A water village

Today we went to visit Nzuelo a water village. We had another two hour bus ride to get to the area and then we all put on life jackets and walked to the river where there were several canoes. They loaded the canoes up with sometimes eight people and the water level was about one inch below the top of the canoe. The canoe operator pushed with a long stick through a man made canal that took us into the river and then he paddled to the village, which is built on stilts in the water. It took over an hour to get to the village and it was sunny, hot and humid. It was difficult to sit still for so long and all of us had sore butts. When we got to the village we climbed up a ladder to get out of the canoe. There were wood planks on the floor and some areas were round bamboo sticks to walk on which felt pretty unsteady. These people did not want us to take pictures of them unless we paid to do so. I did not pay so do not have any pictures, but others took lots of pictures. One thing I noticed about the little children was they do not smile. Even if someone took their picture and showed them on the camera they did not smile. When we got to the school room then those children would smile and were very animated. It is a fairly new thing for them to have white people visit and so they were very curious about us. Some of the students brought them pens and pencils and then they were very happy.

We met with the son of the chief and he told us about their history of living on the water. He said that they are not from Ghana but rather ran away from Mali because there were warriors there that wanted them to fight and they are a peaceful people.

After about 45 minutes of visiting we got back in the canoes for the trip back to our starting point. There was a student with us that had too much to drink last night and was feeling ill because of the heat and humidity. They put her in a special canoe and fast tracked back to the starting point so they could get some water into her. Consequently my canoe was the last one back and the lady sitting behind me stood up before it was her turn to get off and lost her balance and fell into the water. She got wet from head to foot. I had brought a hand towel from the ship, so I gave her that to dry off with.

We then walked across the street to a hotel for lunch. This hotel was situated right on the Atlantic Ocean and there was a nice breeze blowing, so it was nice to sit there under the thatched roofs and cool off while we ate. Some people walked along the beach to an old fort and the bus picked us up there.