“At the end it’s the sea”, on France 5, descends the Ouémé river, to discover Benin

2023-08-16 19:00:11
Fishermen along the Ouémé, Benin’s largest inland river, in François Pécheux’s program, “Au bout c’est la mer”, on France 5. CHRISTELLE LEROUX / STEP BY STEP

FRANCE 5 – WEDNESDAY AUGUST 16 AT 9 PM – DOCUMENTARY

Of the adventurer, he has above all the curiosity. For his penultimate summer issue, François Pécheux proves it once again by descending from north to south, over more than 500 kilometers, the Ouémé, the largest inland river in Benin. With the only certainty: “At the end it’s the sea”. For six seasons, he has been navigating on sight between, on the port side, the concept of this magazine of discovery – the journalist puts himself on the stage, carrying a basin of sand and sharing food and lodging with the natives – and, on starboard, high quality reports on the country visited.

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Also François Pécheux does not hesitate to pay with his own person: even before having found the source of the Ouémé, near Mount Tanéka, he will have thus coughed while smoking a long pipe under the “talking tree”, with a village chief who does not turn 80; he will have drunk water from a well; before being bitten by ants more than a centimeter long and getting on a moped, the preferred means of transport of Beninese.

These adventures, whose lightness can amuse, also allow you to visit a village in northern Benin and rub shoulders with the inhabitants who live there, while Benin emerged, in 2020, from the back of the twenty-five poorest countries. of the planet, and has since continued to recover, with growth of 7.2% in 2021 and 6% in 2022, according to the World Bank.

Great agricultural valley

There is activity 200 kilometers further south, in Ouinhi, where men extract sand from the river before women carry it to the trucks that transport it to town, where it is used as construction material. But while François Pécheux struggles to lift a basin, the Beninese carry an average of 100 per day, paid 5 euros.

Further down the Ouémé, Adjohoun is the largest agricultural valley after that of the Nile. Here again, behind the “gaguesque” situation of a François Pécheux unable to rise more than 50 centimeters from the ground to catch bunches of palm nuts, the locals are having fun: “Friend François, at work. » And viewers learn about traditional and artisanal palm oil production.

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The arrival in Ganvié, known to be the largest lakeside city in West Africa, was expected. The stopover will prove to be enriching, both in terms of its history (started three hundred years ago on the water, to protect itself from slavers) and the importance of the Christian, celestial and evangelist cults practised. Just as expected, the capital, Cotonou, on the other hand, will mark a break, with its buildings, its teeming traffic and its inhabitants dressed in Western style. François Pécheux had warned: you should not travel with preconceptions.

The Ouémé River in Benin, documentary by Christelle Leroux, François Pécheux and Stéphane Jobert (Fr., 2023, 52 min). released as part of the program “Au bout c’est la mer”, presented by François Pécheux, on France 5.

Catherine Pacary