Benin Part 2

Our first stop was the Forrest of Kpasse in Ouidah the Voodoo capital. We were

welcomed by the chief and there was dancing and drum playing but I was disappointed

because I thought we would see an actual Voodoo Ceremony.

We later stopped at the Temple of the Sacred Pythons. Since I have no fondness for snakes,

I chose not to go inside and instead went a beautiful Catholic Church across the street. (Now that was a contrast!) It was probably the nicest building I saw all day. A young boy attached himself

to me and tried to explain a bit but spoke little English (French is native language).

I did understand a little bit. Of course he wanted a tip which was okay except I had

no money in my purse. He hung around until Foster returned for his dollar. 

A dollar means a lot to these people.

We stopped by a small Portuguese museum. I never got an explanation of why Portuguese. Although the guide had a microphone, because we had windows open he was hard to hear.

We then stopped at a structure called the “Gate of No Return.”  It was located on a

nice beach and just down the way was our lunch stop. We had a nice buffet lunch

overlooking the beach. There was only one toilet available although I found out later

there were two in reception.

After about an hour’s drive past many more shacks, we arrived at our final stop of the

day, the stilt village of Ganvie. We boarded pirogues and rode for about 20 minutes

to reach the village.  There are about 30,000 people living in mostly bamboo huts on

stilts over the water. We passed many dugouts of people going between the village

and the mainland. Some public buildings have been built using concrete pilings and

we debarked at one and saw some dancing. Our boat was a bit unlevel and several

times we were leaning either one way or the other. Unfortunately we were leaning

the wrong way when we passed a huge mosque under construction. It was totally

out of place. We did not get a good answer, but suspect it is being financed by
Saudi Arabia or another Arab country.

All in all it was an enlightening day, although not on my list of places to revisit.