Water - Blogabond

I was a bleary mess when Casimo showed up at 9, just my luck to meet the one punctual guy in town. I treated him to breakfast, we agreed to 5000Cfa for the day plus gas, and we got on the road. We drove 15 Km north to Calavi, hired a pirogue, and spent 4 hours out on Lake Nokoue.

Ganvie

Ganvie was started in the 18th century by the Tofinu to escape from the Fon, who had taboos against venturing on water. It has grown to over 30,000 inhabitants, all dependant on three recent artesian wells.

Ganvie

There is no plumbing here, so residents fetch their own...sewage I will leave to your imagination. Most of the houses sit on stilts, the lake barely a meter deep here. In places there is solid land.

Ganvie

Laundry

Most of the residents are still involved with fishing, but tourism is obviously making inroads. The boat tours are sufficiently well-organized to feature three venues where local crafts are sold.

Ganvie

The residents are not all hardened to the tourist trade, and my camera was waved off more than once. Like Hollywood stars they would like to be famous, but without the invasion of their privacy. I understand their ambivelence.

Casimir

Casimo brought me by the house to meet his family on our way back into town. We caught his two sons at home, and his wife at the coiffure, before heading over to his brother's house nearby. There I was treated to a large glass of palm wine where a small taste would have done, and heard of Mathieu's difficulty financing a year's study abroad to finish his legal training. I left him my email address. The massive headache that ensued did nothing to keep me awake when I got back to CODIAM.

The following day I spent hours negotiating prices for presents at the artisan village, then got Casimo's help in finding a car to get me and my stuff to the airport, handed him all my extra food and money, and got on the midnight Air France flight for Paris. Dinner was exquisite, the wine not bad at all, and just like that I stepped out of the developing world. We flew my entire trip in 3 hours and I saw none of it in the dark. I was going home to my girls.

written by

roel krabbendam on March 4, 2007 from Ganvie, Benin

from the travel blog: Harmattan

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