French

Oh yeah, so the title of the email. Lately, I have been working with some new missionaries now, and in a new branch. It seems like everyone has been telling me I speak good French. And actually, I do feel like I speak decent French most of the time, but I still have a lot to learn. But, I speak French pretty much all day every day, and most of the time it works fine. There is the gift of tongues for you. 7 months to learn a language.

Akpakpa

I am in Akpakpa now. It is quite a change. It is a lot different than most of the other areas of Cotonou. There are a lot more big houses, and bigger roads, more cars, etc. Our apartment is right on one of the major roads here, and so is quite noisy some of the time. The church is below our apartment, so it is very close. The branch here is small, very small, but yesterday the room was completely filled, since the room we have sacrament meeting in isn't very big either. We had 41 people there, including several investigators which is not something the missionaries have had a lot of success with here, getting people to church. Often, two or three at church is a major accomplishment.

You asked if Akpakpa was in the East of Cotonou, I think so, but I don't really know directions that much. But, I guess the ocean is to the south, so yes, it is to the east. It is a section of Cotonou, there are tons of different quarters or areas in the city, it is a big city.

My companion is named Elder Aka, he is from Cote d'Ivoire. I don't know a whole lot about him yet. I think he has been a member 4 years or so, and on a mission for a year and a half or so.

Ouidah

Zone visit to Ouidah

Slave arch

Portugese slave castle

Today we went out to Ouidah (pronouned Weeda) with Elder Samutamu, who was our zone leader and finished his mission tomorrow. It was pretty fun, we saw tons of crazy things. It is a town about an hour from Cotonou. It has quite a few ''tourist'' type places, or at least as tourist-y as you can get in Benin. We went to a musuem that was an old portuguese fort and had some interesting stuff. Also some places where they talked about the slave trade here, which they also talked about at the old fort. The ocean is really beautiful, we got to see that. Ouidah is apparently the city where voudoo originated, there is a cool fact for you. Voudoo is really big here, I think it is recognized by the government. There was a voudoo temple here Temple de Pythons, I think you can probably translate that. But, we didn't end up going there.

First, when we went to go there, there was some problem, and a bunch of people running around with machetes, so we decided it would be better to come back later. We never did find out exactly what the problem was, but that is probably best in a situation like that. We came back later, but it was closed. I am not really a snake person, so I wasn't too dissappointed, but there were other missionaries who really wanted to go there.

We got stopped by the police on the way back, since we had too many people in the pickup truck. But, after talking to us for a while, they let us go.

Ouidah beach

Lunch at the beach

Here is Elder and Sister Blacks view from the trip:

Before Elders Samutamu and Kra left on Monday, we told Elder Samutamu we would take the missionaries on a special activity of his choice. He chose to go Ouida, the birthplace of Voodooism that we have talked about on the road to Lome. The first stop was a Portuguese slave castle that has been rebuilt exactly as it was in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The word castle gives entirely the wrong impression as it was definitely not a castle for the slaves. The slaves were imprisoned in an area behind the castle, and if one died or misbehaved they were thrown in the alligator mote. That is certainly not my idea of how life should be in a castle. When the ships arrived, the slaves were taken down a road to the ocean to be taken to Europe, North America, Brazil, the Caribbean, etc. Trafficking human beings is a sad thing and slavery was certainly a sad chapter in the history of the world. The interesting thing is that it was normally the different warring tribes that rounded up each other to be sold as slaves to the white traders. We followed the slave route out to the beach and saw a few historic things along the way. At the beach we had fixed some sandwiches for lunch and found a quaint little pavilion some folks were willing to let us rent for an hour to eat our lunch. We were also going to see the python Temple which we understand is a monument to Voodooism, but when we arrived we found it was closed from noon to 3:00 and we had to get back to Cotonou by 4:00 so we missed that part of the tour. That will be another P-day activity. All in all it was a good trip and a little diversion from the normal routine.

More pictures

Malaria

So, this week was pretty much crazy. Well, really starting last Sunday, so more than a week. I could have written some of this last week, but I guess I was remembering all those times when I've been told not to write about ''negative'' stuff, stuff that will make your parents worry, etc.

To summarize, I was sick last week, with malaria. Now, you should know that malaria is not nearly as bad as we sometimes make it seem. I mean, it is still serious and all, but I think that because it is so rare in the United States we don't really have the same idea about it. Here in Africa, they have ''malaria season'', similar in some ways to what we have as flu season, though it is probably more serious than the flu.

So, I am doing just fine now, with no lasting effects from being sick, but it was an interesting experience, definitely something new. Not something I want to repeat though. I follow most of the precautions that they give us, like taking pills every day, and sleeping under a mosquito net. I wear mosquito repellent often, though not every day like would probably be ideal. There just aren't always a ton of mosquitoes, and I am always rushed to get ready already, so I don't take the time to put repellent on always. Anyways, so the point of all that, was that even though I do pretty well at doing stuff like that, I still ended up getting sick.

Last Sunday, I hadn't really been feeling well, and after church I really was not feeling too great. I took my temperature, and it was a little above 100, so I slept for a while when we went back for lunch. Afterwords I took my temperature again, since the ibuprofen I had taken that morning had worn off, and it was up around 102. So, we didn't leave to go out and work. I slept a bunch, took some more medicine, but in the evening my temperature was 103 now. So, I received a blessing from the other missionaries in my apartment. THe other two has come back to grab somethign, which turned out good. All this turned out to be more interesting than it might have been since the Blacks, the couple missionaries here, were in Togo for the weekend. I wasn't going to call them, since I didn't want to worry about it unless it was really serious. But, I just kept having the feeling I should call, so after my temperature was at 103, I finally listened to this prompting.

So, I had been freezing cold all day, despite a fever, which is the sign of malaria. So, talkign to Elder Black, he was saying I should go in and checked, either that night, or in the morning. I was feeling a little better after having rested, so I thought waitign until morning would be okay. But, after having hung up, I took my temperature and it was around 104, so I was thinking it would be better to go in that night.

Since the Blacks were in Togo, they couldn't take me. So, they called the Relief Society president here, who works as some sort of medical person, a nurse or something like that. And the branch president, who has a car. They arranged for them to take me down to a clinic they often use for missionaries, which was supposed to be open 24 hours a day. When we got there, it wasn't ''open'', but Soeur Félicité was able to get me in. So, they talked to me a bunch, and did all the stuff doctors do, and said, yes, he probably has malaria.

They normally start treatment while they test blood, which makes sense. But, I think sense I was white, they wanted to keep me overnight, just to be safe, so that there wasn't a bad interaction with the medicine or something. So, I got to stay in a hospital (clinic) overnight for the first time.

So, they kept me in the clinic overnight, and gave me a couple of IVs, one for the fever and one for malaria, which was another new thing for me. It is really hard to sleep with IVs in your arm. But, it all worked out. In the morning, I still had a fever up above 102, so they gave me another dose of the one IV. By that afternoon, I was feeling semi decent, and Tuesday, the day after, I felt just fine. We still didn't leave on Tuesday, just to be on the safe side. So, now I feel just fine, and things are all normal.

My fever got up around 104-105 at the highest, which I think is the highest that I have ever had. I think probably the only thing that might have happened as a result of being sick is that I might have lost a little weight, since I didn't eat a lot, and threw up the night that I was really sick. But, things are good now, I'm not sick anymore.

Akpakpa Primary

Menontin Primary