Our Boat Ride Through the Stilt Village of Gonvie (or, We Go Sightseeing and Cause a Village Riot).

Friday morning we wake in a Coutounou brothel decorated with brightly painted walls and 70’s-era decour, waking in mid-morning with three or four of us packed to a room. For a change we have the entire day spread ahead of us like a blank canvas- no borders to cross and nothing really to do until that evening, when we are to appear again at the Festival, this time as the headliners. Over a leisurely breakfast of egg sandwiches and Nescafe in a third floor patio that overlooks the alleyway and trash heap next to the brothel, we decide that acting like tourists and taking in some sights would be a good idea. Lara has heard about the village of Gonvie- where in the 1700’s a local tribe was at war with another whose warriors feared water because they believed their ancestors lived in it. The tribe moved their entire village to the middle of a lake, where, resting on stilts, it still survives today. We pile in the bus and motor out of the city looking for excitement and good photo ops, except for Christopher, the only true French speaker among us, who leaves to visit his friend and will meet us later at the festival.

Finding our way to Gonvie, supposedly just a short drive from Coutounou, is a little like stumbling through a maze in pitch darkness looking for an exit by feeling your way around the walls. We drive down what we think is the main road out of town and pull over as Bongo leans out the door and barks questions in what sounds like passable French to random passerby, then take off down another road, and repeat it all over again. This continues three or four times until we’re all getting more annoyed than tourists on a relaxing day trip are supposed to be. “Bongo”, Lara yells after Bongo points us in yet another direction, “where the hell are we going?” “Yes” Bongo replies. “We are going to the village. This man knows the way and we will go there.”

Finally someone on a moto scooter takes pity on us (and smells an opportunity to make a few bucks off a busload of tourists), and says he will guide us the rest of the way there, and Bongo hops on the back of his moto as Chambas glides our bus out of the city and onto a dirt road that leads through fields that grow more swampy as we go. Finally we pull up in the dusty square of a tiny village on the edge of a swampy canal and file out of the bus. The man who led us here is now speaking to Bongo in French about taking us all in a boat through the stilt village, and Bongo turns to me and translates.

“He says we can all take the tour through the village for 500 cifa (which is what everyone here calls CFA- Central Franc Africaine- the currency of Benin and Togo and the rest of French Africa) each,” Bongo says. 500 CFA is about a dollar, which, even for Africa, seems like a very good deal for an afternoon of enjoying another culture’s bizarre habitat from the exotic vantage point of a long, beat-up motorboat with a crude wooden awning in the middle of it. Such a good deal, in fact, that none of us really stop to question it and we even bypass the haggling that is de riguer for anything in Africa and instead file one by one onto the boat, all 19 of us.

            We’re off, and as the boat glides through a grassy canal Bongo translates as one of the guides tells us about the village we are about to see, about how it has been a fishing village for years but is now growing and changing to accommodate the many tourists who come for a look. As we start to see wooden shacks propped up on long wooden sticks he tells us of how the houses are built, and how the village has a school, and a mosque, and some stores that are all built on shallow sand bars that pop up here and there out of the swampy lake. Lara asks if the local people do not like their pictures taken because they think the cameras will steal their souls. The guide replies that it is actually because people here do not want tourists making money off their picture. We dock and walk inside a store selling trinkets and see two monkeys chained to a fence outside on the ground. We take pictures of the huge, concrete mosque that rises like an iceburg from the water and crude shacks around it. We hit open water with passageways hacked out of the swamp and our guide points down one waterway and tells us we can get to Nigeria that way, but there are boats with soldiers in them so it is better to go by road.

            Finally we are heading in what seems like a circle, drawing nearer to dusty village square where we arrived. The motor stops, and the guide explains that it is better to handle the money now, otherwise people back in the village will see us giving money out and they will want some too. This sounds like a classic set up line, but at the moment we are 19 strong and they are 3, and anyway we only owe them the equivalent of about 20 bucks, so I reach inside my right pants pocket where the band money resides and pull out a 10,000 CFA note. I hand it to the guide.

“Merci”, I say, with a big smile. “Magnifique.” I have now used up half my French.  

He looks at me a little quizzically. “Por deux”, he says, flashing two fingers and motioning to me and Lara, who sits next to me in the front of the boat.

“No”, I say, “por….um, all”, motioning down the length of the boat. I ask Bongo what is going on, even though my stomach is beginning to feel sick because I can already tell.  Bongo argues in French, sounding more aggressive and assertive.  

