Bochion to Takon - Day 273

Date: May 18th, 2010
Distance: 72km
Country: Benin
Song of the Day: Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits

I woke up today and said goodbye to my host Jeff and Eric. Thanks Jeff for letting me stay. Have fun moving up north. Eric, best of luck with the Deadbeat. I hope the re-launch goes well. Liz had already left and I will see if I can stay at her place when I get to Cotonou. Satin had offered to let me stay at her place in Takon as well. So that was my big goal for the day.

As for the terrain and weather, not much to say. More hills and headwind. At least for the first 60km to Houegbou. After that it was another 10km through the bush. This was the best part of the ride. I do like getting off the highway every once in a while.

I made it to Satin's village an hour or two before dark. So she showed me around. Her place is actually pretty nice. It may be a concrete box, but they trimmed it up pretty nice. Plus it has water and electricity. Okay, the water is a tap outside and the electricity is solar powered and provides just a couple of hours of light during the evening. Still, not bad for 11km into the bush.

After that we took a stroll around her village. The first stop was at her neighbor's house across the street. He gave us some Sodebe, which is a local palm liquor. Actually it tastes a lot like tequila. In other words, not really my thing. Satin also took some time to explain what she does as a rural community health worker. I guess a lot of her work is just teaching the people in the area about basic health concepts. Like sanitation, nutrition and disease prevention. While we were there one of the mothers was force feeding her tiny baby. Satin was saying they do this when they don't want to take the time to breastfeed. For kids, like this little girl about 2 months old, food forced down can be deadly. I have also learned that Satin is not the kind of person who lets something like that slide. She got up and confronted the mom about it. She also asked one of her friends to talk with the mother about it as well. So when the mom was back at it not five minutes later, Satin made a show of storming off. Change is not quick here.

After that we went over to another section of the village. They also gave us a bit of dinner. Really not much, as most of the people here couldn't afford even rice. It was Pate (what I knew as To in Burking Faso) with a tiny bit of sauce. The sauce had a some pieces of chicken in it which was great. Even the Pate was good. It was kinda like if someone tried to make mashed potatoes with tortillas. Unlike To or other Pate I have seen, it was even edible without sauce.

-Dravis