Gris-Gris

I had planned a more heroic ending to this trip, but here’s what really happened; perhaps it’s more befitting anyway:

I was unwell when I arrived in N’Dali, the room I got was in a concrete building that slowly roasted me all night so that I did not sleep, and I could barely stay on my bike for the 60 kilometers into Parakou. After more than 2 months of culinary receptivity and constant but controllable diarrhea, the inner me had had enough and took charge. I spent a second night awake and on the toilet, looked in the mirror for the first time in weeks, and found an exhausted guy I barely recognized frowning back at me. He was not having fun anymore.

Coiffure

I had known this for some time now, since it became hard to match the enthusiasm of literally every town I passed through on my bicycle, all of whom left me feeling like a sports super star even when I was primarily preoccupied with keeping my underwear dry, and since meeting Woru Noel Siraru and being given a tour of a radio station under construction 30 kilometers north of Parakou but feeling uncharacteristically disinterested. I wrestled with what to do all night: prolong the trip while I recovered in Parakou, or listen to that part of me that said I had gotten what I came for: enough was enough.

Market woman

The next morning I assembled all my stuff, walked my bike down to the bus station in the dark, and got on a bus for the last 400 kilometers to Cotonou. I popped pink pepto-bismols, two every hour, and kept my fingers crossed, arriving to the beat of some great west African drums and electric guitar.

Parakou bus stop

I realized as I was packing that somewhere between N’Dali and Parakou, perhaps at the Catholic center or at the radio station, but probably on the road somewhere, I lost the little leather satchel filled with medicinal herbs held around my neck by a twisted leather string that I had bought in Agadez, Niger from Aboubacar Mahamadou. I had lost my gris-gris.

Bus stop

Parakou, Benin