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Adventures with Kingsley Holgate
Adventures with Kingsley Holgate
Date: 2017-03-17
BUSHNOTE: VOODOO - MORE THAN 50 MILLION BELIEVERS
We've made it; it's been a race against time - a Landy journey that's taken us from Accra to the Cape Coast dotted with ancient forts and castles built by the foreign nations that ravaged West Africa of slaves, gold and ivory. We'd reached Cape Three Points - Ghana's most southerly tip and turned north following the old slave routes to Kumasi - capital of the Ashanti kingdom of gold; then west across the Volta and the largest manmade lake on earth and through Togo to Benin; along the journey, doing some great malaria prevention and Rite to Sight work.
We set up a base camp at Grande Popo, an ancient slave trade terminus just south of Quidah. We're here to experience and document Voodoo, all part of ongoing Land Rover Living Traditions expeditions across Africa. But it's daunting, especially for us westerners who have little knowledge of this ancient belief system.
From one of our reference books on African ceremonies, we learn that Voodoo is one of the oldest religions of West Africa, originating in the rain forests and southern savannahs of Benin, Togo and eastern Ghana, and is practiced by the Fon, Ewe, and Ga peoples. Voodoo has more than 50million believers in West Africa alone and is still practiced today in Cuba, Haiti and Brazil, where it was carried by the slave trade. Voodoo has such deep roots that neither Christianity nor Islam have been able to eradicate it. On the contrary, Voodoo has become stronger by incorporating aspects of other belief systems to enhance its power.
The word Voodoo (also known as Vodou, Vodun and Vodoun) means Spirit or God and has thousands of deities who connect the everyday world to the realm of the supernatural. Voodoo deities inhabit nature - the earth, trees, and stones - and are also embodied by inanimate objects. These range in form from sculptural figures to amorphous mounds of earth containing medicines (mixtures of plants and other sacred substances) - sometimes referred to as fetishes. This word, introduced by Portuguese traders in the 16th century, has acquired a negative connotation for many in the western world. Yet it's not all Voodoo dolls and pins: there are gods of thunder, rivers, forests, love, healing and protection so much to learn.
The heat beats down as on foot, we follow local Voodoo devotees Steve Abeni and Gratien Kity down a dusty track to the village of Heve. Down a narrow passageGratien bangs on a door made of rusty corrugated iron. A barrel bolt is drawn back and we're ushered into a simple courtyard with a Voodoo homestead shrine at its centre. An old man dressed in pink shorts and a blue woollen beanie is standing in a tin pot, using his bare feet to stomp and squelch palm nuts into the orange-red oil so important in Voodoo rituals. We're told to remove our shoes and offered homemade gin out of a container decorated with evil looking fetishes - it's got a kick like an angry mule - and instructed to wait.
We're here to meet a Voodoo priest called Thierry Amoussou ahead of the Voodoo Festival. In the background, we hear voices and the squawking of a chicken. Not too sure how we got into this, but will keep you posted