West Africa Overlanding: Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso

I spent an extraordinary three weeks exploring some of West Africa as a typical tourist, specifically Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso. The trip I did was called “The Voodoo Trail” and was run by G Adventures (a Canandian travel company) using the local operator Trans Africa. Unfortunately I’ve fallen so far behind on my blog posts that I can barely remember some of the details, so I’m going to write a briefer than usual post this time (which should also help me to catch up).

Togo

My trip started off in Lome, the capital city of Togo. I liked the vibe in Lome; it was a kind of laid back tropical coastal city with zero tourists (apart from the people in my group). My first day in Lome was a chillout day where I just relaxed around the pool (which turned out not to be all that relaxing seeing as there was a 4-hour children’s swimming lesson). The second day was the first day of my tour and we went to a fetish market where you could buy various parts of various animals. Here are some photos:

A stall where we visited a voodoo priest

Monkey heads (obviously)

Dog heads (obviously)

From Lome we headed up to central Togo to a forest called Kpalame. On the way we stopped at a voodoo ceremony. At the voodoo ceremony there was lots of drumming and dancing. Most participants were walking around in a trance. I enjoyed seeing this ceremony, but had difficulty relating to it. Here are some photos:

We spent the night in Kpalame, a forested area on the Ghanaian border. The following morning we did a morning hike through the forest, which was beautiful. Here are some pictures:

Benin

Our first stop in Benin was Ouidah, a former slave port. This was a poignant place to visit, and the memorials were done very well. There was a gate on the coast marking the place where the slaves would board the ships (which took them to Brazil from where they were resold, often to North American buyers). The location of this gate was not exact, as the former slave route was simply a path through the forest that had long grown over, but I guess that the exact location doesn’t really matter. The slave route was full of symbolism, for example a large tree that departing slaves were forced to circle an auspicious number of times and then declare that their lives were worthless. As these sorts of symbolic rituals have great significance in their society this was deeply offensive to the slaves; indeed it was aimed at destroying their last bit of human dignity.

Here are some photos from the slave route:

The gate of no return on the slave route.

The former "slave market"

The markers along the slave route could only be described as "bizarre and abstract"

After our morning on the slave route we visited a stilt village on a large lake called Lake Ganvie. The experience was scenic, but not particularly educational, as I have been to so many stilt villages like this and generally cruising about in a boat kind of prevents you from interacting with local people (except for maybe waving at them from the boat). I found this experience kind of sad, as when we approached people on our boat they generally hid their faces away to avoid us taking photos. When I asked my guide about this he said that they had been told that people were posting their photos on the internet with derogatory captions accompanying them. This made me sad.

Here are some photos (without derogatory captions):

The following day we visited the King of Bohicon. As this was now over a month ago I cannot remember exactly what he said, however I can remember that he was quite progressive, so I was impressed. He was quite a contrast to another King who we visited later in the trip who turned out to be a disgusting man (I cannot post the details of this on the internet because I’m scared of the potential ramifications for the person who told us of his true nature). This King was trying to promote education and discourage female genital mutilation.

Here is the King:

In Southern Benin we also visited a python temple. I did not have a good time at the python temple. We had the opportunity to have a snake draped over our shoulders (as a photo opportunity). I’m not scared of snakes so I thought “why not?” and went ahead with the photo op. Thing was, once the snake had been on my shoulders for about 30 seconds it started to constrict around my neck, not to the point where it was stopping my breathing, but enough to make me feel quite anxious and uncomfortable. I asked the snake handler to remove the snake and he flatly refused, instead grabbing the snake’s head and trying to put it in my mouth! What a weirdo! I started to panic a bit and considered punching him in the balls, but luckily (for him) he decided to remove his snake from me before I snapped.

Here’s a picture of this horrible incident:

In southern Benin we had the privilege of witnessing an Egun Mask Ceremony. This is a traditional celebration of the Fon and Yoruba people where men where elaborate costumes (“masks”), which represent the spirits of deceased people from the community. According to the local lore, these people are not only representations of the spirits, but are literally the dead reincarnated. I don’t know who had died in the village, but at least one of the deceased must have had severe psychiatric problems if the mask wearers really were the deceased people, because some of them were acting really crazily, like people I definitely would not want to live in a small village with.

There is a belief in the communities who celebrate this tradition that the clothing of the mask wearer is dangerous, and any contact with this person causes “temporary death”. As such, children scatter and people scream as the mask wearers approach their vantage points, something that is quite fascinating to watch. During our time at the ceremony two such temporary deaths occurred. I’m pleased to say that both fatalities made hasty recoveries! Sadly, one of the mask wearers (the one who I thought needed to be put in a straight jacket) got a bit carried away with a metal rod that he was flailing around and ended up breaking the nose of one of the man who was “handling” him. This person did not make a hasty recovery. I hope he’s alright; broken noses are absolute agony!

