Visit to Rotary Club of Cotonou Benin completed projects

Yesterday, Judy visited Tuberculosis clinic where Cotonou Rotarians had paid for two buildings. She visited with the Doctors and Nurses of the clinic where they are treating TB, which they call the disease of the poor people. They do not do TB skin tests here the way they do in the US, because they don't have the facilities to skin test. The Doctors and Nurses were very appreciative what Rotary of Cotonou had already done for them.

On the way to the TC Clinic, Judy saw a man thrown off his motorcycle onto a car and the sidewalk. Unfortunately this is quite common here, with the number of motor bikes on the roads. After a few minutes he got up, so he was not too seriously injured.

After that, she visited a school for blind children, which was donated entirely by Cotonou Rotary. The school teaches blind children from elementary school through high school. There were no children there as it was Saturday. The property was impressive because it was so large and much of it was outside. Administrator of the school was a very kind woman, and told us what she needed next was a computer which could translate from English to French to Braille for her teachers, as only one teacher has such a computer so far. There were about 150 children enrolled in the school, and the cost was zero for the parents. It is not a live in facility, only used during the day.

Other Rotarians in our group did different types of things during the day. One group went out to a village to distribute mosquito nets, another group went out to see the Mercy Ship.

Last night several of us went to the Charter Night Celebration of two new Rotary Clubs - the Cotonou Airport Club, and the Rotary Club of Rive Gauche. It was a most interesting evening. To begin with we did not arrive until 8:30 - the event was held at a cultural pavilion that was built by the Chinese, and is just down the road from the hotel. There were at least 400 people there, in a beautiful room decorated with Rotary colors. They had a nine piece band, and one of the singers did an incredible imitation of Louis Armstrong, and he sang "What a Wonderful World". They played "Let It Be" by the Beatles with an African beat.
The African Rotarians were dressed to the nines, and it was really something to see all the amazing dresses, headpieces etc. The African men are not afraid to wear any color - there were men with pink shirts and red ties; pink shirt with pink bow tie; lots of different colored shirts.

We did not get served dinner until 11:30, and by then we were all very hungry. Dinner was a buffet with several interesting choices. At first they were only going to allow us to have the salad appetizers, until our group leader said "no - we do not want to have to come back to the buffet table" - so they relented and allowed us to fill our plates with both the appetizer and the main course. We have no idea what time the party went until, but I imagine it went well into the early morning. With the amount of time some of the women spent on being prepared for the festivities, we can't image them wanting to leave early. Overall, it was a very interesting event, with printed programs that contained all you ever wanted to know about Rotary. Speeches took three hours before we ate, as they translated each speech into English for our benefit. The cost of the event was 25,000 CFA'S or about $54.00 US, and included all the food and drink. We did not get back to the hotel until 12:30am, and it was very difficult to fall asleep after eating such a big meal.

This morning was the first day of the two day West African Project Fair, and the day did not start well as our alarm clock did not go off. We had to rush through breakfast in order to make the bus on time. The day was to be seminars on the Future Vision of TRF. The fair was held at Civic Center, and typically African, did not start on time. It was an interesting morning of learning about the changes coming to the Rotary Foundation funding.

As we write this, there is a gentleman playing "Bridge over Troubled Waters" on the grand piano in the lobby. Tonight we are going out for dinner as a group - no idea where. We have learned from experience to snack well before going out, as you never know what time dinner will be served!

Tomorrow we will again spend the day at the West Africa Project Fair, where there will be booths set up by Rotarians from other West African Countries. At lunch today we met a Doctor from Benin City, Nigeria who shared information about their club project of providing a library for men in prison. We also had an interesting conversation on the cost of medical care here vs the US.

It's hard to believe that the trip is more than half over - I knew the time would go fast, but this is going way too fast for us!