There are 72,000 Kekeno in Cotonou.

Everywhere you turn there’s Kekeno wearing a yellow vest and a helmet – always a helmet – ready to take you anywhere for at least 100 CFA.

Our first stop for the day is Dantokpa, the biggest open-air market in West Africa, and what in particular were we looking for? Nothing. We just walked. And what do you do when you’re walking through a market with no real agenda? You eat whatever you find.

First is Baguette – a long thing loaf of bread that’s quite popular with French and French-speaking people. But Baguette doesn’t go alone here.

It starts with the opening. Your baguette gets cut open like you’d do if you were trying to load a loaf with butter. But who needs butter when you have a platter.

Everything ends up in the baguette – Irish potatoes, fish, and all kinds of sweet and spicy things. Keeping track of all of them quickly becomes futile.

Don’t stress, just take a bite. Take another. Finish the whole thing. If you’re like me, you’ll ask for more. Wash it down with a drink.

There’s Pito, this drink I used to know as a kid, which I have now found out is a fermented corn beverage.

The market feels like every Nigerian market I’ve been in, until someone speaks and you hear Bonjour, instead of “uncle you no go buy?” We’re still walking in the market when I hear something very familiar.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Marlians in Cotonou!

In a corner, there are a bunch of boys just jamming Naira Marley’s Soapy at the highest volume their speaker can take. It’s a DVD stand, and everything that’s not Bollywood on there is Nigerian music. The music set up is a DVD player and a sound system.

“Do you know the name of the person that sang it?” Tosin, our french-speaking project manager asks the person manning the DVD player if he knows the name of the artist.

He doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t care. He just loves the jam. One of the boys stand up and throws in a little Zanku to spice up the mood. It lasts for 3 seconds, but it’s sufficient for me. Greed is not a virtue.

Our DJ – his name is Frederik – but I’ll call him DJ Naja. He’s showing off now, because when he hits the next, Totori is up. Another girl across the market aisle throws her Zanku, before some older woman yells at her, and she stops. Bad bẹlẹ.

“Good afternoon,” I hear someone say to us as soon as we’re on our way again, and I just knew that accent straight away.

So I “how you dey’ right back at him. A few moments later, I now know his name is Justin, 19, and he comes from Aba in Nigeria. We exchange Ariaria stories, and play that little game of “do you know so and so?”

Add a few more minutes, and I find out he can sing, dance, play football, and is only just selling slippers to make money. He introduces his baby brother Chinonso, and when Tosin teases that I’m a movie star from Lagos, he asks for my number.

Someone get me a manager.

Walking in a market is sweet, but sitting in a restaurant and eating is sweeter. Next thing.

We make a quick stop at where we meet James, a pretty smooth man who loves Tekno as much as he loves his Dibi Dobo. And so, he goes on about who everyone should be listening to in Benin, minus the obvious Angelique Kidjo. There’s John Arcadius, Dibi Dobo, Sessimes, Nika Nor, Vano, Sagbohon Dabialu, and then Zaynab, who he mentions more than once.

We really want to hear more gist, but we’re losing daylight and energy. Time really does fly when you’ve spent a serious amount of time walking in a market, taking an unhealthy amount of Okro Soup photos.

Tomorrow’s for the Ganvie we didn’t have enough time for, and the Ouidah we’re going to sleep at.

C’est bon.