Today I had a chance to witness a Catholic baptisim of a baby boy. One of the employees in BAT was getting his baby boy baptized and invited all of us to join in.
We left at 11 and arrived at the church. Typical of the housing it was made from brick and plaster and left unpainted. It was a warm day and the church was no equipped with air conditioning and just only 2 standing fans for a congregration of around 25 people. The Reverend Father turn out surprisingly to be the father's elder brother. ......Perhaps that is the reason why they choose that particular church. Have never attended a Catholic mass before so was an eye opener for me. Somehow I have the feeling that this services are conducted in the same manner in any Catholic church. Unfortunately service was in French ...so the whole part of the mass was mostly alien to me .. We just followed the crowd ...There was the dedication of the baby and the baptisim. The god parents were also present and they were smiling proudly.
Later we left for their house in Contonou for a some sort of small party. I was surprised at the grand scale of it all. According to other employees the party would last through out the night till next morning. I could see there were free flow of drinks and of course the indepensable beer. It's unimaginable to seperate an African from beer. Food was ok ... and we sat there for around 2 hours ....just listening to the music which was turn on at full blast. The house was something like a shared communal housing whereby there were 2 or 3 families living together in a 3 storey house .... Each foor had some roooms ... We did not enter the family living space instead we were brought up to th e roof where some tables were laid out. Later we proceeded to a the lower floor where there were some rooms that were partially built and uncompleted I find in puzzling here .... a building can be half completed and there would be people using and residing in it. I am tno sure however whether they even plan to complete it.
According to one of the employees; Benin is aiming to be another Dubai in the near future. However I think that will be some time off ......
Well give a few years the landscape of Benin might totally change
