Cotonou, Benin

New-to-us port #29.

The authorities were on time today. Yay!

Today we did another ship’s tour. There were three buses doing the 5½-hour tour, which was simply named “COO-003 Porto-Novo.” All three buses pretty much traveled as a convoy. No police escort, however. None was really needed as traffic flowed smoothly.

Cotonou — which means "by the river of death” in the Fon language — is not the capital of Benin. But it is the largest city and the seat of government. That explains why we saw so many embassies as we drove through the city on our way to Porto-Novo.

Before we left Cotonou, we were taken to a beautiful park near the very modern Congress Palace. Here we saw the “Benin Amazone.” This is a 30m high statue that was sculpted by a Chinese artist. Our guide said that it is plated with bronze, but otherwise hollow. The statue was installed in 2022 to honor the warrior women of the Kingdom of Dahomey, of which Benin was once the center. The French colonial forces called these fierce, and sometimes cruel, warrior women the “Amazons du Dahomey.” Hence the name by which the statue is known.

A meandering drive through Cotonou eventually took us to the highway … with a separate lane for what our guide said were motorbike taxis and other two-wheeled vehicles. With a yellow-shirted driver at the helm, these taxis carried everything from people — sometimes more than one — to heavy loads.

The tour description gave the drive to Porto-Novo as 1½ hours each way. Glimpses into daily life along the way — shops and shacks and markets doing brisk business — kept us entertained. Something interesting that we saw in the roadside stands … bottles filled with a yellow liquid. No, not what you think. It was gas ... stolen or purchased illegally from neighboring Nigeria at prices less than the current market rates. This gas is sold mostly to the motorcyclists, though some car drivers also use these “gas stations.”

Porto-Novo, the country’s capital, is located on an inlet of the Gulf of Guinea. Our guide explained that the settlement was developed as the port for the transatlantic slave trade. As an older city, its roads were not built for the modern bus conveyances of today. Add to that the crowds of people going about daily life on a Saturday. Well, it was slow going to get to our destination.

Musée Honmé Palais Royal — aka the Palace of King Toffa —is a royal-residence-turned-museum … a museum of ethnography that takes visitors back in history to see how royalty lived in Benin in the 19th century.

We arrived at the museum around 11:00a to find drums beating … dancers shuffling in the dirt. A man was climbing to the very top of a pair of very tall stilts, performing acrobatic feats. The party had started before we arrived … with a crowd of locals perched atop the surrounding wall and standing along it.

The next phase of our visit to the museum took us inside. The description from Oceania mentioned a rich collection of artifacts and an extensive mask collection. Unfortunately, the guide misunderstood and directed us to the guided tour of the palace so we didn’t see any of them.

The tour took us inside the palace to a small sunken courtyard. If I remember correctly, it was the private space of one of the king’s many wives. The guide began to tell us about the space, but every other sentence was a caution to those who insisted on taking photos when we’d been told quite clearly at the outset that this was a private place and no photos were allowed.

The tour continued through a series of small doors that required bending over to get through them. There were also a number of steps of uneven risers at each door. We walked through courtyards similar to the first one, including a larger one that was described as the king’s space. These courtyards were rimmed with rooms, but they were locked so we didn’t get to see what was inside … if there was anything. One room was labeled the “Dark Room,” and was described by the guide as where the king would have gone in shame to commit suicide in the event he lost a war or he somehow lost his honor. The only room that was open held a bust of the king and the tomb where he is buried.

The best part of the whole tour was the “Gęlędę.” This is a public display of the Yoruba people … a ritual mask dance that is designed to not just amuse the audience, but to educate and inspire them as well. We were told that it celebrates “mothers,” including female ancestors and deities, and the elderly women living in the community.

Before leaving Porto-Novo, the bus took us by a monument to a woman who gave birth to 9 sets of twins. Turns out that twins are revered in the traditional culture. Then we stopped by the Grand Mosque of Porto-Novo … currently undergoing much-needed restoration, though it is apparently open for prayers. We were not allowed to go inside the mosque, but the exterior surely was like no other mosque that I have ever seen. Built between 1912-1935, it is considered to be in the Afro-Brazilian style, it looked very much like a cathedral. As I understand it, the building was modeled after the cathedral in Bahia de Salvador in Brazil.

The return trip to Cotonou was uneventful. We were back on the ship at 2:00p. Not the best tour, but we got glimpses into daily life and insight into the culture of the country. That is always a good thing.Read more