More than Magic

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Since I posted a number of blogs on my West Africa visit last February, I have received positive feedback and interest from a wide variety of sources. This is not, I suspect, due to their particular literary merits but because they relate some cultural experiences that even most seasoned travellers have not experienced, eg voodoo and fetism. Now over the course of the many years I have been writing these travel blogs, I have often participated in small group tours but I have always resisted naming others in the group to protect their privacy. But I make an exception here because on this tour I formed a close friendship with a delightful Irish couple, Ann and Gerry. Who could have believed that Aussies and Irish would bond so well! After we returned home, Gerry sent me a copy of an article he had written about our tour for a Christian magazine he subscribes too. I was so blown away by his journalistic skills that I consider are far superior to mine (maybe I'm better at maths than him!) that I sought his permission to share this article with my Travelblog readers. He has agreed, so here it is. Disclosure - I am the "jovial Australian" he quotes in his article. Enjoy!

It was February this year in the west African country of Benin. There were eleven of us. We had stopped by the roadside and climbed out of our minibuses. Our guide had urged us forward towards an unusual-looking collection of sticks, mounds of earth, torn and withered banners and some men holding two small goats. A few people from the locality were also there, not just to watch but to share in something special for them and for many people in that part of the world. We watched and waited and then saw the large knife. The silence was broken by the baby-like cry of a goat as its throat was cut and the blood was spilt all over one of the mounds. The second goat met the same fate on the other mound. Some of the bystanders came forward and were smeared with the blood on their foreheads. We were witnessing a regular event at one of the most important religious shrines in that part of West Africa. We were present at a voodoo ritual of intercession.

Voodoo (known locally as Vodoun) is an official religion of Benin. It’s not a form of magic. It’s a complex and intricate way of seeing the world with hundreds of different gods responsible for various areas of daily life, some benevolent, some less so. To communicate with them and ask for favours, the local people seek the assistance of priests of the tradition; this will often involve the sacrifice of animals, most often chickens but – as on this occasion – goats. The people who offered these for sacrifice must have been seeking something big in their lives but there is no expectation that favours will be granted easily; promises must be made and if a favour is granted, the promise must be kept. There is a very strong belief that a broken promise will attract severe punishment.

The goats were cooked on a nearby fire immediately and the meat shared with the local people. The spilling of blood as the seal of the pact being made and the subsequent sharing of the meat in a meal will ring bells with Jewish people as they recall the covenant between God and the Hebrews commemorated in the Passover, and with Christians when we recall the new covenant proclaimed in the meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his crucifixion. I was not expecting to find such close connections between the signs and symbols of my own Christian experience, and the deeply embedded practices of people in this part of Africa, practices which were taken with enslaved men and women to the worlds we now know as Haiti, Brazil and other parts of the Americas. There they were integrated with the Christian religion of the conquering invaders and enslavers to produce some exotic manifestations of belief, much of which was imported back into traditional societies when freed slaves returned to their original homelands.

Voodoo is closely related to the animist traditions in other parts of Africa. It is very different from our own faith traditions but has the same purposes: to relate our lives to the wider world both seen and unseen, to seek a spiritual dimension through respect for and contact with everything in the created order. Our group visited what was called a ‘fetish’ market, bits and pieces of animals, birds, reptiles and plants which are used as the ingredients of both traditional medicines and ritualistic potions. The sights and smells were challenging for us but important because some of these medicines sit alongside the ones we use and, in many cases, achieve their objective more effectively. We visited several isolated villages in Benin and neighbouring Togo where the use of fetishes, hanging in doorways, placed in prominent positions, or just carried by individuals was widespread. Again, I wondered at the extraordinary similarity to many Jewish traditions associated with going into and out of the house and the wearing of signs and symbols, and the once popular Christian traditions of, for example, having holy water near the front door to bless a journey, or relics of holy people displayed for veneration and healing, or the statues placed at scenes for remembrance, or crosses placed in public squares.

All of us on this trip were, ostensibly, on holiday but it was not meant to be a ‘staring at weird practices’ couple of weeks. We knew we were going to experience something very different and not just voodoo. We hoped that we were going to have our minds opened-up in ways we, perhaps, did not expect. My ‘gosh’ moment came when it dawned on me, as we battled our way along roads pitted with potholes the size of small craters, that the place was alive with every variety of Christian presence you can possibly imagine, matched in certain parts by a powerful physical presence of Islam through the dozens and dozens of small mosques dotted here and there in the roadside villages. In the end I could not keep track of the sheer number of different names for the many, many church buildings (most just large halls) and church affiliations. Think of a way of expressing a congregation’s approach to faith and think of a name, and there you have it. The Pentecostal church style is clearly in tune with how many in these countries (and, I guess, other parts of Africa, as also in South and North America) want to praise God and enjoy each other’s company in their journey of faith.

We visited what is claimed to be the world’s largest village built on stilts in the middle of a vast lake. We were invited to join an Assembly of God congregation for part of their Sunday worship; it is important to say part because we were with them for about half an hour whilst they stayed at it for a few hours. One member of our group, a jovial Australian happily proclaiming his unbelief, told us that it was one of the most uplifting and wonderful moments of his whole life as he joined in with the singing and dancing. I’ve been to a few Black Church celebrations here at home, and now I can easily see how it was in Sunday events like the one we witnessed that their exuberant expression of faith was learned and nurtured. I wanted to join in, but the floor was made of bamboo poles and my old feet couldn’t manage both to stand up straight AND dance. I took videos of everyone else instead. I will be able to enjoy the experience again and again. The sound of the drums ringing out over the water and the joy of the people, young and old, clearly evident in the singing of the gospel message was in marked contrast to the roadside sacrifice we had seen a few days earlier. But, our guide stressed, everyone keeps their voodoo traditions; the Christians more easily than the Moslems because of attitudes within the respective leaderships.

The trip, including some days spent in Ghana, covered much more than religious practice. The people who lived in the tribes and kingdoms before the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century and who co-existed with and eventually resisted colonial invasion for a long time, were also the victims of barbarous enslavement. We visited the places where people captured (or in many cases exchanged by local rulers greedy for guns) were held before being shipped across the Atlantic. We experienced what it was like to be locked into a dungeon with no windows (we were only a few – then there would have been a hundred living in their own inevitable mess). We stood with shame in the chapels, in several of these abominable coastal forts, which had been built above the rooms holding slaves in darkness. The chapels were of all denominations. All of us have a shameful history to ponder. Our guides asked us to reflect in silence for a moment or two at each visit. They were not asking us to beat ourselves up. They reminded us that people-trafficking and other forms of slavery are vast problems in the modern world and asked that, as we looked at ‘the gates of no return’ where the slaves of old were loaded on to boats, we would seek ways of helping our world to respect the dignity and freedom of every human being. We were all happy to make that promise.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Fantastic travel
Travel fills the soul and broadens the mind. Churches on stilts and people living the daily life. What a fantastic experience.