Day #13 – Started :
Houeda Ended:
Kpankou Distance
Covered: 105 km
Day #14 – Started :
Kpankou Ended:
Save Distance
Covered: 95 km
Highlights
- Industrial areas
- Oro
- Fulani cattle herders
- Forests, logging, and fires
- Pepsi!
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| Click on the images below to enlarge |
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Fulani cattle herders are semi-
nomadic people who travel
through much of West Africa by
foot with their cows.
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Bikes sitting outside a secondary
school on the way to Sakete.
Seems like the kids here know
the best way
to travel!
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A cement processing plant just
outside of Ketou
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The past two days have been exhausting, but our team finally completed
a 200 kilometer stretch from the south to the city of Save in the Collines
Department. We had to brave a long length
of busy highway and make our way through an expansive and fairly uncharted
forest, but now we’re finally back in regions where the weather is cool and laundry
can actually dry overnight (humidity has dropped so much!).
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An electrical power sub-station outside of Sakete.
This station helps power traverse several
southern countries in West Africa.
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In traveling between the cities of Sakete and Ketou,
we passed a lot of industrial establishments.
Although it was difficult to discern what many of them were, it was
clear that they had large machinery inside due to the huge power grids found
outside. It’s both surprising and
encouraging to see such large-scale enterprises in Benin; it’s not something that
I’ve seen much of while travelling during my 21 months in Benin, but it shows
that there is substantial economic growth happening somewhere.
Upon reaching Ketou, we weren’t sure exactly what to
expect. Ketou is the center of a region
where voodoo has a powerful influence, and the day following our arrival was
the national day of voodoo celebrations.
This would normally seem like the combination for some interesting encounters,
but it actually turned out to be a cause for a bit of concern for
our group.
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On our way to Ketou, we spotted this house; it has a
cross surrounded with the white flags that symbolize
voodoo. In Benin, voodoo is very compatible with
other religions.
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Near Ketou, a deity known as “Oro” is well respected
and even worshipped by part of the community.
During certain periods of the year, Oro is known to appear in this
region and roam the land accompanied by those initiated into the divinity. Depending on who you ask, you may hear that
the Oro roaming the land is actually the deity himself, or someone serving as a
vessel for the deity. This may sound
like something interesting to see, but it is actually forbidden to the eyes of
those not initiated into the divinity. It’s
said that if a woman sees Oro, she will be killed by him and his followers; and
if an uninitiated man sees him, he must either become initiated or suffer the
same fate.
This all seems like an extremely dangerous situation,
but fortunately those performing the ceremonies do their best to ensure that no
one uninitiated stumbles across Oro by accident. Towns and villages are notified days before
he plans to come out, and they essentially become ghost towns for the week (as
most people in the community board themselves off in their houses). Once Oro does arrive, those accompanying him
leave signs and make as much noise as possible to ward others off when he is
roaming about. Nonetheless, I still hear
that a few people are killed due to Oro each year, so it’s not something to be
taken too lightly.
We were a bit worried that we might have to watch out
for an Oro appearance near Ketou, especially because we were passing by one of
the sacred forests known to be a place of ceremonies devoted to him. But luckily, we learned that Oro is very
respectful of holidays and an outing was not planned for the period we were
there (if he came out, everyone else would stay in and be unable to celebrate
the national day for voodoo).
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Many of the villages we found in the forest
were extremely isolated and basic.
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Once past Ketou we took back roads through fields and
forests that lead from the border of Nigeria to our final destination of
Save. This area is apparently one of the
most dangerous in Benin, as bandits use the roads to make robberies and traffic
goods. Fortunately we didn’t run into
any of these, though we did have some annoying problems with Beninese gendarmes
at roadblocks that wanted to reprimand us for not notifying them that we were
biking on their roads (essentially a power struggle with a military officer that
wanted to feel important – completely ridiculous!).
Seeing as how we were on an adventure through a
“dangerous” forest on little-explored roads, this just prompted a couple of
epic monologues about our metaphorical journey through Mirkwood Forest, though
I’m not sure the rest of the bike team found them quite as amusing as myself (who
isn’t a fan of The Hobbit though?).
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Logging trucks transporting tree
cores out of the forests.
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In reality, the land that we biked through did not
seem too often travelled, though it was quite beautiful. Many of the villages we passed were among the
most rural and isolated that I’ve seen in Benin, and many of the passerby’s we
encountered on the road were not locals, but the semi-nomadic Fulani people who
move cattle throughout much of West Africa.
We saw a lot of forests packed with trees too, but it was clear that
they are being put to the test. Signs of
constant field fires show that young trees face a challenge to reach maturity,
and logging activities are also taking their toll on larger, older trees found
nearby.
It took a while to make it through the forest, since
the distance through them was long and the roads were not always the best. But in the end it was all worth it, because we
found a village that was hidden beside a river that sold one thing none of us
had ever came across in Benin – Pepsi!
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| Coca-Cola is all over Benin, but Pepsi is a rare find. |
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