It’s hard to believe that this post will wrap up my first foray into West-African travel. I really fell in love with Accra, Lomé and Porto-Novo and cherish all the friends I made along the way. The day before my flight back to New York was not spent in a world capital, but rather on a day trip to Ouidah, which at least is the unofficial capital of Vodun culture in Benin. Ouidah is also home to the powerful Route des Esclaves, a UNESCO-funded memorial thoroughfare that traces the path that slaves walked from the inland slave forts of Ouidah to the Door of No Return on the Gulf of Guinea’s beaches.
This small city, just 30km west of Cotonou (pick up a shared taxi at the Place de l’Étoile Rouge) really warrants more than a day trip, but you can squeeze the highlights into a single day’s sojourn from Cotonou if necessary. Also, compared to Porto and Cotonou, there is a fair amount of tourism infrastructure in Ouidah, taking out a lot of guess work in getting from place to place and figuring out what to do next. Because of the Route des Esclaves, I encountered more travelers in Ouidah than any of the other cities I visited in West Africa.
Temple des Pythons (Temple of Pythons)
After having so enjoyed my visit to Cotonou’s contemporary art museum, Fondation Zinsou, I was eager to check out the Ouidah branch of the institution. When I told my shared taxi driver to drop me off at the museum, he told me I could go there second, but that any first-timer in Ouidah needed to make their premiere stop be the Temple des Pythons. If Porto and Cotonou’s populations are evenly divided amongst Christians, Muslims and Vodun worshippers, Ouidah is all about Vodun and its residents are eager to share their traditions with you.
Pythons are particularly sacred in the Vodun religion and the Temple des Pythons has the highest concentration of this holy snake in all of Benin. Admission includes a guided tour of the temple; note that there is an extra fee if you wish to also take photos. (The guide will assist and allow you to interact with the pythons, making the photography surcharge well worth paying.)
As legend has it, in the early 1700s the King of Ouidah was being pursued by his enemies and ran into the nearby sacred forest. The royal pythons surrounded the ruler and defended him from his foes. Due to their devotion to the king, he built this temple for them in which to reside.
Will the snakes bite you? I was assured that they are quite docile and friendly, never having bitten a guest at the temple. The priests don’t feed them, but rather allow them to roam Ouidah in the evening, catching mice and other rodents for their dinners. Residents out on their morning strolls will gather the snakes and bring them back to the temple as if they were gathering children who had wandered off from the schoolyard.
I met a fellow blogger from Nigeria at the temple and she was pretty freaked out about placing one of the pythons around her neck. I agreed to take the plunge first and put on a brave face for this photo. Although I wasn’t (too) scared, she could barely hold my phone still long enough to snap this photo. You can see some of the guides laughing in the background as we took turns standing stiff as a board while the python slithered around our shoulders.
After I proved to my new friend that the experience wasn’t so bad, she agreed to set aside her fears and give it a go. Although she claimed to be terrified the whole time, I told her she looked cool as a cucumber in the photo and no one would have any idea she had been afraid. Personally, I felt the temple was a very controlled environment and it would have been a lot more nerve-wracking to run into one of these snakes while walking around town. There are roughly sixty pythons that lounge around the temple; I never conducted an official tally, but I took my guide’s word that at present, all snakes had been accounted for.
Basilique de l’Immaculée Conception (Basilica of the Immaculate Conception)
Right across from the Temple des Pythons is the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, one of the few Catholic houses of worship in Ouidah. The basilica was built in 1909, but wasn’t consecrated by the Catholic Church until 1989. Having visited on a Sunday, I witnessed parishioners entering the church to my right and the Vodun temple to my left, a harmonious blend of different religious groups practicing their beliefs side by side one another.
Fondation Zinsou
After Marie-Cécile Zinsou had firmly established Benin’s first contemporary art museum in Cotonou, she looked to expand the foundation’s reach and opened up a second location in Ouidah in 2013. The museum is housed in a 1922 Afro-Brazilian style villa that was built by a wealthy merchant family of Agudás, or slaves that had returned to Benin after being freed. Benin’s Afro-Brazilian architectural heritage may not be prominently on display in Cotonou, but due to the strong Portuguese influence in Ouidah, there is an abundance of this gorgeous blend of construction styles to be found here.
