Riley in Africa : Two White Boys

Two white boys in Porto-Novo. One white boy is bad enough, but when you got two it’s a big deal. We got mobbed by kids this week coming out of school. They all needed to touch our skin, literally swarms of hundreds of kids around us all screaming “Yovo, Yovo!” It was kind of terrifying, but also kinda cool. I felt like a superhero even though we did nothing but give them handshakes and fist bumps.

Also, when you’re two white people, people become very interested in what you have to say, only because you are white, which is dumb. Because usually it’s for other reason than the gospel they talk to us. One girl just wanted a selfie with two white people to put on her profile picture. Another wanted us to take him to the US. There was one guy that called us over and said "you two are Americans, aren’t you?" and I said yes, and he said that he can tell anyone’s nationality by the way they walk, so that was weird. However, everyone wants to talk to us so that is a big bonus.

This week I got the common cold, which was kinda dumb because I was sniffing and coughing all week. Also, it is combined with the weird end of the world like dust fog called harmattan which is back to make everything dusty and I’m constantly sneezing.

The bane of my existence was the bathroom in this place. It had no toilet seat which was really difficult, for obvious reasons. However, I found a toilet seat today and put it on so it’s better now. I thought that was going to be a lasting problem, but it’s fixed already.

One of my favorite things about this apartment is Elder Daniel. He is a Nigerian. I think I mentioned him last week but he is just a really funny guy. He has some funny mannerisms that just crack me up and we get along great. He always will just walk in to the room and tell me something he wants to do. Like he walked in and said he wanted to get a haircut. I asked him if he needed me to go with him or something, but he didn’t, he just wanted to tell me. He is like that, he will just announce random things. He also had me go and buy some glasses for him because he has difficulty speaking French, but he wanted glasses. Not sunglasses but kinda grandma like clear glasses with no prescription. I got them for him and he uses them like reading glasses, like every time he needs to read he puts them on but in the day he doesn’t use them. It is weird because they have no prescription, but it is super funny. And finally, how he is with food. He always wants to try new things but when it gets down to eating it he never can. He will just go out on the street and see someone, buy something and is like “I want to try that.” He brings it over to me after buying it and says "I bought something I don’t know" and every time I tell him not to do that because he always puts it on a plate, gets ready to eat, then loses his appetite and eats bread, mayo and chocolate every night. Such a funny guy. I’ll try to get a pic with him for next week.

We found some pretty cool people in the sector this week. Actually, we found a widow that is super ready for the gospel and I love visiting widows because that is like a duty of the priesthood that is specifically mentioned in many scriptures, so that makes me feel good. We also met a Congolese Muslim who is interested too, so bunches of new experiences to be had in the dusty red-sand capital of Benin.