A "temporary death"

Northern Benin was a stunning place to travel, regardless of its remoteness and the various difficulties of travelling in this region (the roads, the food, the toilets with tricky locks designed to trap you in the cubicles etc). Unfortunately, at this point in my travels, the tribal villages had all started to blend in to one pan-tribal identity in my mind, so I’m having difficulty recalling the nuances of the various places that we visited, so I will treat them all as one entity here (an approach that I realise is somewhat disrespectful as each ethnic group in the region has unique traditions and identities, however I need to work with my intellectual limitations here).

Voodoo: voodoo remained an essential part of life in Northern Benin (and Northern Togo). We visited a shrine called Dankoli where we placed wishes for supposedly a small fee which changed according to how much the people running the shrine could wrangle out of you. I’m pleased to say that I paid the least (about $1) using my foolproof approach of pretending that I didn’t understand that people were asking me for money. Interestingly, voodoo in French West Africa exists alongside more conventional religions (Christianity on the coast and Islam further inland); people weave the two traditions together seamlessly.

Voodoo priest in Northern Benin

Architecture: the traditional architecture in these areas is amazing. Many of the houses were reminiscent of small castles rather than simple huts. Each residence included a granary (a place where grain is stored), the integrity of which was integral to the stability of the household (we met a man whose wife had left him because his granary broke). Here is a photo of one of the houses:

Tribal markings: I can’t find a photo of it (I haven’t looked very hard because I am both lazy and time poor) but the houses in this region have distinctive patternes etched onto their outer walls. Likewise, the people have these patterns etched into the skin on their faces! This normally occurs at a young age, and the said purpose is to identify children so if they wander off people can identify the village that they should be returned to. In my view, there are probably better, and less cruel, ways to identify lost children. Sadly, we saw a boy with keloid scarring all over his face as a result of this practice. Keloid scarring is common in non-Caucasians and is also incurable, so I think that it’s sad that children are exposed to this complication by this tradition. Here is a child suffering from keloid scars as a result of his tribal markings:

Gender relations: like other places that I have visited in Africa, it seems that women do a lot of the work and men do a lot of the drinking.  I’m not going to bang on about this again, rather I would like to explain how divorce works in this region. Women are given a symbolic callabasse (pot made out of goard) that is kept as a prized possession in their house. If the husband decides to divorce his wife he goes and smashes up her callebasse and she knows what this means and leaves without protest. In contrast, if a woman wants to divorce her husband she simply sleeps with another man to send the message.

Here is an intact callebasse:

Food: a staple food in this region is “fufu” which is essentially ground up cassava or yam paste. As fufu happens to be my favourite slang term for vagina (this is not just my term, see urban dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fu%20fu&defid=281110) I ended up laughing everytime that this was mentioned, especially when we stopped to watch some fufu being “pounded”.

Burkina Faso

From Northern Benin we crossed briefly back into Northern Togo, from where we crossed into Burkina Faso. Some of us had to get our visa on the border, which was quite an experience. Rumour has it that the price is constantly changing, and we were unlucky to be charged the maximum price that this visa has ever been (about USD200). Nonetheless, this went smoothly (until we left the country and discovered that they'd written that the visa was only valid for 7 days, despite being actually valid for 90 days!) and we were accepted into the country.

Our first few stops in Burkina were very rural areas near the borders with Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. These areas were culturally quite similar to what we saw in Northern Benin and Togo, albeit with slightly different cultures and customs.

We visited the Gurunsi region, where the houses are spectacularly decorated with geometric patterns. Here are some pictures:

For the few days following our visit to the Gurunsi I was feeling quite unwell (combination of food poisoning and extreme fatigue) so my recollections are not all that clear. I have many stories from those few days, however none of them are appropriate for my blog, so I’ve decided to instead leave a gap.

The second largest city in Burkina is called Bobo Dioulasso. I loved Bobo; it was a happening place full of music and life. Unfortunately, my computer decided to randomly delete all of my photos of the city walk that we did, which is a crying shame as I had taken many lovely photos of the west African style mosque, and also of djembe playing and street art. Luckily, I have some photos of the spectacular landscape that we got to visit around Bobo:

After Bobo, on route to Ouagadougou – the world’s most fabulously named capital city – we attended a ceremony of Bwa ceremonial dance. This ceremony was explained to me as “a form of street theatre that melds sacred, traditional and entertainment elements” and I think that about sums it up. I personally thought that the masked dancers looked like Snuffelapagus off Sesame Street, but here are some photos to allow readers to make up their own minds:

Our journey finished in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso. I really liked Ouagadougou, although it didn’t really have much in the way of tourist attractions (apart from some creature comforts, which attract me. And I’m a tourist so I suppose you could call hot showers and functional air conditioning a tourist attraction!) I don’t have any photos from Ouagodougou, sorry!

Next instalment: Sierra Leone, my favourite African country so far on this trip (Indonesia was my favourite Asian country).