(4) In Benin



with Frank Butler


August 28th 2007, Cotonou, Benin
The Twins

In Cotonou I met these two little children who badly need help. We are setting up a fund for them, and if you would like to contribute, click here for details or just read the story first. As with a lot of the things in my life it starts down at a local drinking hole.

One day I had arranged to met up with Amos after he finished work. His wife Laurence had a little bar in a back street near the Golf FM radio and TV staion. In Cotonou you can travel all over town on a little motocycle Taxi for about thirty Euro cents. I arrived early and was sitting on a curbstone outside the bar. There were dozens of children running up and down the sandy street some carrying thing some playing, all having a lovly time in the late afternoon sun.

I was watching a little girl sitting in the sand with her mother stooped over her...in one had the mother had a bowl of watery porridge in the other she held a tiny twig. She would hold the bowl to the babies lips and the baby would turn its head away...then the mother would wave the twig in a treatening gesture the thing that struck me was that this tiny baby understood...if it didn't eat the porridge it would get a smack with the twig.

I thought that a bright kid the way it kept watching the twig and taking just enough prridge not to get a smack. I strolled over thinking that it was probably a very friendly kid too. When I was about two paces away the child noticed me and it froze, its head turned to its mother and then back to me, and let out the most plaintive cry. The face screwed up and it looked back to its mother and raised its arm wanting to be picked up. I reached in my pocket and brought out a hundred cent coin and offered it to the child. It started flapping its arms and crying louder. I put the money in her hand and smiled at the mother ... the baby cried on. I saw the bundle tied to the mother's back - 'Jesus there are two of them'...but at least this one is fast asleep. I walked back to my own side of the road.

Seeing that child reminded me of when I was a child myself. When I was eight or nine the war in Biafra (now south west Nigeria) was well and truly on. In England we would see pictures on the television of starving men, women and children and posters of little babies with big heads, big bellies and skinny, skinny limbs. This child reminded me of that time, a time when your mum would say "finish those mashed potatoes, there are children in Africa who would be glad of them" and we would say "Send it to them then because we don't want them". I was too young back then to understand or to help...I no longer have that excuse.

The mother went and filled a small washing-up basin with water from a house on my side of the road and carried it back to where the baby was still sitting rubbing her hands in the sand never taking her eyes off her mother.

I watched as she took the dirty T-shirt off the child and the the rag that was tied around it as a nappy. I looked again at the kid's skinny legs but the question that I found myself asking is where is the child's backside...it has no backside. It was true the legs went straight into the backbone there wasn't even a hint of buttock... 'Jesus that child is thin'. The mother washed the child, the child put up a good fight.

The second child tied to the mothers back was now awake and looking around. I reached in my pocket and found two 5.000 CFA notes I walked over quickly and placed one in each of the kids hands...almost before they could start to Cry.

The mother looked at me in disbelief and started to bow and say 'merci merci' again and again...I walk away feeling that I had done a good thing...Just then Amos Showed up.

I pointed to the kids and said 'how old are they'? He asked his wife Laurence and she said that they were three. I said 'they can't be three they can't even walk...look at the size of them.' Laurence comfirmed they were three...That just made the whole thing worse...they were in worse shape than I thought. And I thought that they were in bad shape for one year olds...for three year olds they are pathetic.

When they had finished their bath the mother brought them over to our table at the bar and curtsied again and said thankyou again and again. The girls looked at me and both began to wail. The mother went away and a second latter an older woman came over and said 'Merci, Merci Beaucoup'. She was a friend of the mother. Then an other woman came over and thanked me and told Amos to tell me that god would bless me for my kindness.

I asked Amos what he knew about the kids, but he had never really noticed them. He asked his wife again. She knew most of the story. The mother, her name is Dianne, is a village girl from a small place about eighty kilometres north of Cotonou. She had been taken to the Ivory Coast in her early teens by a friend of her uncle who was recruiting people to work as maids in big rich people's houses over there. Dianne's parents sent her with the man.

When they got to the Ivory Coast there was no work for her but the man kept her as his own woman, she had two daughters by him and seemed to be reasonably content...her expectations were not high. Five years after the second girl she had the twins...now the story gets a little hazy.

Either the father was already seeing another woman and desided to move out, or as soon as he found out that it was twins he moved out. Some Animist religions believe that twins are bad luck. Anyway the point is he left. He left her with nothing, not even an Identity card for herself or her Children.

She was miles from home with nothing. Some friends around where she lived clubbed together to get her the bus fare back to Benin, she had to pass through Ghana and Togo, before getting to Benin, with four children and no papers.

She eventially got back to her village, but the last thing her parents needed was another five mouths to feed so she took the three youngest children and headed for Cotonou where she might get work.

She is small compact and strong with a pleasant nature and a quiet persistent kind of strength and very guarded emotions. What she could have hoped to find in Cotonou I can not imagine. She got a job helping a woman prepare and sell food at a street stall but one of the twins got sick and she missed two days. The woman paid her off.

She came to be near Amos's bar because it is beside the radio station. She wanted to appeal to the Father of the children via the radio to help with his children. The radio station wasn't interested but gave them a short interview that was not broadcast.

