Porto Novo

On Thursdays, the Ophthalmic Field Team travels to Porto Novo Hospital. Porto Novo is about a 45 minute drive from Cotonou and is Benin's Capital city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto-Novo 

The crowd at our Porto Novo clinic is notorious for being a tad rowdy, and today was no exception. It is difficult to capture them all in one frame, but here is my attempt:

This Clinic is run in the same fashion as Godomey...children first, then the elderly and totally blind, then the general population. Pictured here is Robert (left), my right hand man and translator, trying to control the angry crowd:

For some reason, the women are much less compliant than the men. They push, shove, scream, slap, punch, and mob. The men are generally well-behaved, keeping themselves in nice straight lines.

 Here you see Robert in between the lines, distributing numbered tickets:

I met a young lady who claims to be 100 years of age. I am not sure whether or not this is true, but she was a sweetheart and was very happy to be scheduled for cataract surgery: