Ganvié : Between Resilience And Conservation

In considering the pervasive issues surrounding affordable housing and access to modern infrastructure, we often think of dense urban landscapes situated in the world’s biggest cities. Even more so, these affected communities might also demonstrate some of the greatest innovations and adaptability with minimum resources. While conventional research centred on solving these very issues focuses on well-known cities throughout the world, we may be able to gain invaluable insights into the role that heritage plays when an entire population is up against a confounding number of contemporary threats. Perhaps Ganvie, a remote African lake village, with its remarkable inception and unique stratum of urban rituals and functions, can serve as a case study in issues of housing and infrastructure. As we look at Ganvié, we begin to understand the resilience of a community over centuries while asking essential questions bound by (and wonder how it upheld) the responsibility to sustain its existence.

Ganvié, a lacustrine village in the West African nation of Benin, offers a look into heritage built out of necessity and resilience in the face of an ever-changing landscape. Located along the Trans-Atlantic slave trade route, villagers living on the nation’s coast were forced to flee from slave capture in the early 18th century by taking refuge in the water. As a result, the Tofinu comprise of a multi-ethnic community still practicing unique traditions and rituals informed by a ‘water as land’ way of life. Most notably, the use of stilt architecture, canoes, man-made islets, and an innovative fish-farming technique called acadja, all demonstrate the adaptability and ingenuity that people can develop with finite resources and under extreme threat.

The village’s location also demonstrates a fascinating dynamic between juxtaposing urban environs and varying natural landscapes, all while facing issues of rising sea levels, increased water salinisation, water toxicity, deforestation, over population and tourism. The implications of such social, economic and ecological pitfalls have put pressure on the Tofinu to shift their way of life while endangering their distinct heritage. Ultimately, these conflicts question the critical roles that conservation and advocacy can play in connecting the Tofinu community to vital resources and in catalysing a sense of urgency to begin reversing existing trends towards a seemingly fixed demise.

History Of Resilience

Ganvié sits at the nucleus of the West African, Trans-Atlantic slave trade route where an entire swath of coastal villages along the Bight of Benin at the southernmost point were preyed upon for slave capture in the early 18th century. For centuries, Portuguese, French, English and Dutch colonialists championed the slave trade network and worked with local kings and tribes to capture entire villages for shipment to the New World, especially as sugar plantations increased in popularity throughout several parts of the world, like Brazil. Benin, previously known as Dahomey in its pre-French colonial existence, was at the centre of the coastal region also known as the ‘Slave Coast’. This area of West Africa served as the main port for slave trade where, over the course of 300 years, 12 million Africans were enslaved and taken to the West. While much scholarship has been done on the Atlantic slave trade, there exists very little research and understanding into the internal resistance to imprisonment, making it seem as though resistance occurred only after capture. The ability of local fishing villages to resist slave capture over the course of hundreds of years and eventually end up in surrounding waters is something worth studying further and is certainly nothing short of a phenomenon.

According to oral tradition, it was the Aja-Tado cultural group that sought refuge by moving directly into the northern waters of Lake Nokoué, a brackish coastal lagoon only a few miles away from the Atlantic Ocean along the Gulf of Guinea. The choice made by groups comprising various ethnic and cultural fishing villages to ‘consciously mix’ and evade capture by migrating to water was certainly deliberate and ingenious. At the time, the Dahomey King enlisted the surrounding land-based Fon tribe to violently capture villages for slavery. Tradition dictates that the water was deemed spiritually taboo to the Fon due to the belief in the existence of a great water serpent inhabiting the lake. John Kistler learned from his visit to Ganvié that the Fon carried a superstitious fear of combat in the water, believing that their gods would only protect them on land. Besides, there existed an impracticality for attack by a tribe ill-equipped and inexperienced with the lake’s waters. Thus the Aja-Tado stayed in the Northwestern part of Lake Nokoué and became the Tofinu people, meaning ‘Men of Water’, and a rich community immersed in the history and traditions of their endurance was built. The village’s name itself translates to ‘safe at last’. Today, more than 25,000 people inhabit a dense sprawl of stilt buildings and fish farms that has come to be known as The Venice of Africa.

By looking at the village of Ganvié, we begin to understand the resilience of a community over centuries

The Men Of Water

The water village is an oxymoron by virtue. Water as an element is constantly shifting and often transient in nature while a village typically represents land, settlement and permanence. The phenomenon of Ganvié as a lacustrine village challenges the notion that water and land cannot act alike. More so, it is a physical representation of strength and adaptation by its inhabitants over time.

The village comprises of distinct elements that allow for life on water while also following similar traditions to those of the land-based. The Tofinu live in habitat palafitte, homes built on stilts at the edge of the lake or directly in lake waters. According to Ganvié scholar, Elisée Soumonni, the houses are planned in such a way as to accommodate both human beings and animals – the latter moving from the bottom level to the top during a flood, while the former remain in the middle. Man-made islands created by packing earth into enclosures made from vertical branches stuck into the mud, provide spaces for agriculture, livestock and recreation.