Inside the museum you will find a cornucopia of contemporary paintings, sculptures and video installations, showing off the best of West African art. While admission to Fondation Zinsou is free, you will be provided a guide who you will need to tip at the end of tour. All of the English-speaking guides had the day off, so one of the French-speaking guides promised to speak very, very slowly and somehow he managed to communicate both the technical aspects of the pieces as well as the artistic motivations behind each exhibition.
I was particularly delighted with this set of sculptures made from Béninois pottery, gathered from villages across the country. Indoor plumbing and running water is not commonplace in many villages and fetching water from a well or collecting rainwater is essential for life to flourish. Here, these life-giving vessels are assembled to create a Béninois family unit: a mother and father discuss their children who eavesdrop on their parents nearby. The fused pottery has been painted light blue to represent both the heavens which provide the rain and the water that fills the basins.
In another room, my guide explained the importance of female hairstyles in Béninois culture. A hairstyle is a like a fingerprint, telling the story of each woman sporting the intricate weaves and braids. Of course, women in big cities like Cotonou and Ouidah don’t carry on these traditions, but in rural Benin it can still very much be a part of daily life. Not only will one of these hairstyles denote to which ethnic group a woman belongs, but the design will change as she matures and goes through various rituals like marriage and child birth. A married woman with three children will have a very different hairstyle than an unmarried teenage girl entering puberty. The artist has enlarged and transformed these hairstyles to resemble the “dream catchers” of the Native Americans of the Southwestern United States. The hair not only relates history of each woman, but now informs us of what she aspires to become as well.
In the walled-gardens behind the villa, there is a collection of historical sculptures that were once on display around Ouidah. Many are Vodun religious art that tell the tales of their gods and the plants and animals that act as conduits between the human and spirit world. (It is believed that a rainbow-colored python known as Dan can bring the concerns of the people directly to the most elder of the spirits, which is another reason why the serpents are so highly revered by Vodun worshippers.)
If I don’t take a coffee break every few hours I tend to get a little cranky, and lucky Fondation Zinsou had just the cafe I needed with fast WiFi and wide selection of strong Béninois coffees made to order. The colorfully decorated bistro was more stimulating than relaxing, and knowing that I had limited time, I didn’t linger as long with the stacks of books detailing various modes of African art as I would have liked to. Still, the shot of coffee gave me the required energy needed to move on and continue my exploration of Ouidah.
Ouidah’s Afro-Brazilian Heritage
The walk from the art museum to downtown Ouidah takes you through the historic district that exploded with Afro-Brazilian buildings between 1880 and the 1930s. The Portuguese held the strongest ties in the Americas with Brazil and most of the slaves they traded were sent to this South American colony. As an American, when we were taught about the trans-Atlantic slave trade in school, it was never impressed upon us how many slaves also were shipped to the Caribbean and regions of South America in addition to the United States. (Many slaves and indentured servants were also brought to the Caribbean from India, creating a delicate hierarchy of native Caribs, African slaves, Indian slaves and European colonialists, but I’ll explore this more when I write about Trinidad and Tobago.)
Many of these Afro-Brazilian structures are in dire need of restoration. The faded paint and weathered walls certainly create an atmospheric mystique, but if these buildings aren’t renovated soon, they will cease to be structurally sound. This is part of the constant tug and pull of visiting old towns and historic centers. When a city comes in and replaces rotted wood and slaps on a fresh coat of paint, a quaint cobblestone street can suddenly feel like Disney World, causing you to ache for the derelict appeal of the old neighborhood. On the other hand, without the upgrades, many of these buildings would no longer be standing and could face demolition in favor of more modern structures. There will always be this struggle between maintenance and authenticity that will never fully satisfy any traveler, let alone the residents of a city.
Downtown Ouidah
When a powerful Iroko tree that once dominated one of Ouidah’s central squares became blighted with a disease, rather than remove the tree completely, local artist Adanssa Allada was selected to carve scenes from Ouidah’s slave-trading past as well as its Vodun present into the mighty trunk. The tree tells of painful stories from Benin’s shameful history as well as offers hope that despite being ripped from their Motherland, the heritage of the African people will still live on today.
