Floating Villages

We hopped into a cab and made our way to Ganvie, West Africa’s largest stilt village. The cab driver was a bit of a card, declaring straight off that he loved me. I fawned him off on Rhonda, saying I was married, but my friend was single. At Ganvie, our plans changed according to the price of things and the notion of spending several hours at a hotel surrounded by water. The ticket sales guy flirted shamelessly, threatened to follow us out to the village and generally tried to weasel as much money out of us as possible. I finally got royally annoyed, told him to stop wheedling us because we aren’t rich and he took the hint and wandered away.

The ride out was rather peaceful, if somewhat unbalanced. Rhonda and I sat facing forward in the middle of the pirogue, which skimmed just barely above the water. A man at the back of the boat “paddled” with a long stick while Gregoire, our guide, unfurled a Snoopy sheet as a main sail, which was propped up rather awkwardly with three long sticks.

On the way there, Gregoire explained that Ganvie’s original residents came from Togo fleeing a war with a tribe forbidden from entering water. At the lake’s edge, their king transformed himself into a bird and carried each of the residents into the middle of the lake, where they built their simple homes on shaky, thin ticks. Once everyone was safely stowed in the middle of the lake, the voodoo king transformed himself once again, this time into a crocodile, to keep the residents safe. Amazingly, this story is still told, even though the lake is salty and crocodiles only live in fresh water.

We got out at the hotel for a drink and realized all we’d had to eat and drink that day was a baguette and a litre of water. We decided to head back and push on to Abomey. The village wasn’t interconnected in any way, so neighbours would have to paddle to visit one another. There were a couple patches of marshy land where chickens and goats scratched, but otherwise, everything was on water. The corrugated homes looked rickety and ancient. The pirogues also looked old. The entire town was filled with them, some piloted by men, most by women and a few by children. At one point we glided past a floating market, where women traded with pirogues full of yams or pineapple. It was the one place we didn’t see women carrying goods atop their heads and it made me wonder who was better off: women on land who walk for miles in search of firewood and farm land, or women who paddle for miles looking for the same thing.

I found the village enchanting and intriguing, but also incredibly sad. The men and women seemed unfriendly and slightly closed off and guarded. Some neither smiled nor acknowledged the strangers in their village, which is somewhat rare for the southern parts of West Africa. But worse were the children, who stuck out their hands and demanded “cadeaux, cadeaux” relentlessly and seemingly without thought or shame. Eve the smallest of children would mimic the older children and some were slightly menacing in their demands. I wondered who taught them this and whether it really worked and why their parents hadn’t instilled in them a greater sense of pride or self-worth. It really wore me down and ruined the experience.

After a slow, uncomfortable paddle back to the jetty, we hopped in a shared cab back to Abomey. The cab reminded me of the old-style station wagon from Ghostbusters and we were seated at the very back, three rows back, where the smell of petrol was almost nauseating. The car made several stops, emptying our seat and no matter how many stops we made, they would fill the middle seat with four passengers while we had room to sprawl with only two of us.

When we pulled into Abomey, we were surrounded by zemidjan drivers, but we decided we could walk. By the end of two blocks, we realized we were lost, it was after dark and the map made the distances seem smaller than they actually were. Two zems pulled up as we talked over our options and although Rhonda wasn’t thrilled at the notion we hopped on and sped off.

The ride was winding and comfortable and from that moment on, I was rather fond of zemidjans missing them when we arrived back in Ghana.

The hotel was pretty but unremarkable and the food gave Rhonda stomach trouble, the first time she’d ever had full-on diarrhea, which surprised me, considering she lived in Kenya for almost a year. I was to learn over the next few days that our experiences in Africa were markedly different in ways I hadn’t really realized. From her stories and emails, I just assumed Rhonda took mattatus and public transportation, that she’d be used to different foods and “funny” toilets and slightly grungy hotel rooms. But, in fact, she took a matatu only once, when he mom visited and public transit only once, when I visited. She took a bus provided by her company to work and if she missed it, she didn’t go. She never ventured further than four hours from Nairobi and hung out almost exclusively with rich young Kenyan men who were educated in London and lived about as African lifestyle as Rhonda did. She’d never eaten street food until she came to Ghana.

After a rather sleepless night – the loud couple next door sang to each other until midnight then had incredibly vocal sex after which the guy fell into a deep sleep, snoring so loud it woke Rhonda. The sweeping – my nemesis – started before the sun rose. We found two more zemidjans and zipped over to Abomey castle. (Even Rhonda was warming up to zems by this point. There’s something really liberating and wonderful about feeling the wind and sun on your face. You just feel that much closer to the landscapes that are flying by.)

The castle was very, very interesting, with Western-style displays outlining the history of the kingdom, the slave trade, the fight against colonialism and the brutal reign of the king, who sounded like a tyrant. Parts of the palace are built of the blood and bones of human sacrifices and the king’s tomb is not far from where 41 wives were poisoned and buried to keep him company in the afterlife. I found it a trial to translate and I know Rhonda found it frustrating because I was only catching 75 per cent of what was being said.

We walked to the artists’ market, where Rhonda bought a wall-hanging, then went in search of Internet and lunch. The previous night while trying to change the settings on my camera, Rhonda deleted 97 pictures, including our only photos of the python temple and Ganvie. I laughed, convinced we could retrieve them and not especially concerned even if we couldn’t, but Rhonda felt nauseous and even hyperventilated slightly so we needed Internet to send an SOS to friends who might know about photo retrieval. Lunch was a long wait for greasy chips and scrawny chicken, while two slightly impaired teenaged boys stared and begged.

We made our way back to the street and convinced one another to take a zem on the highway back to the next village where we could get transport on to Parakou. I told Rhonda’s driver to drive “doucement” and by the time we arrived she was smiling.

We paid to ride in a shared taxi with a flat tire and a fast driver and rolled into Parakou just as the sun was setting. The ride up was dusty, dry and smoky, the entire landscape was hazy with brushfires and it was even difficult to see stars in the night sky.

We checked into a hotel, splurged on air conditioning and went for a drink on the patio, then set off in search of dinner. Rhonda marveled at walking down the street of an African city after dark and I found myself marveling once again at her lifestyle in East Africa. Truth be told, I don’t wander around my neighbourhood after dark without a purpose, but other than when I’m carrying my computer back from the Internet, which isn’t often, I don’t feel nervous.

Northern Benin was a lot like northern Ghana, in the sense it was dark, there were bikes everywhere and people called out friendly greetings.