I was annoyed by this story, not because some bloke ran out on his wife ...that happens everyday and sometimes the story is not exactly as it is told by the aggrieved party. I was annoyed because no one had done anything about the aftermath, about the fact that a blind man could see that those two little girls probably wouldn't reach the age of four...and no one seemed to care at all.

I asked Amos about this and he said that 'yes I should help the mother'. I said 'why should I ? She is one of your people, she is surrounded by her own people, why should a foreigner be the one to help, why don't you look after your own ?'

He said we do, but we can only do so much many people have given small things to this woman but that will not change her circumstance, just prolong it.

It was true the ten pounds I had given her would be stretched out to make it last a week by buying starchy food with no nutritional value, and then she would be left with nothing again. If she needed medicine then the game was up.

I went back to the boarding house to do some thinking. Next day I asked Amos to arrange a meting with Dianne and the Twins. I wanted a doctor to have a look at them and see what the problem really was.

A couple of days later we all trooped off to the St Jean Catholic Hospital where we registered the kids and then sat down to wait in a long queue. I started filming.

An orderly came over and asked me to stop I told him what it was we were doing he asked me to speak to the Hospital Director She was a lovely woman and phoned her secretary and we were suddenly at the head of the queue. The girls were weighed and examined, had blood taken, were poked and prodded, and bawled the whole time. We bought some medicine, some vitamins, some food suppliments, and some worming medicine, and went back two days later for the results. There was nothing wrong with them except that they were half their normal weight and their legs had never developed the strength to hold them up. But it could all be fixed.

Next day Laurence, Amos and myself went on a spending spree, we bought shorts and shirts and dresses and reuseable nappies and pants and bed sheets and a bag and a dress for Diane.
We spent sixteen pounds. When we gave it to Dianne she cried.

That week we tried to open an account at the bank for her. We were detained or two hours for filming outside the bank, the camera is not always a blessing, we didn't get an acount either. On the weekend we took the girls on their first visit to the beach.They loved it.

We started to do some of the paper work to get documents for the family...but it was time for me to leave so I passed the buck firstly to Amos to take care of things on the ground and make sure that the girls got the things that they and their family needed and secondly to my brother in law John to see if he couldn't persuade the friends of Mr Beem to part with a few paltry pounds each year to see that these little girls get a fair go.

Travelling in Africa you see many heart breaking situations....amputees, lepers, blind people, people with withered limbs or gross disfigurements ...sometimes you will see all of these people at one set of traffic lights.

The truth of course is that you can not help them all and indeed some are unhelpable,....with the twins the thing that struck me was that they and their mother were not begging, they had not given up, they still had dignity...just no money. Their case was as life threatening as any I had seen but it could be fixed ...If they got food, shelter and medicine when needed, they would live productive lives and that and the fact that there was the possibility of being able to put a system into place that would insure their longterm survival not just a short term donation and some good wishes.

Help needed

So we are setting up a fund to get the twins food, medicine, clothing, and somewhere better to live, and to help their mother set up a little business of some sort, since they can't live on humanitarian aid all their lives. If you would like to help I promise it will be money well spent !

Please send what you can, however small, to John Radcliffe, my brother-in-law in England, who runs this web-site for me, at 106 Richmond Avenue, London N1 0LS, by cheque, money order, or even used dollar notes well wrapped up!

Every penny except bank charges will go to the cause and accounts will be kept and progress reports given regularly to donors. I am also planning to see if the English school can give them places when they are of an age. This is an ideal chance to see your money working directly and to make a real difference in real lives. It is not just a pie in the sky promise and you can see it happen over the coming years...how good will that feel ?


Meanwhile, I had my own nightmare to face...Nigeria.
Frank Butler, September 12th 2007.





Amos Davies wrote, September 14th 2007:


The twins are doing fine for the time being. They have finally integrated into their new home. Today or tomorrow, I am going to give Diane, the mother, some money to make some benches and tables, purchase some bowls, plates, buckets, pots, spoons and other petty items in preparation to start selling some food.

I spoke to Diane, several times to be sure of what she wishes to do. She convinced me that she wants to sell a local made food with sauce to accompany it.

Also, I have some items like rice, sardine, tuna fish in tomato paste and canned, washing and bath soap, powder, same like what are found in my shop for her to start selling. She has not yet received these items because we are in the process of finding a place for her to place her tables. Her room will be overwhelmed with items for sale. All these items are gifts from my wife Laurence, my son, Alex and I. This is a surprise package for Diane, the twin's mother, and Leonine and Leontine, the twins. God bless them in all their undertakings.

As I write my friends, my eyes are filled with tears. I have never, ever come so close to someone so poor and in desperate need, and talk less of the children, who are so tiny. God bless you for coming this way my friend and opening my eyes to a need.


September 14th 2007

We are just doing great here. The twins and their mother too. You should have seen the expression on their faces when they integrated into their new home. I visited them on Saturday past, the mother was in the door cooking, and the girls were in her front looking how she cleaned the crab, washed it and put it into the pot. Leonine came over to me and took my finger; a sign of welcome. Leontine looked at me and refused to come to me; you can imagine what that is. They were happy. I brought over a used mattress for the mother and children. Oh, the mother was very pleased when she saw the mattress and I gave her a 5.000F CFA note, that is, five British pounds.






STOP PRESS

Just over a year later
(November 2008) we
have been able to get
some more help to the family,
and the twins are
looking much better.