My visit to the commune of a local Vodun chief was certainly one of the stranger and slightly unsettling moments on my trip to West Africa. As I was making my way from the Fondation Zinsou to the Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah (Ouidah History Museum), I noticed that most of the other tourists were being led around by private guides. I felt a sense of superiority that I was an independent agent and proceeded to buy some sandwiches in pretty decent French (if I may say so myself!) before wandering into the heart of downtown. I should have paid more attention in Sunday School, because I forgot that, “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
When you are being led around by a guide everyone leaves you alone. It is clear that you have chosen (and paid) someone to help you out. But if you are by yourself, you’re fair game for anyone looking to make an extra buck by showing you around some corner of the city. I was approached by a young man, no older than myself, and was asked if I’d like to meet a Vodun chief. He seemed like he’d imbibed a few beers before noon, but he also was friendly and I didn’t want to travel with regrets, so I said sure and followed him through the back corridors of Ouidah. I entered a commune where the “royal family” of this chieftain lived. Here I was greeted by a second tipsy fellow who showed me the artwork that adorned this inner atrium.
Both men barely spoke a word of English, but when I told them I was from New York they were excited and referred to me by my home city from that moment on. “Hey, New York, come look at this painting!” “Over here, New York, you will see the fetish that protects our chief.” The chief, as it turns out, was too tired or busy or moody to see me. (Maybe there never was a chief to begin with.) Still, the friendly demeanor of the two men changed a bit when it was clearly time for me to move on. They had shown me around the commune and delivered a few hazy facts and figures. It was now time for them to be paid.
I asked them how much they wanted and they responded with an obscene amount: 14.000cfa ($25US) for each of them! Well, I was not going to pay this crazy price, but I knew I was in a tough spot. I didn’t quite know how to make my way back to the central square, and even if I did, how was I going to get past these two slightly-drunken men without another soul in sight to help me. Suddenly I remembered the sandwiches. I told them that I had spent my last bit of cash at the Temple des Pythons, but I did happen to have these sandwiches if they would except the food as payment for the tour. To my surprise, they were quite content with my compromise and greedily starting eating what was to have been my lunch. Before they could look up, I dashed deftly into the alley and made my way back to the central square. I mistakenly had assumed those with guides were weak, but now I was eager to take the next reliable person up on their offer to show me around.
Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah (Ouidah History Museum)
Enter Guillaume at the Ouidah History Museum. (Top tip: museums are great places to pick up enthusiastic and official guides to show you around a city for the day. Remember to negotiate a price for their services before you start your tour and make sure you agree upon what you will do and if transportation will be included.) Guillaume was my guide at the local history museum, which is housed in the former Portuguese slave fort, Forte de Sao João Baptista de Ajudá (Fort of St. John the Baptist of Ouidah).
When the Portuguese lost control of Elmina Castle to the Dutch in what is present-day Ghana, they moved eastward toward Dahomey where they set up camp in the small village of Ouidah. Soon the French and British also arrived, each of whom built a rival slave trading post alongside that of the Portuguese. The fort was completed in 1721 and commenced operations immediately. The Kings of Dahomey allowed the forts to be built, but they forbade them to placed directly on the beach. Because of that, the future slaves were forced to march the four kilometers from the forts to the shore along what is now known as La Route des Esclaves.
When France was granted control of Dahomey in the 1890s, Portugal was adamant that they retain sovereignty over the area of the fort, almost like how an embassy legally sits on foreign soil. France begrudgingly agreed and the fort stayed in Portugal’s hands for the better part of the 20th Century. In 1958, the Guinness Book of World records declared the fort the smallest colony in the world, both in terms of area and its population of two. Upon Dahomey’s independence from France in 1960, the newly independent government demanded Portugal also return the fort to Dahomey. Portugal and the two guards stationed in the fort refused. After a year of negotiations went nowhere, the Dahomey army approached the fort to take it by force, if necessary. The two guards attempted to burn down the fort rather than surrender, but the army was able to put out the fire and save the structure. Portugal did not formally recognize the loss of the fort until 1975.
Today the museum details the slave trade in Ouidah and the two million who were shipped from its shores bound for the Americas. Many of the French and British-sold slaves found themselves in the United States or the Caribbean, but most of the slaves that passed through the Fort of St. John the Baptist of Ouidah ended up in Brazil, where there is a large Vodun-practicing Béninois population to this day. A good chunk of the museum is given over to the influence of the diaspora in Brazil and how the traditions of the two countries have commingled over the centuries. The museum also doesn’t shy away from the role the Dahomey Kings played in facilitating the slave trade. The Europeans would never have been as successful as they were without the support and cooperation from the Dahomey leaders in Abomey.