The main source of transportation is the pirogue, a thick wooden canoe carved from a single tree-trunk that is often passed down from father to son. The hand-carved boats are long and narrow, sometimes carrying up to ten people or loads of heavy supplies. It’s worth noting that only a few tourist boats use a motor while everyone else uses oars or poles to move the pirogue. The pirogues serve as the platform from which to conduct business, such as floating markets with boats, side by side, each selling different products. In Ganvié, the men are in charge of getting fish while the women are in charge of selling fish and other commodities throughout the village and to surrounding communities.

The acadja, a fish-farming technique used for centuries by the Tofinu, is the main source of subsistence and economy throughout the village. Branches from local forests are harvested and placed vertically into the lake’s mud to create enclosures that enhance fish production by creating additional nutriment for the development of plants and animals upon which the fish will feed. The common species harvested through this method is the Blackchin tilapia, native to West Africa. Men then use netting and cages to gather the fish after months of rapid breeding and growth within the artificial underwater paddock. In a surprisingly agricultural approach, the shape and size of the fish refuges are determined by those of the family’s ancestry – like land, the acadja plot is passed down from generation to generation.

Contemporary Threats

Living in isolation from accessible modern infrastructure, the Tofinu rely on an emerging tourist industry and the residents of nearby Cotonou, Benin’s largest city, in order to sell fish and exchange other goods. However, it is development from this city that has added to the imposing challenges threatening the strength of the village. In 1959, the City of Cotonou decided to build a port, eliminating a natural sandbar that kept salt water from the ocean at bay. Now, with rising sea levels, the water’s salt content is increasing at a rapid rate. In an ironic twist, water scarcity is an issue.

Residents must rely on a generator-powered pump that lifts water from a well deep underground into a large tap that fills bucket after bucket with water. According to one visitor, the water pump is busy from sun-up to sundown. Ganvié’s isolation, while allowing for self-sufficiency and preservation in many ways, creates issues of basic human needs. Benin still imposes taxes on a community that does not have easy access to modern infrastructure like electricity, potable water, service roads and waste systems, ultimately leaving the Tofinu to feel neglected and abandoned.

The village is undeniably at the epicentre of natural and man-made conflicts with these issues of rising sea levels, increased water salinisation, pesticide run off from nearby agricultural sites, nationally sanctioned deforestation and over population occurring all at once. Many of these environmental problems have become a source of heavy metal and human waste contamination in the lake waters. Fish species in Lake Nokoué’s waters show evidence of strong cadmium and lead contents, leading scientists to recommend the regular monitoring of pollution. The confounding threats imposed on the Tofinu demonstrate the direct impacts on their livelihood, questioning the need for intervention by outside conservationists, environmentalists, advocates and policy makers. Whose responsibility, as a community, nation, continent and people, is it to act? Is a community ripe with undeniable heritage and tenacity meant to slowly decay from the onslaught of tourism, poor living conditions and an expiring ecosystem?

The Venice Of Africa

Ganvié’s presence as the ‘Venice of Africa’ has become associated with a growing tourism industry that relies on the romanticisation of the lake village and its inhabitants. A floating hotel and restaurant, as well as gift shops and motorboats have popped up to accommodate the increase in visitors, all while the Tofinu live with no roads, virtually no vehicles and very little electricity. That being said, this seemingly shantytown existence has been embraced by the Western travel industry. One journalist urges potential tourists who want to visit the lake village to “head back to the colonial past, via your privately booked (and slightly ramshackle) train… the charm is in the decay.” But one must ask, how do we perceive Ganvié, if only through a western lens? Does any profit from tourism supersede the cycle of exploitation when celebrating the degeneration and deficiency of a community?

While little scholarly work has been done to understand the complex history of Ganvié, information surrounding the daily rituals and local industries must rely heavily on stringing together piecemealed details from newspaper articles, travel journals and first-hand accounts from tourists over the years. The lack of comprehensive data limits our understanding of Tofinu and Ganvié as a whole, ultimately reinforcing a superficially Western and touristic perspective of the village as a quaint and unaffected society. As a result of this distorted appreciation, is it possible that the industry of tourism as it functions now and the adjoining narrow perception of Ganvié act as barriers to resources for the Tofinu people in the wake of obliteration?

The choice made by groups comprising various ethnic and cultural fishing villages to ‘consciously mix’ and evade capture by migrating to water was certainly deliberate and ingenious

A Conduit Of Change

The continuously evolving role of the conservationist strives to recognise, educate and champion a remarkable tradition of both tangible and intangible nature. Why not consider that of Ganvié? Perhaps the start of reversing dangerous trends relies on the simple act of acknowledgement, understanding and empathy for a people and culture that have survived seemingly insurmountable obstacles and blatant attempts at eradication.

When problems of housing and infrastructure are at the centre of a transforming landscape, the conservationist can thus become another conduit of change. By connecting the very community, advocates, public servants and even tourists through a deeper understanding of a people, you may have the potential to preserve a phenomenon of sheer human will and perseverance. As Elisée Soumonni writes, “It would be a pity if the descendants of the refugees who survived the trials of the era of slave trade were allowed to slowly but surely die, isolated in their historical refuge.”