Can travel make one a liberal?

The seas are rough, the wind is howling and the boat is rocking. We had a pretty awful dinner at the specialty restaurant last night and the ship has been running out of things from spinach to berries, diet coke in cans to some beers and wines, crackers and bar snacks and, god forbid, fresh baked cookies. While the evening entertainment has been very good, with the many sea days we are having, the mornings and afternoons are pretty devoid of things to do unless you are into "Caravans and RV's", "Carpet Bowls", "Needpoint and Knitting", or "Trivia" ad naseum. They've only had "Jackpot Bingo" once on the trip and some of the natives are really getting restless.

Then there are the tours in rickety, dirty windowed, broken seat, non-air conditioned buses on either traffic jammed, polluted streets or rutted dirt roads. Guides with thick accents and no PA systems. Water that is warm, if provided, at all, and constant complaining from people with British, Austrailian or New Zealand accents, (I can't tell them apart), about everything, but especially that the French contingent wrangled the only air conditioned bus in Benin.

This all came to me as I was sitting at my iPad, in our lovely suite, enjoying a Diet Coke in a can, munching on fresh baked peanut butter cookies (perks of being in a suite) and trying to sort through pictures of street life in Cotonou, Benin. What do we have to complain about? We've been going through some countries where the people have little power to change things and struggle every day, maybe not to merely survive, but to make some kind of life for themselves and their families. The pictures and reflecting on the past few weeks were getting to me. Why all the complaining when life just off the boat was so tough, but the people so warm and welcoming?

Life in these countries is lived on the street for most of the population, but especially in the cities. While the main road is paved, the side streets quickly turn to dirt and along the sides of both, paved and unpaved roads, people try to make a living.

 

Virtually everything one can think of is sold on the street and some things you can't imagine are as well.

 

That's not soda, beer or olive oil being sold in those bottles, but gasoline. We saw few gasoline stations, but vendors selling gas by the bottle were everywhere.

Produce was everywhere as well, but we saw little meat, poultry or fish. Grains and yams make up a large portion of the diet.

Then there was the merchandise. Here there are no Walmarts, Targets or Macy's. You want something, you find it being sold by the side of the road.

 

 

 

If all that shopping made you hungry, no problem. There are plenty of eateries right by the side of the road and also the ice cream man pushing his cart.

Then you have to carry your goods home and unlike in some East Africa countries, both the men and the women use their heads to get this done.

 

Travel may not make one a liberal, certainly not me, but what it can do is open one's eyes, slap you aside the head and make you more sensitive to people's conditions. It forces you to see so many different aspects of life that you'd never come into contact with if you didn't have that passport. The lessons learned may be immediate or remembered at a later date, but one does learn and change. Empathy is heightened.

From the Eiffel Tower to the Killing Fields, from the Metropole Hotel in Venice to the one in Hanoi, from the Polar Bears in Churchill to the Lions in Botswana, we been blessed to be able to experience so much. I hope we bring some smiles to your faces and that you enjoy journeying with us.

 

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We Did It!

Today, Thursday, May 22, 2014, we have set foot in our 100th Country: Senegal. Here we are standing at the Port and then near the Monument of African Renaissance in Dakar. Tonight we will celebrate achieving this goal with some French champagne, an Italian dinner at Sabatini's with our friends from Vancouver, Maureen and Gordon, and some fine South African wine we bought in Cape Town. Truly an international evening as we sail toward the Cape Verde Islands. Tomorrow we will regroup and figure out our next travel goals.

Stay tuned...

 

 

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Slaves, Voodoo and French Bread-Benin

After leaving the orderliness of Namibia, we spent four days at sea crossing the pirate infested waters of the Bay of Guniea. Yes, pirates. It seems that the anti-piracy inniatives off the coast of Somolia have been so successful that they have moved to the West Coast of Africa. Complete with piracy drills and anti-piracy defenses, we safely crossed the Bay to land at the Port of Cotonou, Benin.

This tiny country, once called Dahomey, was home to the ferocious Fon tribe and it so dominated the slave trade the coast was called the Slave Coast. For over a century approximately 10,000 slaves a year were sent from it's ports mainly to Brazil and Haiti.

The Fon were also famous for their women fighters. These were the "Amazon Women" some 2500 strong who formed the personal battalion of the Chief and who's legends still carry on today. They so frightened the native tribes and the European's that the region wasn't brought under French control until 1882 and then the slave trade was finally abolished. Within one generation, the Fon changed from being savage warriors to well educated bureaucrats and served the French throughout their African colonies.

The Fon were the reason for our first excursion. There was a tribe called the Tofinu who fled the approaching Fon by building a stilt town in a large lake far from the shore. The Vodoo beliefs of the Fon did not allow them to pursue their enemies on the water and thus, the Tofinu were safe. For over two hundred years they have lived in a settlement called Ganvie and carry on the traditions of fishing as they have for centuries with scant contact with the mainland.

