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This is not a picture of a flood. This is Ganvié, in
the Republic of Benin, the largest collection of lake dwellings in
Africa. 20,000 people call Ganvié’s stilt supported dwellings home. The
city, in the middle of lake Nokoué, is not a recent construct however.
Ganvié is up to five hundred years old. Sometimes called the Venice of
Africa, like the Italian city, its first inhabitants set up home there
out of sheer necessity.
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At the beginning of the seventeenth century the country was called
Dahomey and was one of the most powerful states in West Africa. The
major ethnic and linguistic group was the Fon and they had made a deal
with the Portuguese. Rather than their own people being captured and
sold in to slavery they made a contract with the Portuguese to hunt and
sell tribes people from smaller ethnic groups.
The Fon warriors were numerous and powerful and there was little other
groups of people could do to defend themselves against this onslaught.
Then, someone among the Tofinu people came up with an idea. Their name
is lost to history but one wise person realized that they could take
advantage of the religious practices of their enemy.
The Fon were forbidden by their religion to advance upon and water bound
settlement. Any groups of people who lived on water were, by the law of
the Fon, safe. Lake Nokoué is simply immense. Ganvié was established as
a means to escape being sold in to a lifetime’s slavery and shipped
across the world in appalling conditions. No wonder its name means the
collectivity of those who found peace at last. The alternative
translation is the much more to the point We Survived.
Since then Ganvié has remained, forever physically changing by sheer
dint of geography, but it has developed a complex and successful culture
around life on the lake. Of course there are pockets of poverty, as
there is everywhere else, but generally the people of Ganvié live ones
of relative prosperity. |
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There are occasional small islands which pop up on the lake from time to
time and these are immediately used to graze the few domesticated land
animals that the Ganvians maintain. As you have probably already guessed
the main diet is fish. There is an intricate system of underwater
corrals which are used to farm various species of fish and supply the
city.
Most Ganvians use small boats to get around – as well they might – the
lake city is a couple of miles from the nearest shoreline. Even if you
are just popping to a neighbor's for a gossip, it has to be done by
pirogue (as boats are called).
If you can find a guide book to Benin it would probably not be likely to
describe Ganvié as something of a tourist trap - though you do have to
be as careful here as anywhere else on the planet about unscrupulous
tour guides. There are just a few craft stores and a single hotel and
restaurant to cater for tourists to Ganvié. Chez Raphael looks most
welcoming! It also happens to be the focal point for Ganvié's wealthier
young people, who meet up here in the evenings. |
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The doctor's is just a short boat ride from home - or the hotel for that
matter!
There is also the promise of a certain soft drink, if you are feeling
thirsty.
Family life is unusually business like on Ganvié. Most of the men are
fishermen and they sell their catch (the produce of their makeshift but
reliable fish farms) to their wives. It is then their responsibility to
sell the fish on at local markets and to feed the children and their
husbands. Although this accommodation has led to a stable society, the
women do seem to have pulled the shortest straw as it were. Plus ca
change.
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A slow drift through this enterprising center of lake culture and you
might well begin to wonder what actually holds most of the buildings
together. There is a part of Ganvié where a floating market takes place
but generally the town drifts off idly in various directions. Town
planning is not something that means a lot to Ganvié’s inhabitants but
on the one large piece of dry land there is a school – and there will
soon be a cemetery.
The arrival of modern commodities such as tinned fool and plastics has
also created a problem. When all waste was biodegradable, simply
throwing it out of the window in to the water was fine. Now, the water
is becoming more and more polluted with the detritus of modern life. If
Ganvié is to thrive as a liveable place in the future this issue will
have to be addressed.
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This is not, to be honest, a tourist destination as yet though since
1996 it has been listed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO. It will
probably develop over the next few decades as Benin itself becomes more
of a target for more adventurous travellers. As such there is not much
to do in Ganvié except to soak in the strangeness of it just being there
and the very different way of life of its people. For most who visit
this unusual city on stilts, that is sufficient. |
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