Boutre trip

To get from Belo sur Mer to Morombe I took a boutre. I talked of these ships in a blog entry at the time; they look like they were built 500 years ago. I spent four days and two nights on board for about 80 km. We were solely relying on the wind, and the wind is capricious.When it came to bringing the sails down and putting them together, I looked for a place out of the way of the saliors. There was none, so I moved around to get out of their way. Helping was out of the question: I was a passenger, white, and didn't speak their language.
Look at the mast, the ropes, the sails, the cables...
The captain (not the commandant! the commandant is smoking in the back) rolling the sail around the boom.
Once we got to Morombe, we started blowing our makeshift horns. The crew had drilled a little hole in a few of these massive shells.
When the wind blew evenly, there wasn't much to do but sit around, grab a guitar, play some music and sing.