“Monsieur, cinq mille! Cinq mille!” Bongo yells at the guide, pounding his fist for emphasis.

“Cinq Mille!” the guide echoes, his voice rising.

We are approaching the shore, our bright green bus gleaming right where we left it an hour or two ago.

“Bongo!” I yell, “Mille means a thousand!”

“Yes!” Bongo replies, and Lara will later swear to me and everyone else that in this second Bongo’s brow eased and his jaw dropped and he immediately began berating the guide with cries of “Cinq sens! Cinq sens!”, ignoring the fact that he had confused five thousand for five hundred. At the moment I notice none of this though, realizing only that we have agreed to pay about ten dollars each for this ride, which comes out to about 200 dollars- an unheard of sum in Africa and astronomically more than we ever would have agreed to pay if we had known what was being talked about (not to mention exponentially more than what our dwindling cash supply could support). I also notice the shore, and with it a whole village of men no doubt aligned with our three guides, who are even now shuffling down towards the water to meet us, the shouting between Bongo and the guides carrying over the water and informing the whole village of our dispute with the subtlety of an air raid siren.

            The boat glides up on the beach and we hop out awkwardly, one by one. Bongo and the guides are still yelling at one another and gesturing violently; some of the village men have surrounded them as they walk and are joining in, yelling and pointing. We make our way up the beach and towards the bus, wondering what to do, scanning the growing crowd of village faces for anyone sympathetic or at least English-speaking.

            “Keep going,” says Panji. “Everyone get into the bus.”

            A crowd has gathered. Mostly it’s men who are standing around, joining the argument or standing in a circle around Bongo, who is locked in a furious shouting match with our head guide, but also women and children who crowd around to see what the growing chaos is all about. Most of us file onto the bus, but I linger for a few moments outside the door, next to Alex, feeling strange running away from these African villagers and into my big bus full of white people.

            I find one of the other guides in the crowd, and touch his arm. “Monsier” I say, as politely as possible. “Cinq sens.”

            “Je ne parl pa Anglais!” he shouts at me, and turns his back.

            Things are getting more heated. There is a lot of shouting among the villagers. Alex is standing around, and so is Chambas and his crew- Sharrif and Mohammed and the old guy. I join the rest of the band on the bus. We nervously watch the crowd out the windows, as Bongo yells and storms away, then turns around and yells again.

            Some of the villagers are hauling big blocks of concrete and dropping them in back of the bus. We’re blocked in. I see one of the guides drag a ship’s anchor from the shore to the concrete pile in back of the bus. David suggests we play music, so they can see us as human beings, musicians, instead of just greedy white people who are trying to get away for free. Jason and I shake our heads, “yeah, right, that’ll work” we mutter, but I don’t have any other ideas at the moment and the situation outside is getting chaotic. Chambas paces the ground and yells angrily at no one in particular- now that the villagers have piled concrete and a ship’s anchor in back of his bus this is his problem too. Zach darts out of the bus and follows Chambas like a shadow. “Chambas! Chambas, no!” he yells, and I flash back to the meeting with Chambas back in our house in Accra the night we met him on our second floor porch, Zach hastily scribbling “No gunfights” on our handwritten contract with him as soon as Chambas proudly boasted of the gun he always carries on his right hip.

            Todd, Liz and Kevin get their horns out and head into the crowd, followed by Maya and Lara. They sing a little of Fela’s “Water No Get Enemy”, but even though a few of the villagers- women who are there because it is what is happening in the village at the moment- start dancing and singing along I think the irony is lost. I don’t know what to do. Maybe this is just harmless agitation all around- the kind that has you shouting back and forth with someone when all you’re trying to do is ask directions to an Internet café- or maybe it’s something deeper and could spiral into violence. Right now it seems it could go either way, and from the looks of Chambas, who is stalking the ground, glowering at the villagers, yelling and pointing at them to move the concrete pile from in back of his bus while Zach trails him yelling “Chambas! No gunshots!” I don’t want to wait too much longer to find out.

            I dart out of the bus, find Alex, whose huge arms and calm demeanor make him the closet thing to a bodyguard we have, and corner the lead guide away from the crowd.

            “Monseur,” I begin.

            “Je na parl pa Anglais!” he retorts, angrily, and turns away. I look for Bongo but he has stalked into the bus and is sitting in the front passenger seat, arms folded, a look of disgust on his face. I motion to the guide to follow me and Alex into the bus so Bongo can translate.

            “Non!” the guide shouts when he sees Bongo, and he storms off into the crowd.

