Voodoo Festival!!!!!

Hello everyone!!! Guess what!!! I’ve got a computer again… woooo hooo!!! My mother ended up sending her old laptop with another volunteer who went home for the holidays. She has my old desktop that she uses all the time, so it actually works out pretty well.
Well, I’ve got all kinds of news from around here. I just got done with a Peace Corps conference in Ouidah, a village in the south of Benin near Cotonou. Ouidah is actually the voodoo capital of the country, and conveniently enough the annual voodoo fete happened to fall during our conference (January 10th). This fete is actually a national holiday here, and it stems from the view that the animist (voodoo, or local) religions of Benin should have a day of celebration just like all the other religions.
It is not just one religion that attends this festival though: With every different ethnical group or tribe, there is a different way of life. Different groups speak different languages, have different facial scarring traditions, dress differently, and they even have different personality traits that are very noticeable. There is one group near Ouidah, the Adja, who are known to be very rash and boisterous people. The Fon, another group from the south, are also known to be less laid back then the people of the north, but the Adja are more intense then they are. These are just a few examples though. There are over 60 different cultures in Benin alone… maybe even more than 100. I don’t really know. I do know that sometimes you can go to a village off the main road, and the culture will be completely different than the one you passed 10 kilometers ago.
Anyway, back to the festival: So, everywhere you looked at this festival there was a different cultural group celebrating in a different way then the one next to them. Everywhere you looked there were people dressed differently, dancing differently, saluting each other differently and drinking different local drinks… it was really crazy.
One group consisted of the women and boys playing drums and slapping wooden bricks together while the men of the group wore huge grass skirts, no shirts, and a yucky orange/yellow paint that looks as though it had been dripped down their heads. These guys were dancing and rolling on the ground, and every once in a while they would be handed a beer bottle that they would smash on top of their heads. One guy was even handed a knife that he used to slash his already scar-ridden belly over and over until it drew blood.
Other groups weren’t quite as intense as that group. Most people were dancing though, and it was really interesting to make note of the different styles of dancing. In some groups the men would be dressed like women and they would dance for the chief of their group one at a time. Other groups consisted of women who would dance for the chief one at a time. Some groups consisted of women who all dressed the same and danced together with their traditional instruments. Some women groups celebrated by having all the women sing as some women danced in the middle of the group. Some groups just had women sitting in the middle a circle singing while the men stood up around them. That group also had a goat in front of them, and they were all facing the same direction… so maybe it was a sacrificial ceremony??? Who knows? It was definitely exciting.
All of this was taking place right next to the beach, so after taking in all that I could, I decided to join my friends on the beach. It turned out that a whole bunch of people had gone to the beach since I was there an hour earlier or so, so I asked one of my friends what was going on. “I don’t know.” She responded, “But some guy did tell me that a dragon was about to jump out of the ocean and feed us all… so I’m waiting for that.” …Can it be assumed that that was what everyone was waiting for? Who knows.
There were also some entrepreneurs on the beach who were doing their best to take advantage of the masses. One game consisted of the hustler folding a belt in half then twisting it up into a coil. He then gave his contestant a thin metal rod. The object was to stick the metal rod into the point where the belt was folded, so that when the hustler pulled on the belt the belt would get caught on the metal rod. If it got caught the contestant won, if not the hustler… the bet was 1,000cfa ($2usd). You may be thinking that this is a little trivial, but people were actually loosing at this bet. After a while they did start to figure it out, but of course the hustler would make up another rule, or accuse the contestant of cheating. It was funny to watch. It’s as though people didn’t even take the time to think that it might be a scheme.
All of us ended up leaving by around noon because lunch was included with our conference, but afterwards we went on to visit the other tourist sites of Ouidah.
Ouidah is actually the place where much of the slave trading occurred in Benin, so there are many relics left from that time. Both the French and the Portuguese had forts that were mainly used for storing slaves, and if the slaves died before the ships got there, well, they conveniently had a mote full of crocodiles surrounding the forts, so bodies would just be thrown over the walls. The slave trading process was very interesting though. They managed to incorporate some of the local religion into Christianity in order to convert the slaves, and yet there were still many traditions that held strong that seem to be related to voodoo. For instance, there is this big old tree in the center of Ouidah, and it was believed that if you walk a few times around this tree then you would forget about the life you were about to leave behind. There is also an archway on the beach that I believe is called The Point of No Return, and now it stands as a gateway that people symbolically walk through at the beginning of the Voodoo Festival. I wish I could remember all the details from the tour we took. We only visited the Portuguese fort/museum. For the record, there is a guide there who speaks English, and I don’t know how much it was to get in… 1,500cfa??? ($3usd).
