We went up to Porto-Novo at the beginning of this week to do a split with the missionaries up there. My old comp Elder Kappel was there. We are good buds so we just kinda hung out together for a while catching up on what’s going on. Turns out one of the crazy ladies we found together is getting baptized next week along with her husband and three kids which is five baptisms that I had a part in finding. So that was some great news. Kappel and I went out to get lunch for everyone, as we were waiting for the rice lady to fill up our black plastic bags with rice to eat, a girl came out of nowhere and slapped Kappel really hard in the face. I looked to see who it was and it was one of our old investigators I had taught with Kappel. She then looks and Kappel and said, (referring to me) "you said he wasn’t coming back." I tried to apologize but she had already walked away. Kappel looks at me and said he didn’t deserve that. So me coming back to Porto-Novo got Kappel slapped, that sucks. But I got slapped this week too, I’ll talk about that later.
As we were coming back from Porto-Novo our taxi man gave a huge speech on how great white people are. He is a black Beninese taxi man, but he loves white people. It was so funny to hear what he had to say. His speech went something like this: "You whites are crazy, you can do whatever you want. I look up in the sky and see air planes and wonder how in the world did the whites get something that heavy to fly. But that’s not all. Look at those big boats that come to the port they are huge and heavy but they don’t sink, no its unbelievable. You whites are strong, so strong. What do we have here that you don’t have? Maybe magic but we don’t use that for any good we just kill each other, ugh. I would love to go to the US. I bet a white man could even create another man. But of course, you couldn’t give the breath of life, only God does that, but I bet you could do everything else if God gave you that power too. I bet He (God) would be like ‘dang it those whites are gunna pass me up’."
So, mental illness is a social problem, right? How do we treat mental illness and stuff. People talk about that all the time in the US. I remember one campaign in my high shcool "spread the word to end the word." It was to have people stop using the word retarded as an insult.
This week I saw a first-hand account of how people treat mentally challenged people here. We were teaching a really nice good Christian family the gospel the other day. This family is so nice the mama gave us a little bag of four eggs so we could try “African food” (thinking eggs did not exist in America). As we were teaching a couple starts walking down the sandy path we were teaching on and they all started laughing and talking in Goon (their tribal language). Segal and I asked what was wrong and they said, you see that girl that is coming with that guy? The girl is "folle" which direct translate is crazy woman, but it means she has special needs. They told us that this man with her married her from some dumb reason. The way they were talking was quite rude then when the couple got closer they all stood up and circled around her and started harassing her and her husband. They were poking her, putting leaves on their heads and dancing like crazy people. The man seemed very nice about it though. He just kept trying to keep his wife calm. The couple bought some stuff from the Mama and kept walking. After wards the people we were teaching all ran to the well and washed their hands saying if you touch mentally ill people and don’t wash your hand you will become like them. This was a nice Christian family that did this too this woman. I’m sure she gets the same treatment everywhere Segal and I were so shocked we just ended the lesson, it was too much for us.
The second run in with mental illness was so weird. This week we were walking and we hear this man hiss behind us. The universal sound for “look at me”, so we turned to see where the hissing was coming from. We see a man running at full speed towards us dripping in sweat. He is wearing a golden boomba shirt with really tight skinny jeans tucked into black military boots. This man has some orange powder coming out his mouth as he speaks and he starts to explain rapidly, out of breath how he is a security guard, and a man who speaks five languages. He says how he super smart but does not goes to school. Then he loses all strength and runs across the street and collapses in front of a house and askes for water. They bring him some and he drinks it, splashes some on his face then tries to steal the drink of a man walking by. The man was so shocked he just kinda pushed this crazy guy off while we watch in horror. We wonder if we should just leave, then he runs back across the street and has a totally different personality. He starts explaining his life from birth. Then he points to this random girl down the street a little way and he explains that she was a “creature of the night” meaning prostitute. He says that she is pregnant with his kid and he has brought her along with him where ever he goes for five months. He calls his “girlfriend” over and we say hi to her give her a restoration brochure with our number. Then the man looks at us and just starts bawling his eyes out. Through his tears he cries about how the police are chasing him and he has nowhere to feel safe and how he is going to run away to his village to present his prostitute girlfriend to his mom so that he can get out of his forced marriage. Then he abruptly stops crying and closes his eyes, changes his voice, and in a creepy deep voice he says in a mix of French and English "The whites will always be whites the blacks will always be blacks. I know you want their hearts. I know how to get them, they are easy I will do anything for you. I am your servant." Then he snaps back into his first personality and says sorry if I was a little intense say “hi” to Elder for me and he shakes our hands and walks away. Segal and I were very shaken up about meeting a schizophrenic. Since that day he has called us two times from two different numbers. The latest one was just this morning and he said he made it to the village, his mom is out in the fields and he told us have a good Sunday, even though today is Monday. I’m scared, that guy is too weird, too weird.
So, for when I got slapped. At the end of one of our lessons the family we were teaching wanted to take pictures of us so they held up the phone and I smiled kind of jokingly as I do and they are like “stop that you are ruining the picture.” I’m like, sorry. So I changed to a normal smile and they said “stop, we are taking a picture, stop”. So I just kinda made my smile less big and the girl slapped me in the face kind of annoyed. She said, “don’t you know what a picture is?” I remembered back in the day when my converts would not smile for their baptism pics so I realized they are not down with smiles in pictures. I made a face that looked like I was really ticked off and they were so happy, “now that’s a real picture.”
As a young man was praying for us in an opening prayer for a lesson he said "bless the missionaries that suffer in thy name." I had no idea he knew about that.
I took a picture of a car this week because as we were out about doing our zone stuff we saw on the back of it written in blue was the phrase in English "cover me with your blood," of course.
Segal is a really fun guy. I like teasing him from time to time because in some ways he has really adapted to the African way of life. He cracks his eggs by hitting it with a fork. He uses a bunch of oil to cook his eggs and uses a bunch of every single spice in the apartment in his eggs when he cooks them. When he cooks eggs, he has totally lost his nationality and its super fun to see.
Segal and I are always on the same wave length, it seems. We love to joke around with people. We met a guy that helped Segal get a virus off his camera card, and we convinced him that living in Benin was so much better than the US and that the people who want to leave just don’t understand the reality of what awaits them. Segal is big into politics debates and economics. He gave the guy many reasons that he will now use to convince his friends of the same thing, it was so funny.
We figured out there is a goddess that people worship here that lives in the bottom of the ocean and her name in their language is 'Mami Watta' which is just a funny pronunciation of mommy water. People say that those who wear ankle bracelets worship her. Jenson happened to have one on when we did the split to teach some people so they are convinced Elder Jenson worships Mami Watta. Segal and I are constantly attacking the beliefs of the Mami Watta people. We often joke to people here that we have seen her and because sarcasm is not a thing here everyone always believes us.
I can begin to explain the weirdness that is going on in this place. I saw a mama throw knives at her kids, luckily, she missed. I saw a kid running from her angry mom, the mom picked up a rock and with perfect arc and aim beamed her in the back of the neck when she was quite a ways away. Life here is a mess, but there are still bright sides, like Kappel baptizing that family we found. A girl we were gunna baptize in two weeks this last Sunday she said that she felt ready now, so she moved up her baptism date a week. My son Kouadio is baptizing people I found with him in Togo. My converts are going strong here in Benin, Menotin and Cococodji. I’ve done some good work. I’m very happy, life is nuts but it’s okay, I’m kinda used to it.
District lunch to celebrate Tolman and Kahombe first baptism
Check out the back of the car. "Cover me with your blood"
Kenzi Marsh sent glow sticks for me to share
