Benin, First thoughts

So due to the ship having some problems we arrived a day later than planned here in Benin on Tuesday 10th Feb. Which was kinda unfortant because we didnt get cleared to leave the ship till the next day, and well i was working wed and thu so i decided that it best to wait to leave the ship till the weekend. We have had a lot of briefings about Benin, and well it sounds like it gets a lot more un safe after dark, so that chances of me going exploring after dark in a place ive never gone before werent very high (infact zero!)

For those you you that wanting to know exactly where i am, we are in Cotonou which is in the south of Benin

So thankfully with this whole weekend off ive managed to leave the ship 4 times now!

So my first experience was Friday with my sister and her family (http://thefarrells.org.uk/), so we made it prob 50 yards down the dock and well some guy called Michael comes off a boat, and well he came with us the whole way!!! I had been warned this might happen, so it was Sarah, Tommy, Tom (4 1/2), Joshua (2), Michael the Beninese man and myself! We didnt make it too far, just to the end of the dock and down a couple of roads, pretty much it was very hot and the boys got tired very quickly! It did give Michael time for a few questions, which he seemed rather concerned about. He really thought it strange that Tommy didnt have a daughter and he very much wants Tommy now to have one!!! ... and for me ... well a wife of course! My reply that im still young wasnt good enough for him i feel.

So friday night a group of about 15 or so of us ventured out for some dinner! And oh what a good choice that was ... so the chips ... they were just like good old English chips!!!

My 3rd and 4th ventures have been alot less eventful, just a couple of walks around the main road, i will try and get some pics of these places for you all to see!

So this week ahead is gonna be very hard working i feel, i have to work in the kitchen mon,tue,fri,sat,sun and this thu is screening day.

What that means is there are going to be about 2000-3000 people coming to the football stadium to be looked at my the medical team and will be booked for operations on the ship, or whatever they need. So even though im non medical i will be there, most prob i will just be security of some type making sure that everyone is ok etc! I will give more details of this when i know more!

Ok so this is the map of where we are docked, we are docked pretty much right down the end of the thing you can see sticking out of the land in the picture.


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