Scene hardly believable in the city of Kandi, in the north of Benin. Bees invited themselves to a wedding, causing the death of one person. Other guests were hospitalized. Located in northern Benin, the town of Kandi was the scene of a particular wedding that its guests are not ready to forget.
The scene occurred during a Muslim wedding celebrated on July 03, 2021, at the city’s grand mosque, built in the Baobab district. As the religious ceremony came to an end, no one among the guests imagined what awaited them on the forecourt of the worship building.
While guests, relatives, and friends were singing and dancing around the bride and groom just outside the mosque, they were attacked by a colony of bees in the purest local tradition. It was the save-who-can.
“The wedding went well. We finished all the prayers of circumstance. And it is as soon as we went out, we were surrounded by bees by surprise,” said Alazi Imorou Dakara, a guest, to the microphone of Kandi Fm, a local private radio.
He said he was “savagely stung in the head by these bees” before escaping. “It was very painful,” he continued. “Guests were running around trying to escape the bee stings. Some fell and got trampled by others. I was lucky, I was able to save myself. If you could see my head right now, it is still swollen. It took ten minutes to get the bee stings out of my head,” he added, before affirming that he is now “doing very well”.
One dead and many wounded
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for everyone. One of the guests lost his life in this incident. “Trampled and savagely stung by these bees, one of the guests, later transported to the hospital, died (…). Other wounded were also admitted to treatment. One of them is still currently in the hospital,” explains Alazi Imorou Dakara.
“The man’s name is Bakari Soumane. He was taken to the neighborhood clinic immediately after the incident. But, even before receiving first aid, he died,” he said.
The origin of this surge of bees remains unknown for the time being. For their part, the bride and groom are doing quite well. Not sure, however, that they are ready to taste their honeymoon.
Recall that in Togo, last week, after lightning struck the international airport in Lomé, traditional voodoo priests went to purify a Boeing that was hit on the tarmac. Togo is a secular state, but it is also a country where voodoo is widely practiced and respected.
