Benin Babes

(The details of procuring and exporting 6 Basenjis from Benin to Washington, DC)

Finding six small dogs in Benin, getting them their vaccinations and paperwork, and then exporting them to the US is a complicated process. I went to Benin with my wife Cara for only two weeks, so I needed help if I wanted to get everything done by the time we left and still have some time to do the things we wanted to do. Luckily, Robert Dean had done his homework on the technicalities of importing dogs and he looked into air cargo schedules.

I had been in touch with my good friend Nestor since I left Benin in 1997. Initially it was by mail but since Allada got E-mail a few years ago we have been communicating by e-mail. A month before we left for Benin I told him that I had a friend (Robert) who wanted me to bring some dogs back like the dog I had named Wafi, which means “come here” in Fon. I told him that they should be a minimum of 3 months old and not much older if possible. They had to be at least 3 months old to be shipped and small dogs meant that two could be shipped in the same cage. Larger dogs of course would be more expensive to ship than smaller dogs.

When Cara and I got out of our taxi in Allada, dozens of my old neighbors were waiting. They yelled, screamed, and jumped up and down, hugging and kissing us. It had been almost seven years since I left and this was the first time since I had returned. They had also heard a lot about Cara but had not met her yet so they were glad to meet her. At least once every year when I was in the U.S, I sent money for the kids to use for school supplies and for school fees. I also sent toys for Christmas every year so they did not forget me. They threw a big party for us on two consecutive nights with the whole extended family there as well as my friends from town that I asked Nestor to invite. They had the children perform traditional songs and danced to drum music. They wrote a welcome speech, we ate, drank and at the end everyone danced. They even performed a magic trick. Some guests tried to decipher it but to the delight of everyone, they were unsuccessful in revealing the secret.

After the partying was over I asked Nestor to go buy the dogs that he had found and bring them home. He did not have them when we arrived because he did not have the money. To find the dogs he asked around and found two separate litters in a village about five miles to the west of Allada down a narrow dirt bush path. The path is only about as wide as a small car so the village is quite isolated from the modern world. There is no electricity or running water in this village. Only mud huts, kerosene lamps, and people must fetch their water from wells or cisterns. He paid between 1000 to 2000 CFA for each dog (two to four dollars). He brought back four puppies in a small wicker basket as he sat of the back of a motorcycle taxi called a zemidjan. He kept the dogs in an adjacent room of his parent’s mud hut.

When I arrived the next day we put on the collars and leashes that we brought from the US to make sure they did not run away. Once I paid my neighbors to buy me a chicken, and it took them five days to catch it so I was not going to relive that experience again! Nestor fed them klui-klui (fried peanut butter sticks), smoked fish, and akassa with sauce. Akassa is a gelatinous ball of corn flour starch that is wrapped in teak leaves. The Beninese break off a small amount with their hands, dip it in sauce and eat it. Yes- it’s as bad as it sounds. I ate some this trip and somehow I enjoyed it. I suppose my body knew it was only once, and its bland flavor was masked by my nostalgia. In Benin, dogs are given only left over food and they usually have to scrounge for food in the garbage piles. Never do the Beninese buy food for their dogs, because they can not afford it. Dogs in Benin are never kept as pets. They are kept as guard dogs and hunting assistants. When a Beninese hunter shoots an animal (usually bush rat or squirrels) sometimes the animal is only injured. If the animal manages to run away, the dog will aid in retrieving it. As for guard dogs, I’ve heard stories of people giving them alcohol to make them meaner and a better guard dog. Unfortunately Basenji’s are killed and their dried heads are sold by Voodoo fetish ingredient sellers in almost every market in southern Benin. The Voodoo fetisher will then use the dog’s head to create magic charms or gris-gris to protect people’s homes from robbers and evil spirits. Despite some popular myths, I have never heard of anyone eating cats or dogs in Benin.

I had my Basenji Wafi during most of my two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. My neighbors could never understand why I treated it with so much affection or why I spent so much money on fish, akassa, and klui-kui for such a lowly animal. Whenever I would kiss him on the head they would say, “enyo a… e du mi!” “That’s not good, he eats shit!” They told me that I treated Wafi as if he were my child. Nonetheless, over time I think they began to accept my strange affections for an animal that is usually treated with much scorn in Benin.

When I left Benin, I could not bring Wafi home because I planned on living with my parents until I found a job. I left the dog with the Peace Corps Volunteer who replaced me, and he left the dog with the volunteer who replaced him two years later. That volunteer left prematurely due to medical problems so Nestor kindly offered to look after Wafi. Sadly, only a few months before I arrived, Nestor informed me that Wafi had disappeared. I found it ironic that he couldn’t wait just a few months for me to come back. After all, he had hung around for almost seven years, why couldn’t he wait a few more months? Nestor looked for him everywhere but could not find him. Nestor told me that he and everyone in his immediate family was very sad, and he even cried. I immediately accused him (jokingly) of becoming a Yovo (a whitey). He admitted that I had taught him and even his family to love Wafi. Nestor even got another dog soon after, but sadly it was run over by a truck not long after.

