In the excitement of moving I forgot to say that I at last received my permanent Beninese driving license!! Hooray! The day before we moved, Esther said to me as I left home to do some shopping, "Weren't you going to see if your driving license is ready yet?" I had completely forgotten, with everything else on my mind, and wasn't very optimistic. But I thought I had better drop into the transport office to find out ... and it was there! The big boss said he'd made a special effort to get it for me, so it's a good thing I did go before we left!
The episode-before-last was that a month or so earlier one of the driving school instructors turned up at the mission headquarters with a photo of me, trying to track me down because they didn't have my contact details and they had found out that my passport wasn't enough, they needed to send in my birth certificate too. He'd been asking for "Rachel" (my middle name) so strangely enough hadn't found anyone who knew me, hence the clever idea of using a spare photo of me they had. Marie-Claire, who was on reception at the mission that day, thought it was a bit strange though, and went to ask someone else whether she should admit to knowing me or not!
So anyway, we'd been to the law courts with him so that they could get a photocopy of my birth certificate "legalised", and he'd thought it was unlikely that the license would be ready before we moved. But it was! And I now have a life-long Beninese driving license - so no need to renew an international one every year ... it has been worth it in the end!
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