The Beninese government is having a Yellow Fever vaccination campaign, offering free vaccinations to everyone, this week. Anyone entering Benin over the age of one year is checked for Yellow Fever vaccination as they go through customs, so all of us except Benjy had been jabbed already. But Benjy is now old enough to have it – he is ten months and it is recommended from nine months – so we thought we'd take advantage of the offer of a free jab.
I went with Esther (our home help) who mentioned she wanted to go today and was very happy to have us come along too. Marc is in Cotonou so it was just me and the boys. We had heard a rumour about one of the places it could be done where there would be less queueing, so went there. It was difficult to find, which might explain the lack of crowds! In fact when we got there Esther was able to be vaccinated immediately, but they told us to take Benjy elsewhere and ask for the person in charge.
So we drove up the road to another dispensary, where Esther jumped the (not very long) queue to say we'd been sent there. She then called me in, I answered a few questions about Benjy, and he received his injection.
The cross-cultural confusion I have is that I'm still not sure a) why Benjy couldn't be injected at the first place, and b) whether we jumped the queue at the second because we're white, because we were sent there from elsewhere, or for some other reason, like Benjy's age. However, I'm not too bothered about not understanding since the important thing is that Benjy has had the vaccination now!
I went with Esther (our home help) who mentioned she wanted to go today and was very happy to have us come along too. Marc is in Cotonou so it was just me and the boys. We had heard a rumour about one of the places it could be done where there would be less queueing, so went there. It was difficult to find, which might explain the lack of crowds! In fact when we got there Esther was able to be vaccinated immediately, but they told us to take Benjy elsewhere and ask for the person in charge.
So we drove up the road to another dispensary, where Esther jumped the (not very long) queue to say we'd been sent there. She then called me in, I answered a few questions about Benjy, and he received his injection.
The cross-cultural confusion I have is that I'm still not sure a) why Benjy couldn't be injected at the first place, and b) whether we jumped the queue at the second because we're white, because we were sent there from elsewhere, or for some other reason, like Benjy's age. However, I'm not too bothered about not understanding since the important thing is that Benjy has had the vaccination now!
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