min conversation on the different countries the 4 of us were from as well as several other interesting topics. And was followed by a photo session with the King (which is apparently usually not allowed at all, but he liked us) followed by the exchanging of email addresses (so he can invite us the next time he has a big celebration). We said goodbye to the king and headed on our way and went off to see a big statue in the center of town, the statue is of one of the former kings named Behanzin and he was ruling the country at the time of the French invation. The way the story that we were told goes, the king stood up to the French as they tried to enter Abomey and he held up his hand and because he was so powerful everyone stopped, even the French. But he was eventually captured and the French took over. After that we went to see one of the few world heritage listed sights in West Africa, it is a very old large wall that used to surround the residence of a king and is made from mud and human blood. It wasn't that much to look at but after hearing the story behind it I was in awe and a bit shocked by it.

We then headed back to Clementine's house to find a ready made meal of delicious local style food. We ate and hung out for a bit and after working out which local hotel would give us the best deal we went and called it a night.

The next day we headed out with the aim to take it a bit easy and see an underground village in the area. Now this was a place that John didn't know so we went to see one of his Brothers who has a friend who is an English teacher in a local school and they came with us to help translate and show us around. The underground village was really cool to go and see although there was a definite Voodoo presence there. The way the village was set up is there are a whole lot of underground rooms with several other rooms connected on, but none of the main sections were connected so it was about 4 rooms together all on their own. They say that the underground village was only recently discovered when they were building a road along side where the village is and they think there are about 1600 small rooms but they haven't yet found them all.

So all in all it was a good weekend where I learned alot about Benin's history and a bit about its culture. And also it was great to just get away from the hussle and bussle of Cotonou and see a bit of the beautiful country side.