Monday, 13 August 2007
Well, the other shoe finally dropped from the fiasco on Independence Day.
My host papa is very well-known and very popular around the district here and his normal Sunday activity is to travel all over the area and saluer (greet) all sorts of people who he knows; politicians, policemen, business people, farmers, whoever happens to be home that day. So, yesterday I spent most of the day hanging out at the volunteers’ house here in Azove swapping life stories with other PC types. When I returned home, papa was getting ready to go out and said I should come along – also standard practice, though I had been trying to avoid it yesterday. So I changed my clothes and off we went.
Our second stop was the gendarmerie in Aplahoue, the seat of the commune (district). There we were met by the Commandant himself who, if I understood correctly, is actually the commandant of the entire province. He invited us into his residence behind the brigade and busted out the Irish Cream liqueur – over ICE, which is unheard of in Benin – whence he proceeded to give me his personal apology for the incident at the roadblock on Independence Day. The word he used to describe the actions of the gendarmes that day was “extravagant.” Hmm…ya think? So I told him in my broken French that I understood about security for the president and besides I had learned an important lesson that day…always carry your passport – and I whipped my passport out of my pocket right there just to prove I had it on me. He thought that was the funniest thing ever and proceeded to totally crack up. So we hung around for about half an hour, him speaking a little broken English to match my broken French and he and papa speaking a lot of Adja (the lingua franca of this part of Benin). As we parted he made a point of telling me to be sure and come to him if I ever have any more problems with the authorities. Now, how this meeting came about I have NO idea, but it is certainly nice to know I have a high ranking military official in my pocket if I ever need one.
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