Day 15 - Otapele Rock, Osuuru Spring & Benin Republic Border

On Saturday we started early our trip to the Otapele Rock, Mount of Salvation in Imeko, a place where people of the Oke-Igbala congregation have pilgrimages.  There are few buildings and a church all build around a couple of huge granite boulders stacked precariously that look to be ‘suspended’. The tradition is that they display God’s blessing on the area. The first person of discovery this place was the prophet Frederick Akanbi Adeoye. The prophet was led to this place by a series of dreams where the Lord spoke to him, after few trips there he saw a picture of a man’s face and praying hands on the side of the set of balanced boulders, so he returned to this spot and built his church. Many people say that who travel to the rocks are blessed with answers to their prayers. 

As this place is considered a holy ground, we have to take off our shoes and walk around bare foot. 

Our next stop was in a natural spring called Osuuru Spring. The water pours out from underneath a rock with no obvious source. The interesting part is that it has never stopped even in the driest season and they believe to have healing powers.

On our next stop, we saw the tomb of Captain Freighton, a British Traveling Commissioner who contracted malaria and died in 1899. He had treated the local population so badly that they did nothing to aid him when he became ill and after he died they went to the extreme step according to their traditions of burying him standing upright. The tomb itself is just a grave marker between 2 huts in the village. Then while we were walking back to our bus we were blessed with the best part of our trip when a group of kids started singing for us. Here’s a link to the video Krisztina posted on her blog http://krisztina-v.tumblr.com/post/89537001858/kids-are-singing-a-song-for-vesna

 

 Our last stop was at the border with Benin Republic, we only stopped to take few pictures and kept going on our journey back to the hotel

It was a long day, not just because of the distance, but the time we spent in some unexpected ‘stops’. I could see in everyone's face the relief to get back to the hotel safe and sound.

It didn't take much for our group to agree that next weekend we will add an extra day of community services in one of the local orphanages instead of a tourism trip!

  
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