My Burkina Journal: Cotonou to Comé

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I can’t believe it is already March! Yes, February was a short month, but still the time seems to be going too quickly. My flight to Cotonou went very smoothly, with the except that Air Burkina has switched to its “summer hours.” I am glad I check the website the night before because I might have had an unpleasant surprise (the flight was to leave an hour earlier), but fortunately, due to a cancellation of a flight the night before, the flight was late in getting off the ground due to having to spend extra time accommodating those passengers. Despite this, the flight, through Lomé, Togo, arrived pretty much as scheduled. A complete mystery to me, although I suspect they allow extra time in their schedule to allow for such issues.

My time in Bénin was to be spent at the library of the Collège Biblique Apostolique du Bénin (CoBAB), a training school for pastors of the Eglise Apostolique du Bénin, a denomination similar to Assemblies of God, which I was completely unfamiliar with. CoBAB has a 3-year program terminating with a degree equivalent to a year of college, post-high school. Not a high bar, I admit, but I was pleased that they had a library, and when invited a year ago by one of their pastors that I had met in Ouagadougou, decided to look into visiting. It was worse than I expected because the computer in the library turned out to be a laptop, and it was not connected to the Internet. I had prepared for a variety of scenarios, however, and the software I discovered at the last minute seemed a good fit for them.

With the aid of one of the students, a University graduate with computer background, and one of the teachers, we worked at imputing the collection into the database. (Thank you so much Toussaint and Emmanuel!!) It was a challenge assigning call numbers without a reliable connection to the Internet, but I did have a connection from time to time, and was thankful for both the experimental OCLC classification site I had discovered during my work in Africa, and the old DDC 21 200 religion class schedule brought along, “borrowed” from the SIL Library in Burkina Faso. The SIL people will be happy as well to know that I suggested that they include some local language Bibles from Bénin as well, because, although the collection is in French and English, I’m sure some of the students at this level would welcome something written in their mother tongue.

In front of the library

a glance inside

There were a few differences I noticed right away about Cotonou—it was on the coast, and, in places had the feeling of more of a beach or coastal town. It was cooler than Ouagadougou, but the humidity was very high. Pastor Damase had arranged for me to stay in a local guest house with ties to the school, which was spacious and fine, but there was no air conditioning, which about did me in physically. I got into the African habit of rising very early in the day before the sun got too hot, and showered twice daily to make it bearable. Pastor Justin, who shuttled me back and forth from the school, also arranged to have me select my meals from something that resembled a menu, so it was like ordering from a restaurant. I give the students and staff very high marks for hospitality, and their enthusiasm for the library project was most gratifying.

Passing through the historic city of Ouidah, which was also served as the Gorée Island of Bénin

I finally managed to get the cable television in the dining area to work, and I was horrified to learn on my second day there of a terrorist attack in downtown Ouagadougou, and that some guards at the French Embassy had been injured and some seven or eight soldiers killed at a military installation. There were also quite a number of people hurt in the crossfire. I was glad to be out-of-the country at the time, but it was more than a little frustrating to be without a reliable Internet connection when there was that kind of activity happening in a place I was quite familiar with. I understand Simon Nacoulma was downtown having a coffee at a nearby restaurant at the time of the attack, caught near the exploding rockets and rounds of gunfire and has posted his experience on Facebook. And who would have ever thought that I would be sitting in a guesthouse in Bénin watching the news on Burkina Info!

Sunday I was invited to Sunday school and church at the college, where a number of the would-be pastors spent considerable time both leading and participating in various aspects of the service. I was a little apprehensive at first, but it wasn’t as overly long as some services I have attended, thankfully. Below is a photo of some of the younger ones engaging in a lively dance for us, accompanied by keyboards and drums. I think it helped that the songs were in French and not in Bambara, or Mooré, or Kaansa, or Aja…

Here I say my goodbyes to those around when I left

And then finally, on Wednesday, it was back to Ouagadougou. I had catalogued the bulk of the book collection, basically assigning call numbers as the descriptive cataloguing was done by Emmanuel using a French Azerty keyboard. I outlined how to handle the journals, and discussed the next steps to take as they will need to finish up what remains to be done themselves.