Sylvia's Journal

Last night after our two local colleagues had joined us in Porto Novo I learned one of them was quite sick in his bed and didn’t think he could join us the next day. Although he is a doctor himself, my co-facilitator, who is a physician from Guinea, took his pulse and decided we needed to get to a pharmacy.

And so we learned something about private pharmacies in the second largest city of Benin that we had not learned last week when we were surrounded by the owners of these pharmacies.

We drove for more than 30 minutes from one extreme of the city to the other without finding any pharmacy open. We finally went to the hospital pharmacy. They didn’t have exactly what the doctor had prescribed. My colleague wasn’t entirely sure the affliction was malaria or typhoid fever, or maybe something else because of the high fever and other symptoms. We are after all in a hot and humid place, ideal for small organisms that can create havoc in our system and interfere with longevity.

And so I got to experience what it is like to need a pill and not being able to find it. We settled for a second choice of pills. That required going from one small opening in a wall to find out which medicine was available; then to another opening, entirely covered by a curtain which required bending over and peering through a small slit at the bottom to listen to the instructions of the woman behind the cash register (name, pill, pay). A noisy dot matrix printer provided the receipt that could be exchanged for the pills by going back to the pharmacy where a new line had formed in the meantime. It took a long time, even during the quiet hours of the evening, to get what we had come for. These kinds of experiences make me count my blessings and realize what we take for granted back home.

Having accomplished our task we decided to take a quick meal in a local eating establishment which would be so much faster than in the hotel, cheaper and of better quality. With an orchestra playing loudly the kind of dance music West Africa is known for, we tried to get our order across a glass partition behind which several stern women were stirring multiple giant pots and signaling them to remove the covers so we could see the contents.

The women were not very kind; they seemed impatient, as if we were holding up the routine, even if there was no qeue. I was flummoxed. I had no idea what to order, and there was no point in asking questions because they couldn’t be heard, nor could the answers, given the volume of the music. I pointed at the only thing I recognized, something with a head and a tail, swimming in a red sauce.

I turned out to be the kind of fish I don’t care much about, a cousin of the mackerel or bluefish, oily and dark, but the sauce was good. With a plate of rice to soak up the spicy sauce and with a local beer it was not a bad meal.

We ate without talking, and watched the people dance, which was quite entertainin. Although it was late, more and more people streamed in, starting to dance before they even ordered.

Having eaten our meal in record time, 10 minutes at most from order to finish, we drove back to the hotel where the doctor delivered the medicine to his confrere. I know it worked because the patient showed up in good shape at next morning’s breakfast. All is well again.