Journal Entry 51

May 31st, 2005

"Bobo in Voodoo-Land"

 

I left off in Kumasi, freshly arrived in Ghana. It was strange being in an English-speaking country (and being able to read signs like 'DON'T URINATE HERE AGAIN!). The English left their mark: stouts are available on every street, though Marmite proved difficult to find. Highlights for me were wandering through the biggest outdoor market in Africa, getting my first pair of prescription glasses, swimming in the pool of an expensive hotel (through a new Indian friend), an authentic Indian meal (through another friend), and getting dental floss from an American dental student (it's nearly impossible to find in Africa)!

Well, that, and going to an 'okomfo'--traditional spiritual healer. They hold a ceremony every 42 days and some fellow Americans and I timed it right! Hours and hours of dancing by the dude who's in a trance and changing clothes every time a new spirit enters his body. Drums beat constantly, and we finally leave at 2am, though the whole deal wasn't finished yet. They were still giving offerings and praying to the mmotia (yes that's spelled correctly--little forest dwarves with backwards feet) when we left.

Then, my favorite little town in Africa so far: Cape Coast. It's a small and beautiful place on the ocean, a hilly salty pastel-colored village with palm trees and churches and forts and friendly people. The bad part is its history as a major slave-trading center. The slave fort here is a UNESCO site. It's huge, and was the first museum I've been to in Africa. I learned quite a bit within the walls of this white-washed behemoth. Just some facts I found interesting: about 12 million slaves crossed the Atlantic to the Americas. 1/3 to Brazil, 1/3 to the Caribbean, and 1/3 to the rest of the Americas, including about 1.5-2 million to the USA and Canada.

I had never realized that the scale was so big, and that a significant yet relatively small portion came to the USA. Anyway, local chiefs were paid roughly 3 guns (or equivalent merchandise) per man, 1 per woman. The living conditions were appalling, and the governor's house, paradoxically, was in the upper level of the same structure: nice spacious chambers with wonderful views of the coastline and ocean!

I also visited Elmina fort, the oldest European structure outside of Europe/Mediterranean supposedly (also a former slave fort). Then I was off: in one day--three countries, two time zones, one taxi, one bush taxi, a motorcycle taxi, two trotros (minibus), and three decent walks. This got me across Ghana, through the politically troubled country of Togo (I crossed the it in one hour), and a fair chunk of the way into Benin, where I stopped in...

Ouidah. Lovely place. Dirt lanes, crumbling neglected French buildings (A dude showed me inside one, an old two-story merchant house. His family owns it. It's incredible, yet they let it turn into a shithole and only use 2 rooms on the ground floor), my first solid rain. Another slaving port...walked the 5km down to the beach past lots of strange statues. This is voodoo country.

Cotonou. Benin's biggest city. Incredible place. Met a German guy and we walked around all day drinking pineapple juice from calabashes, eating pork at the market, having fresh fish, and sitting on the decrepit beach, gazing at the sea through a barbed-wire fence as pigs wandered past looting through trash. And we visited the fetish market. Crazy. This is where you buy stuff to bring to your local fetish priest. Dried and stinking birds and lizards and monkey heads, even crocodile heads and a hyena head. But the most disturbing of all (to me anyway) were the gorilla heads! About fifty bucks apiece, one dude told me he sells about 1-2 per month. Very sad. They're bought, then ground up to make traditional medicine and what-not. And there are dozens of these vendors, and more at the markets in smaller towns.

Last stop in Benin was Abomey, where I wandered around the crumbling walls of old palaces and saw voodoo and fetish shrines. I stood over the spot where the 41wives of a 19th century king were buried alive, 5 meters deep, following his death. Nice, huh? But my highlight here was meeting a voodoo priest and getting to witness a voodoo ceremony ('leave your money, your passport, and your camera'). One and a half hours of drumming and dancing, with about a dozen participants, plus one high priest, and about 200 villagers there to join in celebrating.

Time to move on. I headed north, crossed most of Benin in one day, entered Niger exactly at midnight. Slept on the ground in a bus parking lot and continued to Niamey, the capital of Niger, the next day. Just in time for the city's first rain of the season, which was preceded by a HUGE orange cloud of Saharan sand that covered the city and turned the sky nuclear orange before making the afternoon fade to absolute blackness. An amazing experience! Seeing that cloud coming and everyone running for cover was truly apocalyptic.

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Randoms:

Food of note. Well, in Ghana there's kenkey (fermented corn paste with spicy sauce). It's good. And fufu (boiled cassava paste with snot-like okra and fish sauce). It' not good. In Togo there's kids standing by the roadside holding rodents and lizards by the tail. Didn't try. Benin has soya (tofu), great local cheese, and little fermented balls, all served with great hot sauces.

Ghana taught me how the French-speaking feel in the rest of West Africa. It's totally different when you understand the language and can't play dumb. Inconvenient, actually.

Benin is shaped like a Pez dispenser with a funny head.

I've now entered the last three countries, technically, illegally. My regional visa expired when I left Burkina for Ghana. But quick talking, having an alternate page of my passport stamped, and one deft move on the Togolese border got me through okay.

Contest: When will I see the new Star Wars? The person who guesses closest gets a really cool postcard from a strange country. Hint: It won't be here. I found the theatre in Niamey and it looks like it was invaded by Gremlins and closed years ago.

Voodoo. What we think of as voodoo is actually fetishism here, though this is where it all came from due to slaves coming to the Caribbean from here. Voodoo is a bit different. Both are widely practiced, being the dark and light sides of the same belief system (voodoo being the constructive side, fetishism the destructive).

And bobo. My name in the south. Whitey.

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I'm really reenergized at the moment. Maybe it's the greenness, friendliness, and laidbackness of Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Or maybe it's the wonderful people I've met recently. Or perhaps the 'counter' within me is finally getting into tune with my travels in Africa. It's certainly not the fact that I'm in the desert once again.

Regardless, it's good timing, 'cause things now change drastrically. My West African voyage is essentially over. My route now depends on visas, dollars, ebola, and troubled political climates. Niamey (my current location) is an end and a beginning. It's time to cover some ground. I may be offline for quite a spell here.

P.S. This time 'round, my craving is a tall cold glass of milk with freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies. Lots of 'em!

" 'I saw the sign (Destructive Testing)', said Dwayne, 'and I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking.' " (Kurt Vonnegut)

 

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