Lots of water

When I talk about our home, I tend to say that we live in "the dry North" of Benin, and compared to the rest of the country, it is very dry for most of the year. However, for a month or so during rainy season we can get a lot of rain, and usually once a year we get a huge rainfall which is so heavy that the ground can't soak it up as it falls.

This year it was last Saturday. We had plans to go down to Bembéréké to visit a friend who had given birth. There was a huge storm on Friday night, and the rain started again at about 5 on Saturday morning. We thought at first that we would wait until the rain stopped to set out, but as the rain continued steadily and showed no signs of slowing, we decided to set out anyway at 10.

This was what we saw as we headed towards the gate of our compound:



And between us and the road:



There was a lot of water about. We gasped as we saw familiar countryside under water, and as we passed over one bridge and saw part of the riverbank slip and crash into the swirling torrent below.

At this bridge (missing its safety barrier), what is usually a river 4 or 5 metres wide looked more like a lake:



And then we saw a queue of vehicles ahead of us, which is never a good sign! We parked, and Marc got out and walked down to see what was going on. It turned out that a bridge was entirely under water, and the police had sensibly closed it. They said they'd open it again when the water level had gone down, but since it was still raining, we didn't have much hope of that being any time soon, and turned back, disappointed not to have seen our friends. In Europe we'd have tried to find an alternative route, but we knew that we were on the only north-south tarmacked road and if that was blocked, there was no alternative.

Yesterday we heard that later the road had been blocked in a couple of other places, and we were glad we hadn't ended up stuck in between two of these!