Day One Travel Log: Back to Africa promoting baseball.

by Wally Langfellow

It’s been 5 years since our last trip to the small impoverished West African nation of Benin. after our 27 hour travel venture from Minneapolis through, London, Paris and finally Benin it was late Sunday night by the time we cleared from the small, but improved airport in Cotonou. You still get off the plane onto the tarmac, that hasn’t changed and probably won’t anytime soon. Once again , our lead guy in Benin, coach Fernando, had arranged for a heroes welcome for us outside of the airport with his older players…17, 18 and 19 year olds who had come to Minnesota back in 2016 and 2018 and who are still playing baseball. Great way to start the trip.

As we drove from our hotel through the streets of Cotonou Monday morning the familiar scent of motorcycle exhaust filled the air on a sultry, cloudy morning. It had rained hard early in the morning and temps would reach the upper 80’s, just like most days in Benin, but we never got a glimpse of the sun.

The first thing I noticed after 5 years away is a longer stretch of the main highway/road leading from the airport is good roads and more modern development…including a monstrous statue across from the U.S. Embassy featuring an Amazon Warrior Woman…Kind of Benin’s own Lady Liberty. Except this one didn’t come from France like ours. It apparently was funded by the North Koreans. An obvious thumbing of the nose to the U.S. by Kim Jon Un.

The other noticeable changes includes more stop-lights (many equipped with digital-visual countdowns)..and a significant number of more recognizable national and international brands and signage. An obvious departure from previous years where you’d see very few, if any companies. Tells me that Benin is being discovered by the commercial-Western world.

Our trip through the older, more typical part of Cotonou looked and was similar to what we were used to seeing in past years. It was taking us to the Don Bosco catholic school where we are to view the property/school yard where our older group of kids have been practicing. Of course as we arrive at the gated driveway and pull in, we see kids playing soccer on the field. Its a large walled-in area with a mixed surface of grass, sand and mercifully ag-lime.

What we didn’t know or expect is what we learned next. There is a hole in the fence/wall on one side of the complex. The neighborhood that adjoins the hole in the fence is extremely poor, needy and transient. The hole serves as a way for kids to come in and enjoy some soccer, but it’s also used by others from the neighborhood to literally come in and use the field as a toilet…Human excrement is found everywhere near the hole and of course where the scrubby grass had grown high. A definite problem that we’ll have to address. Overall though, a good spot with lots of kids at the school and in the surrounding neighborhoods. Later in the day we would meet with the priest of the school, Father Gildas, and come to an agreement that if we come in and fix the field and walls this could be our home for our first real field in Benin. We walked away thinking that this can happen.

Later in the day we visited the flat that we are paying for 3 of our 19 year old players to live in. They each have unique sad stories and no place to live, but are grateful for the small adobe that we are renting for them And it is small. Fidele, Tomas and Joel (who all came to Minnesota as 12 year olds back in 2016) are all living there and still playing baseball. We find out that two of the boys share a mattress while Tomas typically sleeps on the floor…so we set out on a mission to find a mattress, and of course we do. It had to be small enough to fit in the smallish room and could be rolled up during the day. We also came back armed with pillows for all three boys. Total cost, $20. Not bad.

The final run of the day (now evening) was to visit with the mother of Sadock, a young man who has been doing baseball training in Arizona for the last several months and will be spending the summer at Gary’s house in Minnesota…playing baseball and hopefully getting an opportunity to play college baseball next season. Fernando struggled to find the mother’s house in the dark busy neighborhood, but we eventually did. Sadock’s grateful mother was a pleased as could be to meet us and thanks us for helping her son. More on Sadock’s interesting story later…After a late dinner we called it a night. More to come tomorrow, Im sure.

.