In the 18th century some of the millions of slaves that were yanked from Benin
and inland  wound up in plantations in Brazil.  There, over the course of a
couple of generations they learned Portuguese and grew integrated in Brazilian
customs and traditions.  When they were emancipated, they returned to the land
of their ancestors, Benin, but brought with them their Brazilian ways.

Anyone who's ever looked closely at a map of the Atlantic might have wondered
if South America and Africa couldn't just nestle into each other like a pair of
spoons.  And plate techtonics theory posits that in the Earth's prehistory
that's exactly what the land mass looked like, northern Brazil and Venezuela
fitting up against Ghana and Benin long before drifting plates caused the
continents to drift to their current positions.

But Brazil and Benin have been connected more recently than that by culture and
human destiny.  I first learned about this curious bit of history in Benin,
when my hotel suddenly began filling up with Brazilians, and the Beninese flag
on every second flagpole along the length of the hotel's property was replaced
by the Brazilian's bold "Ordem e Progreso."  "What's going
on?" I asked one of the Beninese hotel staff.

"The Brazilian president is coming to visit us," he informed me.  And
it was true: that night President Lula himself pulled up at my hotel to
participate in a brief celebration of Benin's fascinating "Agouda"
history (read related news article).


Turns out that in the 18th century some of the millions of slaves that were
yanked from Benin and inland (note the moniker "Slave Coast" that
remains on that stretch of the Bight of Benin to this day) wound up in
plantations in Brazil.  There, over the course of a couple of generations they
learned Portuguese and grew integrated in Brazilian customs and traditions.
When they were emancipated, they returned to the land of their ancestors,
Benin, but brought with them their Brazilian ways.

To this day there's a small population in West Africa that greets each other
not with "bonjour" but rather "bom dia, como passou?" and
responds not "bien, merci" but "bem, 'brigado."  And
President Lula, on the course of a Pan-Africa tour in which he took in several
countries and strengthened his deveoping-world alliance, made a stop in Benin
to celebrate the cultural links between Benin and Brazil that tradition and
history sustain to this day.

The Beninese love celebration, and President Lula was treated to lively folk
dances and music.  In return the Brazilian statesman extended a promise of
solidarity and development aid to its West African partner.  I got to mix my
Portuguese into the French I was so happy to be using, and the world suddenly
got a little smaller.

In the United States it's all too easy to think of the world in the
post-colonial lens of north and south, developed and under-developed.  But this
happy incident - this serendipitous crossing of two very different worlds -
reinforced the growing notion that the links run equally east and west.