Ganvié

Ganvié is a village of some thirty thousand people built entirely on stilts in Lake Nokoué, reached only by pirogue from Abomey-Calavi. The Tofinu founded it in the eighteenth century because Fon slave raiders were forbidden by religious law from entering the water, which made the lake the one safe ground available to them. Houses, a school, a church, a mosque and a hotel all stand on poles above the shallows. Trade happens from boat to boat at a floating market, and the villagers farm fish in fenced enclosures of branches called acadja.