Blown Tire, Beer & Blessings From The Witchdoctor

I'm once again in Benin and so far, things have been great.
My friends and I were digging up the towns of Dassa Zoumé, Savé and finally Parakou up north where we had a little chat with the singer of Anos Band. Dug up loads of vinyl and even made public announcements on the radio telling people to bring their records to the Hotel les Canaries where I would spend the evenings sitting on the porch, drinking ice cold 0,65 liter bottles of Castel beer while playing records on the portable turntable.

On the way there, our left front tire blew while going at 120 kmph on the Cotonou-Parakou highway. The tire got totally shredded, pieces were flying around, the fender got a bit mangled while we were pulled onto the left lane and my friend Landrie who was driving couldn't really do much to control where we were going.

Thankfully, there were no vehicles approaching at that time and once that Landrie had regained control of the car, we pulled over to the right, exchanged the tire and tried out best to put everything else back in place using bolts that we found at the side of the road, cable ties and some old wire.

We had a mechanic in Parakou take care of the damage and once he saw the car, he said that we could have been killed and should consult a witchdoctor. He even called one up for us on his cellphone. Later that day, the witchdoctor visited us at the hotel and took Landrie with him for a ceremony to find out if our travel might be cursed. Landrie came back an hour later and said we should be fine and there was no curse but we mustn't forget to make a sacrifice after safely arriving in Cotonou by handing out some meat to the poor, he suggested at least one kilo and to be really safe, we made it four pounds.

A full report with pictures, record scans and new mix will be coming up soon!