14 DAY TRIAL // Venice is not something unique to Europe. There are Asian Venices, and even an African one: Ganvie. This is a tourist attraction not just for the westerners but also for the Africans.
Ganvie is a 15,000 inhabitants village, built on pillars over the waters of the lake Nokoue, at north of Cotonou, Benin. In Ganvie there are no bicycles, cars, sidewalks or streets. If a local wants to go to the school, market, dispensary, home or to a neighbor, or anywhere else, he must get into a canoe carved from a tree trunk called iroko.
Most families have several canoes: one for the father, one for the mother, and sometimes one for the children. Children learn to row from young ages, and by the age of five, a child can use a boat alone. In short time, he/she can be able to stay on foot in the canoe and to throw a small trawl. To impress the tourists, some young stay on the head in their canoes.
There is a floating market on Ganvie, in which the traders, mostly women, stay on the canoes with a large pile of products put on their front: spices, fruits, fish, drugs, firewood, beer and even radio devices. Protected from the tropical sun by the large-brimmed straw hats, the traders sell their products to buyers coming in canoes, and bargain is the rule.
While women sell or buy in the market, men are occupied with fishing, or to be more precise, with fish farming. A common method employed in Ganvie consists in implanting hundreds of twigs on the bottom of the lagoon, creating this way a dense "little forest" of sticks. Fish gather to feed on the decomposing twigs and several days later, the men return to collect the fish filled trawls.
Today, the Toffinu members are called "People of the Water", but they haven't always lived there. At the beginning of the 18th century, they were running to the lake and swamps to escape from the oppression inflicted by a neighboring African kingdom (in the case of the Italian Venice were the Huns). In the Toffinu language, "gan" means "we are safe", and "vie" is "community".
The religious beliefs of the soldiers of the enemy kingdom impeded them to follow the Toffinu in the water or flood exposed areas. Now, the hide turned into one of the Benin major tourist attractions.
