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Every parent knows that once a child has adopted a favourite toy or softy, there is no replacing it, and a crisis of international proportions looms if that particular friend goes missing. Simon has had the same softy (in French, "doudou") since he was about 6 months old, and Benjy similarly adopted one when he was about the same age. Simon's, called Little Prince, has been confined to his bed since Simon's third birthday, and only comes out if we are travelling. So far he's never gone missing for more than 15 minutes or so. He has got grubby at times, but washes well, and has come out of his first four and a half years looking pretty good.
Benjy's softy is called Bengy (yes, it's confusing, but that is what it says on his label) and he has spent more of his life on African floors than Little Prince. Thanks to some foolish parental behaviour he also ended up with some large holes ... and thanks to Benjy's gnawing teeth many little ones.
Then came the day when the (admittedly filthy) Bengy got thrown into a basin of water at 6pm by Benjy's "helpful" older brother who thought he would "clean" Bengy. Very unhappy Mummy, as I do prefer softies to be dry when they are taken to bed, especially during rainy season when they can smell very mouldy! So I decided that Bengy couldn't get any wetter, so I would give him a proper clean, and just to buy myself some time brought an alternate softy out of the cupboard, one rejected by Benjy many months ago. He also has "Bengy" on his label, so I said, "Look, Benjy! New Bengy!"
And Benjy adopted him and hasn't spoken of old Bengy since. Now Benjy isn't stupid, and new Bengy is quite obviously different from old Bengy, so I can only assume that Benjy was a bit tired of old Bengy's damp smell and head coming loose, and decided to quit while he was ahead. ("Ahead" in this case being "in possession of a clean, sweet-smelling and actually soft softy"!)
And here they are, old Bengy after being washed and just before retirement:
New Bengy:
And here is Simon with the Little Prince in his hand, at 5 months old!
And again when he was nearly 3:
We were down in Cotonou last week to apply for our new residency cards. Hopefully these will be 3-year ones, as we have to both apply in person and pick them up in person, and with Cotonou being a two-day journey from home, that's a lot of time on the road!
I took this photo of Cotonou. Probably not one that they'll be using for their next tourist brochure, but it does show all the cranes working on the new port extension.
It is already an extremely important West African port, bringing goods in for Benin but also for the landlocked countries beyond - Niger, Burkina Faso and even Mali. And anything going to Niger comes up the road in front of our house, on the back of lorries. No wonder the road deterioates so fast! And unfortunately the lorries don't always last long either - this is not an uncommon sight when we are travelling:
The long journey down isn't much fun, especially the Parakou-Cotonou day, which includes about six and a half hours of driving. So we try to enjoy ourselves when we are in Cotonou, getting some shopping done and treating ourselves to meals out, for example this restaurant on the beach:
We have picked up our language sessions with Pastor Samuel with enthusiasm. We've had lots of news to share on both sides, after five months apart, and we showed him photos of our family and the churches we visited in France and England.
We have also done some revision of vocabulary and money (not simple!). I have also been looking out for discussion topics. One day last week I used a question from my Bible study notes, which was, “How has your Christian faith made your life more difficult? How do you feel about that?” which kept us talking for nearly an hour.
Another day I used a proverb I'd read during my daily reading, as I was sure it would be something foreign to the culture here.
“Seldom set foot in your neighbour's house – too much of you, and he will hate you.” Proverbs 25:17
I found it in the rough draft Monkolé translation of Proverbs, and gave it to the pastor to read. Then I said that a lot of people in the West would tend to follow the gist of this proverb – better to have your neighbour wish he could see more of you than have him hide when he sees you come up the garden path!
The pastor laughed and said that among the Monkolé people this proverb doesn't apply. He said, “We are so close to each other that we are always together.” He gave the example of one of the elders of the church, and said that if he didn't call in on him for a week or two, this man would come to him and say, “What's wrong? Are you ill, or are you angry with me?”
He then confirmed what I'd suspected and said that they only feel like this about other Monkolés. He said that although people from the village would like to come and visit us, they don't want to bother us, and they think we don't understand the language well enough yet. They are afraid we won't understand them and vice versa. He said that was good since he thinks we'd be worn out if we had constant visits! I did point out that unless we have opportunities to practise the language we are never going to understand very well! But I had already got the impression that some people don't speak to us other than to greet us because of fear of our incomprehension. I am grateful for those who do make the effort!
But it isn't as if we don't have any visitors at all, even now in rainy season when most of our friends from the village are in the fields working. Last Saturday we had about 28 people for lunch – not only did a short-term French team visit us, but Beninese friends who were driving past stopped and joined us to eat! It was great fun!
Part of the team as they left – and Benjy getting the gate for them!
