I apologize for not posting this blog sooner, but finals, travels, and the common cold have kept me occupied in the last few days. Last weekend I set off to Benin, a small country with a history steeped in the practice of voodoo, the slave trade, and grand empires. We crept into Benin at twilight, after hours of frustrating travel to the East frontier of Ghana and across Togo. The country appeared unremarkable at first sight: flat, grassy earth punctuated by a few modest mud structures and tall palm trees ending, rather abruptly, at the deep blue waters of the Gulf of Guinea. The chartered taxi that we were traveling in dropped us in the nondiscript burbs of Cotonou, the largest city in Benin and its bustling commercial capitol. Here, hundreds of zemijohns (motorcycle taxis in various degrees of upkeep) thundered down the streets shrouded by a brown haze of exhaust and dust. We quickly found a few willing drivers and sped off through the congestion and chaos to the Jonquet district of Cotonou. After finding a spartan but tidy room at a nearby pension, we ventured out in the heart of the city, which is much unlike most other towns
I have encountered in Africa. The streets teem with activity and people; flashy nightclubs blare R&B music; restaurants are crammed with customers; high rise office buildings and glitzy billboards stand silently amidst the eternal traffic and eye-stinging pollution. I'm sure our metabolic rate skyrocketed just walking from the restaurant we dined at to the quiet backstreet where our pension was located, but breakfast the next morning (an omelette served with a tasy baguette and coffee) allowed me to enjoy a much needed moment of relaxation after a hectic week in Accra. And then there was Ganvie. We arrived at the docks of Abomey-Calavi just after 9 am, while the market women were still unloading flapping fish and an array of other aquatic life from their dugout canoes en route to the market in town. Ganvie, a lacustine stilt village built two meters above water, had been on all of our lists of "must see" destinations in Benin, and a personally much awaited experience. We boarded a canoe, and our guides began the one hour row to the village. As we watched boats float pass, laden with baskets of fruit, clothes, and fish, I recalled the history of the village. More
than three hundred years ago, the Fon people had encroached on the area of these peoples, finally pushing them all the way to the Gulf. To escape their enemies, these people build their villages over the lagoons of southern Benin, allowing them to escape the aggression of the Fon (Fon religious belief prevented their warriors from venturing onto water). We arrived at the village, which seemed more like a small town, with thousands of bamboo huts jutting from the murky water, and a light "traffic" of townsfolk in canoes manuevering through the myriad of canals and waterways in the city. As expected, many of the people here did not want to be photographed (and I was trying to respect their wishes) so I have very few pictures of people but many of the village itself. Drifting through the calm waters, waving to passing women on their way to the floating market or children shyly peering from behind the bamboo walls of their homes is an incredible experience, but is also one that cannot be done justice by simply writing out the events of the trip. Back in hectic Cotonou much later that day, we felt as though we had been
transported to another world. Cars honked, motorcycles screeched (Eiren was hit by one as he crossed the street), and the continuous flood of people stormed towards their destinations. Exhausted from the sudden change of pace, we spent the remainder of the day in our quiet neighborhood in Jonquet, marveling at enormous mosques and old colonial buildings. The following day, we ventured into the market in Dantokpa, which was like diving head first into a cacophonous circus of color, chaos, and commodities. Women selling grilled rat set up shop near men peddling through crowded alleyways with dozens of live chckens tied to the handlebars, seats, and baskets of their old bicycles, and women displaying brilliantly colored pagnes of local fabric chatted with friends selling gaudy fake gold jewelry and pumpkin sized bras. My favorite section was the spice market, where the pungent odors of hundreds of spices wafted through the air. Each spice was piled mountain-high in a large basket and displayed next to the others, creating a colorful (and strong-smelling) collage of hues and textures. After wandering through the market for the better part of the day (it's huge!), we returned to our pension, rested, and set out to enjoy
the nightlife of Benin one last time. I am now back in Ghana, with eight new stamps in my passport (two for Ghana, four for Togo, and two for Benin) and a jumble of fond memories stored in my mind. I have two more finals to go (three finals down, three more A's on my transcript!) and then Patrick and I are off to...no not Mali and Burkina Faso as we had so desperately hoped (schedule conflicts and booked flights have shot down that adventure)...but we may have the chance to visit Ethiopia with an Ethiopian friend and travel to far-flung Zanzibar island off the coast of Tanzania for our last two weeks in Africa. As luck would have it, a promotional offer on Ethiopian Airways offers roundtrip tickets to Ethiopia and Tanzania (with some accommodation included) for the resonable price of roughly $800. I'm thinking its time to visit the Indian Ocean, watch the water twirl in the reverse direction down the sink and chill out on white-sand beaches to the sound of sizzling kebabs and Swahili. Can anyone blame me? Anyways, I'll post again soon, and I'll see all of you in about a month! Love.
Benin's Flag
Map of Benin