Bonjour!
Well this weekend a group of 14 crazy yovo (white person) nurses decided to ventutre out to a place called Dassa Zoume, and what an adventure we had!!
It all started on Saturday morning at 8am waiting for our pre-arranged transport up to Dassa which is about 3-4 hours away from Cotonou. We sat and waited and waited and waited until about 9.30am when we thought hmm perhaps they're not coming? So someone went inside to try ring and find out where our drivers were and werent able to contact them. Meanwhile some of our translators heard about our dilemma and came up to the dock and said give us 20minutes and we will get you a car to get to Dassa! So apprehensively we said ok, thinking hmm yeah right! How will you find us a car that will fit 14 people in 20 minutes? But true to their word they showed up half an hour later with an old ambulance that could comfortably sit 15-16 people easily, was the funniest thing ever but so cool that they did it for us.
So after driving for 3 or 4 hours along some smooth and some rough roads we arrived at our destination of Dassa Zoume. The hotel was pretty good by african standards, we had running water and flush toilets altho the shower was cold it was quite refreshing and did the job. After settling in we decided to have a walk around the town and found a huge catholic church so had a wander thru, Dassa is famous for this catholic church and for its rocky mountains, they have a pilgrimage every year in August because apparently the vigin Mary appeared there once upon a time. So after looking thru the church someone thought it would be a good idea to climb up one of these mountains, so then here we are climbing up the side of this rocky mountain in Jandles i might add, climbing thru peoples backyards yelling out Bonsoir! Ca va? (Hello! How are you?) And then some of the locales decided they just might join us so there was about 15 or so of us all climbing up this mountain, was great fun!
The next day we got up early and travelled for about two hours to look for hippos and we apparently saw one but I'm still sceptical as to whether it really was one but since coming back and talking to people they seem to think it probably was. We went out on these little canoes so didnt get too close to see for sure if it really was one!
Well untill next time Beccy
I just climbed that mountain about a month ago. About half way up the villager who was leading up there told us we couldn't go any further because it was a holy voodoo area. Did you see the voodoo compound there?
ReplyDelete