The shop art of Benin

Although modern forms of art and design are being used more and more, the traditional hand painted signs for shops are still common in much of Africa. Benin has largely retained the distinctly African style of commercial shop painting developed during the last century, whereas in Ivory Coast for example, you see a lot more work that seeks to portray people and objects in an overtly realistic fashion, as is more typical in the West. Although some would describe the…

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A brief tale of Covid priorities in Africa

What Africans have been telling me about Covid this year The arrival of the Omicron variant has finally, although rather unfairly, brought some of the focus in the pandemic onto Africa. There is at least now more discussion of the inequalities in the system that is putting profit before people, leaving Africans at the bottom of the vaccine supply chain. Having spent this year living in Africa and I ought to add, living with Africans, entirely disconnected from any expat…

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Women will have their day

I extended my stay in Boukoumbe in northern Benin to join in International Womens Day celebrations: aside from witnessing all the traditional singing and dancing to compliment the interminable speeches, I ended it in fine style lurching out of the village nightclub at 4 30am having jumped around like a sweaty loon for a few hours to some great music, virtually none of which would conform to the European idea of African music and was much the better for it….

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In search of mother

At a café in a small town in Northern Benin, a young man asked if it was ok to share my table and I had to assure the waitress that I was only too happy to chat to a stranger who she assumed would only bother me.  He introduced himself as Paulin and we spent a few hours discussing life, the universe and everything.  It’s always rewarding to find someone interested and knowledgeable in African politics to get a better…

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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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