Distant Horizons

There are some legacies of slavery that somehow were not part of my education. Today, I spent the afternoon in Ganvie, an expansive lake village on Lake Nokoué, near Cotonou. When Alex, my guide told me that the population was around 20,000 people, it was hard to visualize that number of people living on a lake. We drove to a pier through a market teeming with people and then took a boat and meandered through canals with, just as Alex said, a fully-fledged community. Why here? It turns out that in the 17th century, the powerful West-African Fon tribe was hunting and selling other native tribesman to the Portuguese. Fon religious practice forbade their raiders from advancing on any peoples dwelling on water, which laid the groundwork for the Ganvie Lake Village. In the roughly 500 years that have passed since, Ganvie has developed an intricate and prosperous culture within the constraints of life on the lake. As the sun set and we watched the human activity, I wondered if the young children, expertly navigating through the waters, were aware of the heroic acts of their ancestors.

I was lucky to be in Abomey during a ceremony honoring one of the king’s key advisors. As I stood on the outside of the compound, I was invited to join and sit with the audience. Extraordinary.

Avoiding the crowds everywhere in Kyoto is challenging but a night time walk through Tenryu-ji temple in Arashiyama is one way. My only company was a series of figures guarding this UNESCO site.