Everyone in Adjacome (my old neighborhood) liked the four new puppies that Nestor found and the kids loved playing with them. The dogs did not like it at all the first time we put leashes on them.   They fought and cried. When we tried to move them in or out of the hut where they slept at night they would dig their paws into the ground and the only way we could make them move was to gently drag them.  It made me feel like I was a slave trader capturing these African dogs, chaining them only to whisk them away to America, but I quickly reminded myself that their lives would be infinitely better in the US than if they stayed in Benin.  I knew they would be treated like Kings and Queens so I knew that this was a small price they would have to pay for better life.

At night Nestor told me that they made a lot of noise so he put a kerosene lamp in the room which helped quiet them down. The next day I found my old veterinarian friend in town who had taken care of Wafi. I told him that I needed vaccinations for six dogs and he assured me that it would be no problem. I paid him and he said he would give the vaccinations the next day. When I saw him the next day he said that he had gone to Cotonou (the capital city an hour and half away) but could not get the vaccinations anywhere. He was told that there were no vaccines in the entire country! I gave him some money to do a little traveling to regional cities to look for them and offered to send someone even to Lomé (the capital of Togo) if need be. Luckily, the next day he found the vaccinations in Ouidah.

That day Nestor found another dog from a different litter in Lissegazoun, and the sixth dog in a village a few miles to the north called Ayou. The dogs stayed with Nestor’s family for a few days until they were ready to be shipped off. His father tied them up outside during the day, and at night they slept in the locked room of the mud hut with the company of a kerosene lamp. Time was tight because I had made a reservation for the dogs to be shipped on Monday and it was Friday night already. The vet informed me that the doggie passports required a photo of each dog. Luckily, Nestor came to the rescue again. He’s a student and a part time photographer. He found some cloth for background, took the pictures and got them developed in town at the one-hour photo store. When I was living in Allada there was certainly no photo developing stores in Allada. I was amazed that they could do it so quickly too. By Sunday morning, I had a doggie passport with a photo, rabies vaccination, a certificate of health, and all the requisite stamps and signatures for all six dogs. The vet sent his helpers on Sunday to give the dogs a flea bath to prepare them for their trip the next day.

Cara and I were still anxious about the dogs leaving Cotonou, traveling through Paris, and arriving to the United States smoothly and safely. We made a trip to my neighbor, a Fah diviner, and asked the oracle Fah to tell us if the dogs’ long journey would go well. The oracle said yes, so we were a little reassured.

On Monday morning Nestor rented a taxi and picked me up at the hotel with all six dogs. He put them in two small wicker baskets. It was cramped, but since they were only going to be in them for a few hours, it was acceptable. The taxi had a hatchback so that’s where they rode. The dogs got along surprisingly well as they didn’t make any noise the entire trip despite their close quarters. We got to the air cargo area near the airport about an hour and a half later. A friendly expediter greeted us and offered to lead me through the maze of procedures that would be required to retrieve the three doggie cages that Robert shipped to me as well as sending the dogs. He didn’t say how much he would charge, but I knew I’d bargain him down a lot so I didn’t ask.

After waiting in line, the woman at the desk searched through piles of papers looking for my paperwork. She told me to come back tomorrow because the cages had not arrived! I assured her they had and asked her to look again. Luckily, she found them. I followed the expediter around to four different manager’s offices. The managers were all sitting at their desks in suits and had air conditioning. They looked at the papers and quickly signed and stamped them before we headed to the next bureaucrat’s office. Later the expediter asked for an outrageous amount of money for his services. He told me that he needed to charge me so much because he had to pay each one a petit cadeau (i.e. a bribe). I bargained hard and ended up paying him a third of what he asked for, still more than a Beninese person would have paid him. While I was doing all this, Nestor was waiting outside with the dogs. After almost two hours of lines, signatures, and stamps, I was finally able to retrieve the dog cages.

We assembled the cages, put the dogs in them, and had them weighed. We were able to leave the dogs in the cages in the warehouse while we took care of formalities. We then had to take motorcycle taxis over to the Air France office to have all the dogs’ documents inspected. I was expecting to have some problems due to some minor regulation, and I was quite surprised when I was told everything was in order. I quickly remembered what my Fah diviner had told us. We went back to the freight office and were given what seemed an outrageous price of 855,000 CFA to ship the dogs, about $1700. They don’t take credit cards so I had to go to the bank and get it all in cash. I had never taken out that much cash in my life so it was a bit unnerving. Because the banks close for lunch from 12:30 to 3:00 we had some time to kill. We were back at the freight office at 4:30. We paid and were told everything was all set. We took the dogs out for an hour to do their business, we cleaned the cages, and by 6 PM we had to say Aurevoir.

The process was stressful at times because we had so many details to work out before sending them, all wile not missing too much time on our vacation. We had to procure the dogs, find the vet, he had to get the rabies vaccines, we had to have doggie passport photos made, make reservations, I had to retrieve the cages, get the dogs to Cotonou, get the money to pay for their shipping, and pray that there would not be some hidden regulation that would prevent the dogs from flying. Considering how inefficient things work in Benin, it was a small miracle that we were able to do all this in one week.

Now that I’m back home, I’m glad to hear that the dogs arrived safely and that everyone is so impressed by them. It’s nice to know that these dogs will be potentially improving an entire breed of dogs here in the US. When my wife and I are done going to night school, we will be getting one of the offspring of these dogs as a souvenir of Benin. I have heard that there is interest in importing more dogs from Benin and I hope to be able to facilitate this in the future, as does Nestor.