After our visit to the museum, I continued with a group of friends to see the other tourist sites of Ouidah. We decided that our next stop should be the Python Temple, an old voodoo temple that literally consisted of an ancient little mud hut room filled with pythons. The pythons slither around or sleep in piles, and there is definitely no one patrolling them. We paid 1,000cfa ($2usd) to get in and another 1,000cfa to take pictures. They will even put a snake around your neck for a photo! I have to say though, I’ve never gotten a faster tour of anything before. They really rush you through, and there are no guides who speak English… and for that matter, you better be able to understand lightning-fast French. They really seem to rush things.
After leaving the Python Temple we walked right next door to the giant Catholic church. It’s very symbolic of the role of religion in Benin, because this giant cathedral-like building is literally across the street from the traditional (and much older) python temple. In fact, the cathedral glares at you from over the walls of the Python Temple. We tried to go in to see the inside, but we decided not to wait the extra hour for it to open. Instead we went to a buvette (bar) on the street where people were really partying. There were occasionally random people in funny costumes who would dance or act crazy and then ask for money. This is typical in Benin, as it seems these people appear at any festival. I assume it’s just a cultural thing.
So, that concludes all the tourist stuff I did that day. Another day we also did paddle boats at the lagoon near the beach where the festival was, and that was a lot of fun. These paddle boats must have been made out of old oil drums, but they do the job and they are entertaining. 1,000cfa ($2usd) for a boat for 30 minutes. It was cool, because while we were paddling around there would be women fishing or paddling around in their traditional canoes. These men and women stand on the back of their canoes with a giant paddle… it reminded me of the boats in Venice, but with an unstable canoe instead of a shiny, picturesque boat. It was nice and relaxing though. It’s definitely a lot of fun.
Besides all of that, we really spent the whole week in the hotel in Ouidah. We stayed at a place called the Tierra Nostra, and it was somewhat on the outskirts of town. Ouidah is not the easiest place to find a room for the night though, and most hotels are outside of town like this. The hotel was nice though, and we had a good time anyway.
After the conference was done I went to Koko beach in Grand Popo for a few hours before heading back to Cotonou. The beach was beautiful, and it the waves were killer… literally. I guess the currents are so strong that even a Olympic silver medalist in swimming died trying to swim in these strong waters. There was even the turned over hull of a giant ship stuck right off the beach, as if the ocean itself was trying to warn us of her powers. Actually, I guess this beach used to be a pretty good place to fish before this ship crashed about 10 years ago. Of course no one tried to clean it up though. It is Africa.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, and by the next afternoon I was back in Natitingou. I will be heading back to post today, and I’m excited to get to work. I’m going to have some visitors this week, and it looks like I might be working with an NGO in Natitingou to help build a school that is between Natitingou and Boukoumbe. Also, this same NGO works at helping raise books needed for classes for students in high-school and younger. Many times 1 book is shared by 4 or 5 students, so it is definitely helpful. I have come to believe that education is one of the main priorities that needs help in developing Africa, and especially for girls. I will never be able to understand what it must feel like to be told I can’t go to school because I am female, or because there is only enough money for my brothers to go to school. 80 to 90 percent of the female population around Boukoumbe is illiterate… that’s how bad the problem is.
Just to illustrate the illiteracy problem, here’s a story for you: One day I was attending a womens group’s meeting and they passed around the role sheet to document who was there. I noticed that there was actually one woman walking around with the sheet, instead of just passing it around. It finally got to me and then I understood why. All but a few of the signature boxes contained finger prints. These women didn’t even know how to write their own names. Because of this, I think I might give an accounting for illiterates class soon. It’s a hard class to teach, but I’ll see how it goes.
Other than that, I’m still finishing up with the orphanage project. Recently, I used some of the money to buy enough material to give everyone a new outfit, and the mosquito nets will be arriving in February. We are also working on more sustainable projects. One environment volunteer is going to help with a gardening project, and I’m going to help with the business part of that. Another volunteer is going to show them how to build a stove that reduces the amount of wood needed to cook. We are hoping to be disinfecting the whole place and applying medicine sometime in February, but that depends on the schedule of my doctor friend in Boukoumbe.
Well, that’s really all of my news. I hear it’s a little bit chilly at home! I hope you all are keeping warm! If any of you need a break from that, I think it might be about seventy degrees Fahrenheit this morning. You are welcome to come and visit!!! Really though, I hope all of you are finding life as interesting as I am. Best of luck.

Sarah