The houses are all on stilts over the water and the only transportation in or out is by boat.

They may have invented fish farming by using fronds from local plants to build enclosures in the water, trapping the fish and allowing them to grow in the enclosed areas until harvest.

 

 

Even with the advanced fish farming method they developed, they still use the traditional ways.

We were there on market day and like in far away water based villages, such as in Cambodia, Vietnam Nam and Thailand, all commerce took place from the small boats, here called pirogues, that were the mainstay of life.

 

 

 

These people mainly practice Vodoo or other animist religions and while there was a large mosque and several churches in the village, many turned away or covered up if you tried to take their picture. They didn't want you taking their souls.

What struck me the most was how many children were working, especially young girls, and how many were not in school. While their smiles were infectious, you have to worry about their future.

 

 

 

 

Leaving Ganvie one had to wonder how long this way of life would continue. The city of Cotonou was only thirty minutes away from the shore of the lake and another twenty minutes by boat to the village. One thing we didn't see much of, as we did in Southeast Asia in similar villages, was a profusion of satellite dishes. We saw none and only a few antenna's. While there was some electricity, there didn't seem to be a lot and you also didn't see anyone talking on cell phones. It was quite an interesting excursion.

Quickly we were back in the real world of an unairconditioned, rather worn bus, fighting the thick traffic of Cotonou. Not being a wealthy country, most of the traffic was motor bikes and the commerce of the people was done on the streets. The stalls stretched from the shores of the lake we had just visited to the port. It's how commerce is done in just developing countries and it looked pretty normal. For new comers to this part of the world, especially after Namibia, it was pretty mind blowing.

I'll save the city part of Benin for the next post and tell you our visit to Togo was all about countryside life,Voodoo Chiefs and some pretty wild dance, but you are probably wondering about French bread. Just like in Viet Nam and Cambodia, one of the legacies of French occupation was that the people love their bread and sell it and eat it everywhere.

 

 

 

 

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I hope you enjoyed seeing this slice of history. It's now cocktail time on the ship so I will stop, but leave one last picture that for me sums up why we love to travel, Africa, and photography: the reaffirming happiness found in a smile.

 

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Ok, where's Africa?

Namibia reputedly has the highest standard of living in Africa. Flush with diamonds, abundant uranium and other minerals, vast fishing grounds, productive agriculture, a relatively honest and stable government, good education and a Gernanic tradition, one gets cleanliness, order, efficiency and a lack of anticipation and excitement of what may be around the corner that we have experienced in other Africa countries. When I asked our guide if all of the country was like what we were experiencing, he said yes, unless ones goes deep into the countryside. That's great for the Namibians, but hard on someone trying write something interesting. I mean how much German efficiency can one take when looking for the next mind blowing shot?

As we left the Port on Sunday morning, this is what we experienced on the streets, not only in Walvis Bay, but Swakopmund as well. Large, well maintained roads, with nary a vehicle on them and no people to be found. Our guide assured us that because it was Sunday morning and Mother's Day as well, traffic would be light. It was non existent.

We headed inland from the port to visit Dune 7, the highest dune in Namibia. Now this is desert. No vegetation, no animals, just sand as far as the eye can see. Unlike the southern desert in Namibia, there are no diamonds here so one is free to roam to their heart's content, although why one would is beyond me. The only things you might run across are dung beetles and an occasional snake. As you travel along the well paved road you see nothing but sand until you reach the dunes area and then the landscape gets interesting.

The dunes done, it was time to head off to Swakopmund, the resort city of Namibia, situated directly on the Atlantic Ocean. The city swells to over one hundred thousand people in season as Namibians and South Africans flock to the wide beaches, great restaurants and good weather.

The first thing that hits one is that all of the signs are in English and all of the buildings look like they were moved here from Bavaria.

We were on a Swakopmund on your own tour and had plenty of time to wander the deserted streets. Outside the small, town museum we had a nice lunch of curry wurst and pfannkuchen with a great view of the beach.

We finally did come across some of the indeginous people. The first in a stop at a weavers shop where one woman was dressed in typical native city dress and then strolling in a park, we came across a group of native women in dress more typical of the tribal lands.

We had one more stop in Namibia,Walvis Bay, the largest town on the coast and historically the most important. It is home to a wonderful harbor as well as a large bird sanctuary. It was also typically German in architecture and every other way one could think up. It is amazing how the Germanic tradition and mind set could still prevail considering Germany lost German West Africa after World War One. The parts of Namibia we visited were truly Germany in Africa.

Next stop will be Cotonou, Benin where we are going into the country side to board canoes and visit a stilted village, in a large lake, inhabited since the 17th century. Then Lome, Togo were we will bypass the city and again head into the countryside to Sanguera, the seat of the Vodoo Religion and home to the Python Temple. Things should get much more interesting.

 

 

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