Location Cotonou, Benin

Blog Summary

December 19th was a day for exploring a bit further. I set out to see more of the town and quickly found myself moving through some rough neighborhoods where the roads simply aren’t finished. Getting around meant weaving through deep holes and broken stretches. It’s the dry season, which helps, but it still makes every short trip feel like an exercise in patience.

I also learned there’s an Angolan representation here, and I managed to track down the location—even though it wasn’t very clearly marked. After waiting around for about an hour with no one showing up, I decided to abandon that plan and leave it for another country, most likely Cameroon.

The rest of the day was spent searching for a decent place to sit down for coffee, tea, or a bite to eat. That’s often easier said than done. Sometimes the place I’m looking for doesn’t exist at all, or it exists somewhere else and I just can’t track it down. I eventually found a spot that was good enough, though even that came with its own quirks. Every time something was needed, the person helping me had to disappear through another door to a different part of the shop, which made everything take a bit longer. Luckily, time wasn’t in short supply that afternoon.

In the evening, I went looking for music and found a place close to where I’m staying, though it didn’t really get going until much later. While waiting around, I ended up meeting two German guys in their mid-twenties. One of them is on a mission to attend soccer matches in as many countries as possible—not on a screen, but in person, in a real stadium. He’s already been to 64 countries doing this and somehow skipped several that are close to home in Germany. They were only in town for a few days, and then one of them was heading off to India to continue the same routine.

Soccer, of course, is everywhere in Africa, especially with Morocco’s recent success. I often run into matches playing on screens, even if it’s hard to figure out who’s actually playing. Still, sometimes the real entertainment isn’t the game itself, but watching the crowd react to it. That’s how the day unfolded. Thanks for coming along, and more tomorrow.