26 March 2023

If we ever were curious about the landscape inland Benin, we have now satisfied our curiosity. It is pretty boring. Lots of green, lots of palm trees – for palm oil industry, presumably, no coconuts. And dusty villages, square brick or adobe houses with the inevitable corrugated iron on the roof. And thatch, suggesting greater poverty, again. Interestingly, we also see the occasional mosque, the small, charming type, several larger churches, and Voodoo temples and little Voodoo shrines, apparently happily living next to each other.

We visit one of the villages, to attend Sunday mass. Agonve is on an island, so we all pile in a large sloop punted by an old woman, to cross the water. The mass preparations haven’t finished yet, so we wander through the village a bit – my favourite pastime. See how these people live, how they cook, how they work the nets. I suppose because it is Sunday, most fisherman are at home; the nearby lake only has a few pirogues – canoes – operating, but the amount of nets being dried and cleaned onshore is impressive. The village also has the benefits of NGO support, an organisations that helps them with their development. The visible effects of this are several latrine buildings around the place, although from what I find around the village, I am not sure that they are fervently used. They haven’t qualified for the non-defecation certificate (!) yet, something I did see along the road at other villages.

When it is time for mass, we all flow into a small adobe-like house, with a table in the front and a drum band in the corner. Behind the table the priest, well-dressed, chanting. And in front several woman, singing, dancing like any Voodoo ceremony we have seen so far, and occasionally going on their knees to pray. All the time accompanied by the rhythmic drumming of the band. Quite nice, actually, except that it is steaming hot inside. And we don’t have to dance! After a while we leave again, the service not yet ended. On the way back to the sloop we pass a much larger church, one that also looks more like a church, much fuller than our little ceremonial church, and from what I can see in passing, with a rather more conventional Catholic service. But much less fun, obviously. Or did we just pay for a service that is not normally being held, only for tourists?

 

On our way back to Cove, where we are going to attend another Voodoo dance, we get off in another little village, famous for its tattooed women. Actually, it turns out that the practice was discontinued in the 1980s, and we only find one old woman with tattoos. Embarrassingly, she is then encouraged to lower her cloth to show her entire upper body. In front of all of us, multiple cameras clicking. Mine too, I have to admit, but only to be able to share this with you! No, really, this is no good, this erodes any level of dignity from poor people – I hope that she got paid well, at least.

At the end of the afternoon we get back to Cove, same place as yesterday’s dance. This time the community has a different dance prepared, the Guelede. This is a dance, originating from the Yoruba culture, to show the importance of women in society, or so we are told. Which, of course, boils down to promoting women’s fertility, invoking a spirit who helps her getting pregnant, spiritually I presume. At least that is what it used to be, nowadays this dance is performed as a celebration dance, at weddings or at the birth of a baby. As with all the spirits, they have adepts, meaning people that are ‘in the know’, introduced in the secrets; not everybody qualifies for this. I remember this is also something Profet told us in Porto Novo: adepts of the spirit have so obtained a right to have their own rituals, altars and shrines for that specific spirit. People also try to become adept to more than one spirit, but obviously it is impossible to do so to all the spirits. In this particular case the adepts are – or were – women, chosen to perform the rites of fertility on other women.

The dance is a bit like yesterday. A drum band generates atmosphere – and atmosphere they create! – and then the costumed dancers, the spirits, appear, one by one. In this case many wear a mask on top of their, invisible, head, with some message – not always very clear, but sometimes overly clear, like the plateau on top of one of the masks, which, with the right moves of the head, mimics a copulating couple. The dancers inside the suits, the costumes, are all men, yet are supposed to represent women spirits. Like the two giants that appear, representing the initiated women. At one stage a crippled is brought in, well, a representation of a crippled, who miraculously then managed to dance again, on stilts. The most lugubrious was the bag, which was to contain a baby; it actually contained a small child, and both my travel companion and I can testify to this, because we were the only two ‘blans’ out of the entire groups who were made to hold the bag. Coincidence? Or is there some magic at work here?

Next: Abomey and the third Voodoo dance