The elephant ear of Africa stretched endlessly to our north through deserts and
rubble. A young Fon by the name of Mathieu was at the tiller of our small
outboard; he was an entrepreneur of the sort Africa's economic future
desperately depends, and had proposed the trip to us with a hand lettered
brochure on which he had painstakingly illustrated the boat trip's highlights.
The Mono, sleek with the ripples of the morning's southwesterly wind, slipped
beneath us to the hum of the outboard and the whisper of the morning breeze.
As our low craft slipped through wooded islets it was hard not to appreciate
the tenacity of the river's march towards the rumpled Atlantic. The river's
course widened appreciably in our descent: low villages of concrete and adobe
huts watched us from the river's edge, children splashed each other in the warm
water, and men strained to push their wooden craft in, laden with nets...
With the exception of the mighty Niger River, which unwinds in a broad, silver
arc from the depths of the continent, West Africa's rivers run single-mindedly
towards the coastline in courses the colonial boundaries would eventually come
to parallel. Each one provided a natural target for Africa's own settlements
and the European ones that would then accompany - or supplant
- them, and have remained the continent's principle transport corridors through
the present.
Slipping down the Mono River in a small boat felt like riding the coat tails of
history. The elephant ear of Africa stretched endlessly to our north through
deserts and rubble. A young Fon by the name of Mathieu was at the tiller of our
small outboard; he was an entrepreneur of the sort Africa's economic future
desperately depends, and had proposed the trip to us with a hand lettered
brochure on which he had painstakingly illustrated the boat trip's highlights.
The Mono, sleek with the ripples of the morning's southwesterly wind, slipped
beneath us to the hum of the outboard and the whisper of the morning breeze.
As our low craft slipped through wooded islets it was hard not to appreciate
the tenacity of the river's march towards the rumpled Atlantic. The river's
course widened appreciably in our descent: low villages of concrete and adobe
huts watched us from the river's edge, children splashed each other in the warm
water, and men strained to push their wooden craft in, laden with nets. The
morning sun's vertical track melted the shadows: the water's surface took on a
shine and later, a glare. The ocean was never far away, as the Mono in its
last stretch turns eastward and runs along the coast. There, the wooded south
shore of the river turned shrubby and then dissolved to sand, in dunes that
obstructed our view of the ocean but not the sound of thumping waves beyond
them.
We passed the ruins of the old French colonial settlement of Gran Popo, built
in the 16th century and doomed by a shifting river channel and the steady
encroachment of the ocean: what was once well inland was now half buried in
sand dunes, and easily within the hungry reach of storm surf. Not far beyond,
the Beninese had built an impressive temple to the Vaudoun ("voodoo")
religion, with a call to worship - "Vaudoun for peace and well being"
- that was hard to disdain.
After an hour, we reached the mouth of the river, the end of the Mono. The so
called "Bouche du Roi" ("mouth of the king") was
tumultuous, as the river water concluded its journey in the face of a rising
tide that bucked it into chaos. Mathieu pulled us into a pool carved by the
current, and we disembarked to watch the river and ocean battle for a while.
Beside us, a Beninese, immersed to his thighs in the river, cast a weighted
throw-net, lariat-like, into the waters. With the exception of the outboard
motor, the scene could as easily have been part of the 16th century.
We returned that afternoon, sunburned and happy, to our hotel: a French-owned
auberge of lovely, thatch-roofed huts set on a grassy lawn. Its reception
office was at one time the colonial customs building and some of the rooms are
set in what was once the office of the commander, an stately building
surrounded by pines. Meanwhile, the Mono, eased by a falling tide, continued
to pour out the heart of Africa, sleek and timeless under the tropical sun and
the lengthening shadows of history.
