Spring Break, Day 5

Thursday, March 15

Other than the creepy knocking in the middle of the night, I awoke from a very peaceful and heavy sleep. We went to get breakfast at a little breakfast stand like the one I went to my first morning in Lomé. There were all kinds of misunderstandings in our order. We ordered three coffees, two oatmeals, two omelettes, and three saches of water. So then we got one omelette, one oatmeal, one coffee, one sache of water, and one baguette, which we didn't even order. So we had to tell the guy our order again, and this time again he brought us one of every item as opposed to what we actually wanted. Everyone else at the breakfast place was looking at us like we were retarded and didn't know how to order food. Like I've said, some things I'll just never understand.

We decided to take a walk around Cotonou. When exploring a city, there's no better way than to just take a long stroll. We quickly discovered that Cotonou is by far the most polluted city I've ever been to. The number of motorcycles in the city far outnumbers Lomé, and we discovered that they don't exactly use the cleanest fuel possible. Some even use coal just because it's so cheap. So the result is that thousands of motorcycles are emitting dense, thick, dirty exhaust, making it extremely to breathe. Mixed with the heat, the pollution makes Cotonou almost not worth exploring at all for me. Of course, it's not quite so bad off the main roads.
I'm not really sure what to make of Cotonou. It's not a particularly beautiful or ugly city. The city is much more chaotic than Accra or Lomé, and people are generally not as friendly (although we also got harassed even less here, so it's a win-lose situation). The city is not as clean as Lomé, but probably also not quite as dirty as Accra. The city has a lot of cool restaurants, plenty of businesses, a cool market, a beach - all the things Lomé and Accra have. The only difference is that Cotonou doesn't seem to have much charm. Walking around the city, I didn't get the feeling of being in a particular place. The city didn't seem very local. I just felt like I was in some big city.

There were a few cool places we went to in Cotonou, though. The big church of Cotonou, which looks like a big candy cane, was very gorgeous. There was a funeral taking place when we visited, so we weren't able to go inside, but we admired the church and took a moment to take a break from breathing in motorcycle exhaust. We also went to the cultural center where we met a poet and painter named Chevina. Chevina was telling us his philosophy on art which sounded to me like "art for art's sake." He told us that his biggest defect was that he talked to much. I'd say he was right. He also told us his favorite books were the Bible and Les Miserables. Hmmm... not my cup of tea, but fair enough. Nonetheless, he was an interesting guy. He wrote all these poems using the acronyms of French-speaking countries around the world. I was unaware that there were quite so many! He gave Rachel a book of his poems and signed it for her. Of course, I'm not sure how she'll read it since it's in French.

We had read in the guidebook that Cotonou had an American Cultural Center, which amused the three of us. We talked about how all the big cities in West Africa - Accra, Lomé, Cotonou, Ouagadougou (which I didn't go to, but Rachel and Tania did) - have French cultural centers, so we wanted to see what an American cultural center was like. Of course, I told you about asking for directions in Cotonou. People kept telling us where it was, but they always made it seem like it was just around the corner when in fact it was really far away. So we kept walking, the whole time thinking we were about to be there, and then finally we realized that we just weren't meant to visit the American Cultural Center. I'm still curious as to what is there, though.

We decided that Cotonou wasn't the most fun place to hang out, so we decided to leave earlier and head for Ganvier, a stilt village on a lake just outside of Cotonou. This was probably the strangest place I've ever stayed in my entire life. We got to the lake, only a 30 minute drive outside of Cotonou, and bought tickets to take a boat out to the village. There were tons of boats and people in the departure area. We saw a few other tourists, which was to be expected when you have the opportunity to stay the night in a stilt village. Some of the people in the little boat area gave us really dirty looks, like we were intruders. I suppose we were in some ways. One woman even covered her face as she was rowing by us so that we couldn't see it. As soon as she passed us, she took the cloth off of her face.

The three of us loaded up in a canoe with our bags and two guys who paddled for us. The guy in the front told us the story of the village. The lake the village is on is 218 km², and the village itself is 8 km inland, about a 30-minute canoe ride. The village, Ganvier, was founded in 1717 by people who lived in a little village on the Togo-Benin border. The king of their tribe was waging war on another tribe, and so the king was drafting people to fight in the war. The people in this village were not in support of the war and didn't want to fight, so they decided to build a village on a lake to avoid being drafted. Talk about draft dodging. There's another story that goes along with it that has to do with all the villagers getting to the site of their village on the backs of crocodiles, but I was a little unsure of if the crocodile thing was related to the war. Anyway, the village primarily makes its money from fishing (what else are you going to do on a lake?), although there are also other jobs within the community. I was surprised to learn that the population of Ganvier is 35,000, larger than Douglas! We told the guy rowing the boat that the town I'm from in is smaller than Ganvier, and I'm not sure he believed me. I should also note that Ganvier is not the only village on the lake, but its the largest and most commercial (meaning there are hotels there).

We moved across the big still lake, beautiful yet dirty (because it does not communicate with the ocean). Right after we reached the point that we could no longer see land on the horizon behind us, we began to see little buildings make of small wood sticks standing tall and proud above the water, supported by even more smaller sticks, the stilts. Right when we went between the first two buildings (the outskirts you could call them), we were in the village. Suddenly, more and more buildings started appearing everywhere. Children poked their heads out windows and ran out to the porches to wave at us, scream at us, ask money from us, or just laugh and smile at us. After being in the village for a few minutes, all I had seen were children, so I began to think maybe the village was run by screaming little children. We began to notice that several buildings had artificial earth built in front or around them, serving as people's only land to stand firm on. Sometimes these patches of artificial earth connected a few buildings, but for the most part, you had to take boats to get from one place to another. I was surprised (although I shouldn't have been really) to find that there were tons of chickens, goats, and boars in the village. I felt kind of bad for them, especially the goats, trapped on their small pieces of artificial earth.

