A Village on Stilts

April 29, 2016


A week in Benin, covering the historical town Ouidah and its slave fort, the voodoo market in Cotonou, and two Unesco-sites, the stilt town Ganvie and the Palaces of Abomey.

We had about one week to explore Benin and the first stop was the town Ouidah, a historic town both for its importance in voodoo and in the history of slave trade.

The historic town of Ouidah, important both for slave trade and the voodoo religion

Similarly to Elmina and Cape Coast in Ghana, Ouidah has a slave fort. The difference is that this slave fort has been rebuilt to be a museum, not only of the history in slavery and how the local tribes sold their own people as slaves, but also of voodoo and how the voodoo religion came to America with the slaves. Only tours in French, and no photos allowed.

Not too far from the fort is Houenhouo, a several hundred years old tree that was turned into a piece of art when it died. The tree symbolises the struggle of the slaves, traditional feasts, and several other important pieces of the local history. Not sure if this qualifies as street art, but I’ll tag as that anyway.

Houenhouo, an old tree converted to an amazing sculpture

The next stop was Cotonou, the largest city in Benin with a population of more than three times that of the capital and second largest city Porto-Novo. Despite the size of the city there’s not too much to see. The main site was the market which also included a voodoo market. The voodoo part was similar to the one in Togo but less touristic and with a slightly larger variety of animals.

Just north of Cotonou is the Unesco-listed village of Ganvie, a village located on a lake with houses built on stilts or on one of the few small islands. The village has a population of about 35000 people and has hotels, schools, a big mosque and even a football field (on man-made ground).

The village was founded during the period of slave trade as a way of protecting the tribe from other tribes, mainly the Fon people, who would capture and sell the people to slave traders. Not only did the water make it harder to reach the town but according to the religion of the Fon people settlements on water should not be attacked and the village was therefore safe.

Almost every building in Ganvie is built upon stilts in the water
They even have a mosque on stilts

The last stop in Benin was the city of Abomey where we saw some of the Unesco-listed palaces and tombs of the old kings of the Kingdom of Dahomey. The Kingdom held back the colonial forces for a long time and wasn’t colonised until the late 19th century. Because of that the area has a long history of kings. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos in the palaces as they’re also burial grounds.

That’s it for Benin. Not too many photos but still quite a few experiences. We’re setting camp early this afternoon to be ready for the next border crossing tomorrow morning. Next country, Nigeria.


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