Friday, October 21, 2005
Abomey, Benin
Voodoo is highly overrated. Don't believe the hype. It is not dark, mysterious or even the slightest bit interesting. It will not reinforce any latent beliefs in forest spirits, traditional healers, or baffling natural phenomena. There is nothing remarkable in smearing chicken blood on a rock or leaving boiled eggs on an altar. It is a ridiculous sham. At least in Ouidah and Abomey, the tourist Mecca of commercialized voodoo in Benin; this is the only reasonable conclusion I could reach.
It is not as if we did not give it a chance. We gazed at ten year old plaster cast statues of Pan-esque gods with tremendously pronounced penises, all of whom desired financial donations; we observed a room full of lethargic pythons only to be told that these holy snakes politely appealed to us for gifts; and we walked backwards around the bed of an ancient king in a room, newly whitewashed with corrugated roofs dirtied red with dust, and painting a few cliched symbols on the walls of buildings clearly no more than fifty years old that, not surprisingly, also wanted earthly money.
Constructing basic structureser to entice the curious to pay large sums of money in order to gawk at historical curiosities does not seem to fit the spirit of the voodoo culture that I had anticipated. The fact that many of these money pits were built on ancient sites that probably still continued to have relevance for many Beninese not actively participating in fleecing tourists made it even worse. I found myself quickly disillusioned with this kitsch variety of African voodoo.
I have accepted this with more than a little disappointment. I should have realized that if I genuinely wanted to experience truly authentic voodoo practices still strong in large parts of Benin without the distasteful taint of commercialism, I would have to spend a great deal of time off the beaten path earning people's trust. Regretfully, I do not have time and thus will leave Benin with a warped and mistaken conception of African voodoo.
Voodoo is highly overrated. Don't believe the hype. It is not dark, mysterious or even the slightest bit interesting. It will not reinforce any latent beliefs in forest spirits, traditional healers, or baffling natural phenomena. There is nothing remarkable in smearing chicken blood on a rock or leaving boiled eggs on an altar. It is a ridiculous sham. At least in Ouidah and Abomey, the tourist Mecca of commercialized voodoo in Benin; this is the only reasonable conclusion I could reach.
It is not as if we did not give it a chance. We gazed at ten year old plaster cast statues of Pan-esque gods with tremendously pronounced penises, all of whom desired financial donations; we observed a room full of lethargic pythons only to be told that these holy snakes politely appealed to us for gifts; and we walked backwards around the bed of an ancient king in a room, newly whitewashed with corrugated roofs dirtied red with dust, and painting a few cliched symbols on the walls of buildings clearly no more than fifty years old that, not surprisingly, also wanted earthly money.
Constructing basic structureser to entice the curious to pay large sums of money in order to gawk at historical curiosities does not seem to fit the spirit of the voodoo culture that I had anticipated. The fact that many of these money pits were built on ancient sites that probably still continued to have relevance for many Beninese not actively participating in fleecing tourists made it even worse. I found myself quickly disillusioned with this kitsch variety of African voodoo.
I have accepted this with more than a little disappointment. I should have realized that if I genuinely wanted to experience truly authentic voodoo practices still strong in large parts of Benin without the distasteful taint of commercialism, I would have to spend a great deal of time off the beaten path earning people's trust. Regretfully, I do not have time and thus will leave Benin with a warped and mistaken conception of African voodoo.
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