Voodoo for beginners. Part 2 The festival in Ouidah Benin

In fine African tradition the festival opened at an entirely different location to that given in the programme and started with some offerings from the local Voodoo royalty at what looked like a neglected herbaceous feature outside a petrol station on the outskirts of town, a site for which I can offer no explanation of significance. A parade back into town was motivated by a delightfully shambolic brass section with percussion backing, to which the many women danced with a…

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Voodoo for beginners. Part 1

The somewhat challenging nature of Voodoo for animal lovers is put to the ultimate test at the fetish markets. These are the pharmacies of the voodoo world: after a consultation the priest will provide a prescription which is then purchased from the market. The stalls look a bit like the trophy collection of some psychotic, random animal hunter: great arrays of heads in varying states of decomposition, dogs, monkeys, cattle, birds and even most definitely endangered creatures such as leopards…

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Cotonou Benin – African streetlife

Arriving at night in Cotonou, the commercial capital of Benin and typical of West African cities, you  are enveloped in a mist of dust, smoke of cooking fires and burning rubbish, as the dawn breaks these flavours are joined by less savoury ones such as traffic fumes and sewage. The dust is courtesy of the Harmattan wind that is progressively delivering the Sahara desert and every bit of loose dirt in the Sahel region on its southern borders, to the…

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