As we went further and further into the village, it became clear to us that this stilt village extended for a long time in any given direction. Pretty much all the buildings stuck to the same design, but some buildings were very colorful. Some pieces of artificial earth contained voodoo temples, statues, and fetish priests. The guy paddling the boat pointed out to us the local school, the hospital, pharmacy, the market and a few restaurants. But the real joy of the village is what happens in the water. Lots of people were wading about in the water, trying to catch fish or crabs. Women rode by with boats of pineapples or pharmaceuticals or vegetables, selling them just as they would on land (except on land they carry these things on their heads instead of in boats). Lots and lots of people would hold their hands out as they went by us, wanting us to give them a little money. I suppose it's like our payment for intruding on their life.

The boat took us to the hotel we were to stay at, Chez M. Ironically enough, Chez M was probably the nicest hotel we stayed at on our whole trip. The hotel had a large dirt courtyard, a big restaurant and craft shop, and rooms downstairs and up. The rooms actually had showers with running water and a toilet that flushed! It was amazing. The hotel even had toilet paper! (To add more irony to the situation, though, I have to say that I had my worst sleep yet that night, but I'll save that for later...).

Since it was almost dark, we wanted to check out the stilt village a little more. The same two guys took us out on the boat to visit the voodoo chief of the village who also happens to be the storyteller's grandfather. We went to one of the larger pieces of artificial earth to meet him. There were about fifteen little kids that came running up to us immediately, all wanting to touch us or just be in our presence. There were also several women and a few men around. They were all pretty young, and three of the women were pregnant. We had already noticed by this point that this community was half-naked and half-pregnant. There were tons of naked children, tons of pregnant bellies, and more pairs of old wrinkly droopy breasts than I've ever cared to see. The voodoo chief came out with absolutely no pretense surrounding him. He was just chillin' in his blue wife-beater and beat up green cargo shorts with a bottle of palm wine in his hand. They sat the three of us down on a bench. Everyone, kids, women, and voodoo chief, all stood around us in awkward silence. Here we were, two worlds colliding. I knew I would never be able to understand what life was like for these people, and they would never be able to understand me, and we didn't even speak the same language, but for this one instant in time, we just decided to stare at each other and smile with no plan for how to proceed from there. While I was experiencing this moment, Tania was talking with the boat paddler. We weren't really sure why we had come to meet the chief (other than to meet him), so the guy told us the chief could tell us our future for a price or something like that. We sat there for a long time in more awkwardness and indecision, until finally we just got back in the boat and left.

After that, we went to a place that was called a museum, but was actually just a place where some guy sold shirts and paintings of life in the village. They were all very beautiful, but as usual, I didn't buy anything. It was during this time that I began thinking about how a person would feel growing up on a stilt village if they knew that they could live on land. I suppose if you grew up doing it, it would be normal for you, but at the same time, for me, it's sort of like living in northern Alaska - why would I ever want to do that? I think if I had been raised in some little town in Alaska or Russia that only got above freezing in the summertime, I'd be kind of made at fate, or my parents. Of course, kids in Douglas get upset at having to grow up there. (As for me, I'm not upset I grew up in Douglas... it was the whole sticking around after high school thing that didn't sound so appealing). I wonder how the youth of the stilt village feels about their living situation.

"I hate you mom! I hate you dad! I'm rowing away from home!"
"You can't row forever!"

We came back to the hotel as it was getting starting to get dark. It was about this time that rush hour started and everyone in the village got in their boats to row about. The sunset on the lake was so beautiful. After the sun went down, it became extremely dark, but the town was just waking up. I'm being kind of serious. A huge loudspeaker was playing with election campaigns, people were rowing about more than in the daytime, and talking, laughing, crying, and screaming could be heard all over the village. I suppose they have to release their energy some way to make up for the lack of walking (although I guess the arm work involved in rowing does that).

I wound down the evening with a nice game of solitaire, and then we had dinner. Because dinner at the hotel was so expensive, I just had an egg and some peas. I was still hungry afterwards, so I ate some Snappy nuts that I had bought earlier. Then after dinner the girl and the two guys working at the hotel sparked up a very awkward conversation with the three of us about marriage, virginity, kids, sex, and all that. It was clear that for them, even at the age of 18 or 19, getting married and having kids was pretty much the point of your life. They even told us that a life without kids is a wasted life. It does make sense to me somewhat in the sense that you leave a legacy behind on this earth by having kids, but then again, growing up in America, it's completely acceptable to not have any kids. In Ganvier, I suppose you'd seem very strange if you didn't have a spouse and kids.

We ended the conversation after a little while because it was becoming a little too much for the moment, and so we just played cards instead. Ever since dinner had ended, I had started feeling extremely tired for some reason. I felt like I had been hit by a garbage truck or some other heavy-load automobile. Maybe I was just tired of traveling. Or maybe Andrea, the girl who worked at the hotel, put a voodoo spell on me or something. I wouldn't put it past her. (Just kidding!) So the three of us went to sleep in a double bed laying down horizontally, our bodies on the bed but our legs hanging off the end. Once again, in the middle of the night, I was awoken by the door, but this time it was Rachel trying to get out of the room. Apparently she had been trying for 15 minutes to get the lock off the door. Fortunately, I knew the trick to opening it, so I let her out. As I was falling back asleep, I heard people rowing around outside. It was kind of creepy, but I guess it's just how things go.