Fete de la Gani

On Friday the 6th of March my friend, Eddie Wong (the ship's baker) and I traveled to the small town of Nikki in the north of Benin to attend the annual Fete de la Gani. The Fete de la Gani is a week-long festival where the kings of neighboring Bariba kingdoms, some from northern Nigeria, come to Nikki where the most powerful and esteemed king in the region resides. My interest in this festival was peaked after reading about it in a travel guide on Benin and I thought it would be a great opportunity to get some unusual photos. Trying to pin down the date of the biggest day of the festival was no small task, though. After asking multiple people who knew folks in northeast Benin, I got different answers, but finally got the confirmation that I needed close to the day we had to leave. It was supposed to all kick off at around 7am on Saturday the 7th and we had made arrangements to take the 7 hour public bus ride to Parakou on Friday, leaving at 6am, and stay the night in Parakou on the SIM mission compound. It was all rather remarkable that we had been able to arrange that much. Our plan was to arrange for a before-sunrise (2-3 hour) Saturday morning taxi ride to Nikki once we arrived in Parakou. Well, we arrived in Parakou at around 2pm on Friday. The ride was very nice, actually. The Chinese-made bus was air-conditioned, at least until the a/c broke 3/4 of the way to Parakou and on the bus each person was allotted one seat. On the bus we watched videos of Muslim music from Niger and watched a very bad television soap opera apparently made in an English-speaking African country and dubbed into French. Our single rest stop on the trip was very interesting indeed! We stopped in the town of Bohicon and were greeted by a mob of people with baskets on their heads or carrying trays of snacks and a hundred other things for sale to help you on your journey. Among the items for sale were barbecued hindquarters of some strange opossum-sized animal with a long tail that, if I could hazard a guess, might have been cane rat that I have heard is commonly on the menu here. The restroom was an interesting experience too. It basically amounted to a couple of large trees right in the center of the bustling dirt thoroughfare. The trees had obviously been used well and nobody seemed to mind at all that there was no modesty really possible about using them. So we just took care of our business there in the middle of town and made our way back to the bus.

Once we arrived in Parakou, we needed to get across town to the SIM base, so we took the only available form of transportation and hopped on the back of a couple of zemidjans and took a hair-raising motorcycle trip through the busy market center of town. Safely at our intended place of lodging, we met the very pleasant Swiss couple there and checked in. Later that afternoon we began asking questions about transport to Nikki very early on Saturday morning. It began to become apparent that arranging for a taxi ride that early on the big day of the festival might not be possible. Very fortunately for us there was a missionary who lives in Nikki that had been away for some months that had just arrived back in Parakou and would be staying there for a few days. She very kindly offered for us to sleep at her place in Nikki, not being sure what the condition of the place would be when we arrived or if there would be anything to sleep on. We very enthusiastically accepted her offer and hurried off to the taxi station on yet another pair of zemis in an attempt to get out of town before dark. The approaching darkness was not comforting, especially for me carrying lots of camera gear. We arrived at the taxi station in the center of Parakou with a local man from the mission and were able to secure a taxi ride after about 30 minutes of loud, passionate arguing and moving us and our bags from one very well worn taxi to another and our money from one taxi driver to another. I didn't understand what was being said, but we just waited and hoped that everything would get sorted out eventually. Eventually it did and the two of us were on our way just before sunset in a compact, 80's model, 5 seat Peugeot, with 8 other people and a trunk bulging with baggage and live chickens! We had paid for 3 seats (CFA 7,500 or $15) as the taxi drivers had said they normally put four adults across the front including the driver, so it was just the driver, Eddie and me in the front. We got gas out of a jar at the local fuel stop and headed out. The road half way to N'Dali was paved, but full of potholes, many of which we hit at a higher rate of speed than I would have liked, sitting on the hump between the driver and passenger seat. We stopped in N'Dali for more snacks pushed out of the darkness in through the car windows by street vendors. There and every other time we stopped, Eddie and I took the opportunity to get out and get the blood flowing in our legs again. From N'Dali the road became a dirt track with quite a few concrete humps here and there that our driver would almost always skid into after having locked up the brakes on the washboard dirt road. He usually found the best spot to go over, but would still frequently drag the bottom of the loaded down vehicle on the concrete. It was a bit disconcerting that he frequently hung his head out the window to look at the front wheel and smack his gums as if to say, "Darn, maybe I hit that one a little too hard." Well after about 2 and a half hours of riding in what felt like a sardine can being drug by a horse, we arrived in Nikki amidst a mob of people. We had no idea where the house that we were headed to was, but we found a couple of zemidjan drivers who thought they knew and so we were off on our first after dark zemi ride down the dirt streets of the remote town of Nikki dodging people, goats, and other zemis on our way. Once there, we were very warmly greeted by the girls' school teachers and students. There was no electricity at the house, but there were mattresses on the floor and filtered water. In our minds, nothing could be finer. We were happy as clams! Eddie said we probably could just turn around and go back home at that point and it would have been a good trip. We didn't sleep much that night because of all the noises we weren't used to: the beeping sound of bats, goats running around outside the house and squealing in the night, chickens in the yard, music from the festivities in town, and early morning Muslim call to prayer. Even so, we had plenty of rest and arrived at the Fete de la Gani plenty early in the morning. We watched the traditional dances that took place in field in front of the royal palace. There were lots of horses later in the day with riding displays in front of the palace, the blowing of the kankangui trumpets, passing out of money and cloth to the trumpet bearers, paying homage to the king of Nikki, the arrival of dignitaries and sacrificed goats brought to them, the parade of the king of Nikki through the streets of the town. That's the king of Nikki in the pink robe and white-rimmed sunglasses in the photo above. Equally impressive were the people who came to witness the festival. Many of the women had painted, if not tattooed, faces and beautiful clothing, jewelry, and other adornments. I regret that I had no way to capture any sound as the sounds of the festival were also very interesting. Eddie and I had gotten very used to sweating, as there was hardly ever a time since leaving the ship when we didn't, so sitting in the heat was not unbearable. It was really hot, though, and we were thankful to have some shade for most of the day. We had a wonderful African meal prepared by one of the teachers at the school that evening and returned to the festival for the early part of the day on Sunday. Sunday included groups of rulers walking toward the royal palace and lying prostrate on the ground, some groups only once, others multiple times as they approached the palace. The imam from the region also came to the door of the palace and said a few words there. Later in the afternoon, we said goodbye to the folks at the girls' school and caught a taxi back to Parakou. This time we only paid for our two seats and, sure enough, we had 4 people in the front, along with 4 adults and 3 children in the back, for a total of 11 this time! The guy next to the driver had one foot in our floor and one in the driver's floor, straddling the gear shift. Eddie said he would not want to be that guy because when it came time for the driver to shift into 4th, that was a little too close for comfort! I agreed. We had a great time, despite our physical discomfort, talking about the taxi ride. It was quite an experience! We secured our bus tickets when we arrived back in Parakou. We spent the night Sunday at SIM in Parakou and had a great spaghetti supper there. Monday morning we returned to Cotonou by bus. The festival had been like stepping back in time and the trip there and back was no less incredible. I am very grateful to God for keeping us safe and to all those who helped us along the way especially the folks at SIM.

John