            Lara, David and Nicole start picking up blocks of concrete from the pile in back of the bus and moving them to the side. The villagers pick them up and put them back on the pile. Lara gets in a tug of war with one man over the concrete block she is trying to move, it drops and almost hits her foot. She freaks out- pulling money from her pockets and stuffing it in her mouth in front of the villagers, as if to say “You want money? Here is money! I’ll show you money! I want money too!” The villagers are confused. So are we.

            I comb the crowd again, determined to find the guide and convinced that he is our only key to getting out of here without things getting further out of hand. I find him and motion for him to follow me. He looks annoyed, but follows me to the bus door. We make hand gestures, me holding up fingers for how much he wants, him shaking his head. I am desperate for some sort of good faith communication, something to show him we’re not all bad, that we’re trying, that he can tell his friends to move the pile of concrete from the back of his bus.

After a couple minutes of back and forth, the guide points to me, and gives me the thumbs up sign. Then he points to Bongo, who is now wandering around the crowd as if sulking, and angrily gives the thumbs down. I feel like we are getting somewhere, and motion for him to come inside the bus. “Non!” he says. “No parl pa anglais!”

            “I know, I know!” I shout back. “Don’t worry, hang on.” I grab my notebook and a pen and sit on the front seat. He stands on the doorway, eyeing me curiously. I write “95,000” on a blank page, hold it up, and point to him. He brightens and nods, as if this whole thing was only because we didn’t understand how much they wanted. I cross it out, write “9500” and point to me. He frowns and shakes his head.

            “OK, ok”, I nod, and write “20,000” on another page. He frowns again and shakes his head, though I convince myself that it’s a little less vigorous of a refusal, and that it means I am a master negotiator skilled in the art of the African Deal. Like a master, I stand up, acting pissed off and angry, and slam the notebook down into the seat. I throw my hands up in frustration and stalk back into the bus. I have seen Africans do this many times, and am convinced I have it down pat. I turn around and he is gone, back into the crowd somewhere, leaving me to my fantasies in the bus. Alex is watching the whole thing. “Whoops”, I say.

I dart out of the bus and find him again. Everyone in our group is now yelling, in English, and many of the villagers are yelling back, in French. Chambas is still pacing and glowering, Zach still pleading. The guide reluctantly follows me again.

            I grab the notebook, and scrawl “30,000” in big letters. He shakes his head. “Come on!” I say. “We have to work this out! You have to tell them to let us go!” He yells back at me, in French, and if he isn’t telling me that you crazy mixed up white people agreed to go on our boat ride and now you don’t want to pay us he might as well be. I have no idea at the moment if we’re being ripped off and the whole village is in on the scam- tell the white people one thing to get them into the boat, then make them think there’s been a miscommunication and get more money out of them- or if Bongo didn’t translate right in the first place. I am leaning toward the latter, as the guide, all things considered, does not seem like such a thug really, he seems more like an honest boat guide trying to make a living, and anyway, why would they only charge us a dollar each for such a boat ride? But of course I don’t know, and I only do know that we need to get out of here.

            I write 35,000 on the notebook. “That’s it!” I say, throwing up my hands. “No more!” He shrugs. He looks around, considering this notebook, this white man in front of him. I offer to shake his hand to seal the deal. Reluctantly, he extends his hand. “You have to tell them” I begin to say, but I have scarcely finished my sentence and fished 25,000 more CFA out of my pocket when he is gone, and somehow the whole crowd is breaking up. Men are moving the concrete blocks. Someone drags the ship’s anchor back toward the shore. We all file back on the bus, the word getting around quickly that we can leave. Chambas fires up the bus and yells “Mr. Zack! Can we go now?” I am hit by a wave of remorse for the boat guide and his men, for the village, for the state of race relations on planet Earth. I have an uncontrollable urge to apologize to the guide, my friend, for the way things got out of hand. Surely he understands me now, and knows we’re not all bad, I tell myself.

I ask Bongo, who sits in the front, how to say sorry in French.

“You don’t need to say sorry to these people!” he explodes. “They are thieves! You do not need to say sorry to them!”

“Bongo!” Alex shouts. “He is asking you a question!” Alex never yells.

Bongo hesitates, his arms folded in disgust. He looks out the window. “Pardon” he mutters softly.

I stick my head out the bus door, scanning the crowd for my friend, but we are moving. The crowd is thinning, people shuffling off, and I can’t see the guide anywhere, just the dust kicked up by our bus and the village receeding into the distance as we drive away.