Oct 7

Sunday the 7th was a very long day: whilst the flight was only 6 hours to travel the 3000 miles to get here, it took another two and a half hours to collect the baggage. That would be a long time to collect your bags at the best of times, but with 380 other passengers in a baggage collection space designed for about a hundred, with 32 degrees and 95% humidity, it was an experience!

Still, I was reunited with my bag and the experience did not influence my first impressions. Through the eyes of a Westerner visiting this country for the first time, the place appears louder, brighter and more colourful than home! It’s like someone has taken a European television and pressed the plus button on every scale to make an African version!

More animated, more life, more living in the moment. That seems to be the essential: the loudness and bright colourfulness are perhaps just the consequences of this dynamic. Time certainly appears to be fluid here, as illustrated by my very kind hosts who took me to a great street-side restaurant on the way to my hotel. We had wonderful chicken-and-rice and time just melted.

Arriving late at the hotel it had been quite a journey! It was so late when I arrived that Porto-Novo was actually quiet; but not so from the early hours of this morning! The traffic is very much part of the loudness and this hotel is located on an intersection so it was a good job I had anyhow planned to get up reasonably early!

Photo: view from by hotel window...