Voodoo has nothing to do with dolls?

Ouidah is the birthplace of the Voodoo religion, and a centre of worship for practitioners. It’s about 40 km from Cotonou, and one of the few places where there are many sights to check out.

This morning I took Shaloo’s other driver, Herve, and after a quick ATM stop (my VISA works here!!) headed off for Ouidah. What an experience.

It is rainy season in Benin, so at any point it may spontaneously pour. This happened last night, so many of the roads were covered in meter wide puddles. Within the first 15 mins I had my first puddle run in—the driver had his window down and I was in the back passenger seat. A large truck went by and threw a liter of water into the car. The driver took most of it, but I had a significant amount of puddle water in my hair after the experience. What I have learned in Africa is you have to be flexible, and when things don’t go as planned just remember the mantra “ca va aller”.

First on the list in Ouidah was the Temple des Serpents. This is really a tourist trap as opposed to a temple, but it was formerly used as a Voodoo temple. In fact, a beautiful, large Catholic church is built across the road, and was paid for by the Voodoo religion leaders over a hundred

years ago. Apparently, they built it across the street to keep an eye on what was happening there. Now, the temple is used to house 40 pythons and offer fab photos to tourists. It costs 1000 to enter, and 1000 for pictures (about $5 in total) and the guide takes you into the python room for some pictures. Pretty much the scariest thing ever. The snakes aren’t slimy and gross as I’d imagined, but they move around and slither and look at you like they want to attack. Or, that’s what I perceived from my snake.

After this, we hit the Sacred Forest—I was pretty excited as I played Zelda as a child and thought I was walking in to find the Great Deku Tree or something. That pretty much happened, but with a lot more religious significance. Religion is an interesting topic here—in North America, it isn’t discussed a lot and it isn’t socially positive to question people about their beliefs. Here, people ask and talk about religion a lot, and though they may hold one set of beliefs, they are open to others and sometimes practice more than one. For example, people in Ouidah practice Catholicism in the day and Voodoo at night—probably one of the reasons Voodoo is associated in the west with evil and darkness—because when the slaves were taken to the Americas they were forced to practice Catholicism in the day and had to hide their

Voodoo at night. This practice has continued to this day. In the sacred forest there are many sculptures symbolizing a

multitude of Voodoo and animist deities and beliefs, my favourite being the Amazon woman.

Amazon’s are from this part of Africa, and they famously went topless into war to distract the foreign armies of men—before chopping their heads off. The forest itself is beautiful and lush—it just feels peaceful. It contains a huge and rare iroko tree that king Kpasse, the founder of Ouidah, is reputed to have turned himself into while fleeing enemies. None of the kings are ever said to have died—it is not allowed—instead, they have changed forms. When the king dies, there is a special drum which is beaten and it signifies to the people that the king has passed to a new consciousness. But, he has not “died”. There is a Voodoo cemetery, as they do inter their dead, but there is no service for their passing. I was told to place my left hand on the king/tree and make a wish, while leaving an offering for the king/tree. The highlight of this trip was when I heard a strange sound, like a tap being turned on, in the middle of the forest. I turned around and Herve, the driver, had whipped it out and was taking a piss. In the middle of the Sacred Forest. What a gem.

We went for lunch after this, at a restaurant of Herve’s choosing. I was told to order the chicken, which I was hesitant of, but there was nothing non-meat on the menu. I tried to order just fries, and the waiter wouldn’t let me. So, I ordered fried chicken (the safest, I figured) and french fries. Clearly, I only ate the fries as the chicken was definitely a track star and looked tough and deadly. Herve, however, loved it and licked the bones clean—after the slight let down that they

didn’t have rabbit, he had a good meal anyway.  .

We went back to the Musee d’Histoire d’Ouidah, which is open from 9-12 and 3-6. We had gone there at 11:45 and they told us to leave and return later. I was hesitant to go back, but I’m glad I did as it was very interesting and I met a great American guy who’s doing research on Voodoo and learned a lot. The museum is a reconstructed Portuguese fort from 1721, and houses exhibits relating to the slave trade and the links between Benin and Brazil. The slave trade artifacts are amazing—in a clearly horrific way. There were recovered chains and collars—the Portuguese bound the slaves 2 by 2 and marched them 2 km’s down the route des esclaves (slave route) to the Point of No Return. There were also paintings depicting slave experiences and how people were treated—over 10 million people were deported from Africa (this sounds really high… but I admittedly don’t know much about the slave trade) and were subjected to the worst possible conditions. Men were made to sleep face down, women face up—so the Portuguese could violate them if they so desired. About half of the Africans on each boat died before ever seeing land, and some jumped from the boats into the ocean off the African coast, as the preferred to die in their homeland than in a foreign one. The guide was the first I’ve had to speak English, and he even made a “joke”—when we went towards the souvenir shop he said we could buy anything and everything that we wanted—except “him”, referring to the counter attendant.  After all of that...definitely not funny.

The museum was quite good, but the real highpoint of the visit was the Route des Esclaves and the Door of No Return. The route starts near the Museum, and travels ~2km to the coast. Lining the route are different symbols and images—my fav was definitely the Tree of Forgetfulness, which slaves were forced to circle 5-7 times, to forget the land they were leaving. On the beach is a grand arch, a memorial Point of No Return—once the slaves crossed this line, they knew they would never see their home again. The front of the Arch, when walking through, depicts slaves in chains walking towards a boat. On the other side, once they have crossed and there is truly no return, the image changes to the front of the slaves, in line towards the boats. Between them, looking backs towards their homeland, is a beautiful tree. Trees are a universal symbol of life, but here it means even more—the tree is meant to symbolize that life is eternal, and when the slaves would die, their souls would return home to Africa for eternity. My pictures aren’t too great here, because I walked down to the ocean and suddenly, from a clear blue sky, the heavens opened up and dropped 20 liters of water on me. In about 10 seconds I was soaked, but it was a wonderful experience nonetheless.

This is a long post—but it was a pretty cool place and I learned a lot about the Voodoo religion and the horrors of the slave trade. It was clearly a horrific process, but I had never really thought about what it entailed or would have been like for those people.