It is the December-January dry season and a hot, dry and
dust-laden wind blows down into Benin from the Sahara. Cotonou has several
hundred-thousand high emission vehicles: the average age car is 17 and
there are a ton of Chinese motorcycles; many running on boot-legged Nigerian
leaded gas. Most of the one million inhabitants cook over open wood fires. This
all creates a hazy, smoggy, particle-laden inversion of pollution with a heavy
wood smoke smell and the sun never quite breaks through. It’s the worst air
pollution we’ve ever seen. Nevertheless …
... we were greeted by a dance in traditional garb as we
disembarked:
Our excursion was to a “village on stilts” on Nokoue
Lake north of Cotonou. Tradition has it the village was founded
several hundred years ago when the King of Dahomey (as Benin was formerly
known) was about to sell a particular village into slavery. They escaped and
moved to the middle of the shallow lake and have been living there ever since. The community uses the lake and passages through its reeds and grasses as their road and highway system. The Ganvie
Village community today consists of 30,000 people. Something you don’t see every
day – it was very interesting.
Here is Calavi Harbor on the south
end of the lake:
Here are Joani and I on our way to Ganvie Village
Typical houses. 50 years ago they would have had thatched
roofs; now tin roofs.
Here is a local fisherman casting his net:
Here is the Ganvie Village Marketplace:
Tomorrow is a day at sea, and then on to the Gulf of Guinea island of Sao Tome
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