After my tour of the museum, Guillaume asked if I had been down the Route des Esclaves yet. I told him no, but that walking the route was the next thing on my list. Guillaume had his own zem and told me he would be willing to carry me the length of the route there and back, stopping at the important memorials and monuments along the way (with historical commentary, of course). I thought his price (10.000cfa/$18US) was probably a little steep, but after my previous experience at the commune, I decided not to mess around and take him up on his offer. I also knew that walking the 4km each way to the beach and back would be cutting it close for me to return to Cotonou before sunset.
La Route des Esclaves
The first stop on the Route des Esclaves is Place Chacha, the square where the slave auction was held. The slaves were lined up in the square under the tree (pictured below) that was planted in 1747 by a Dahomey King. The auctions were initially overseen by Don Francisco de Souza, a Brazilian merchant who became one of the richest and most powerful slave traders on the Gulf of Guinea. After being purchased, the slaves were immediately branded so they could easily be separated again once they had been taken off the slave ships in the Americas.
If you look up into the tree today, you will notice the flags of many countries from North, Central and South America. As the descendants of slaves make return pilgrimages to Ouidah, they climb the tree and tie a fragment of their new homeland to give shade to the place their ancestors had been sold and brutally marked as property.
After the brands were seared into the flesh of each slave, they were marched further along the route to the Tree of Forgetting. Here the men marched around the tree nine times; the women completed the circle in the opposite direction seven times. The slave traders told the slaves they must forget their origins and histories. The ritual would erase their memories and their African spirits. (Interestingly, the Tree of Forgetting is the only tree that withered and died along the route and has been replaced with another, non-original tree.)
The Zomachi Memorial was still under construction when I visited, but it is set to house a museum and resource center for those in the diaspora seeking to find research their ancestors who passed through Ouidah. It was on this site that the branded slaves were locked in shackles in the same position for two weeks to further break their spirits. A metal bar was place across each slave’s teeth so they could never fully close their jaws and they were contorted into painful positions to stamp out any thoughts of rebellion or disobedience. Many slaves attempted to commit suicide here as the torture was so great.
After two weeks’ time, the slaves were once again taken farther down the route. Any slave who had died or was near death was thrown into a mass grave at this spot. As a visitor, you are asked to be completely silent when approaching this stop on the route. Guillaume and I solemnly walked the zem to the memorial that now stands over the mass grave and paid our respects to the lives that were senselessly lost here.
A piece of contemporary art known as both the Memorial of Memory and the Wall of Lamentations has been erected over the mass grave. Many of the elderly or ill had not yet died when they were thrown into the pit and those who were able to continue on the journey to the shore were forced to listen to their pleas for help made with their dying breaths as the healthy soldiered on.
Unlike the Tree of Forgetting, the original Tree of Return still thrives to this day. Here the slaves walked in a circle three times to ask that their souls return to Africa when they died. Their physical bodies would never see their homeland again, but their souls would be sure to return across the ocean and find peace from whence they came.
Despite the heavy nature of the Route des Esclaves, the road takes you past some stunning vistas of the Béninois countryside. Between Ouidah and the beach are several villages that rely on fishing and agriculture to survive. Guillaume and I stopped for a moment to take in this idyllic sight, a reminder that despite Benin’s horrible past, a peaceful future has found itself on the other side.
Finally, at the end of the route is the Door of No Return. The gate and memorial have only been added to the beach in modern times; when the slaves arrived on the beach they were taken by smaller boats to the slave ships where up to 500 slaves were crammed into the bowels of each vessel. The voyage across the Atlantic could taken up to three months and roughly one third of all slaves died of disease or starvation while making the crossing.
The memorialization of the Route des Esclaves came about through the UNESCO-sponsored “Ouidah ‘92” project. Only two years earlier, Benin had shed itself of Kérékou’s Marxist-Leninist dictatorship and was finding its footing as a democratic nation. Tourism, which was near non-existent during the communist regime, now stood as a focal point for the new government. Literally hundreds of murals and smaller sculptures were commissioned from Béninois artists to line the Route des Esclaves, but the pathway was in need of a grand finale, a statement piece that would cap off this emotional journey. The Door of No Return makes a definite impression, stately claiming its place on the beach where so many saw Africa for the last time.
The bas-reliefs of hundreds of chained slaves marching from the Tree of Return to the beach were created by Béninois artist Fortuné Bandeira; Yves Kpede was responsible for the Egungun that flank either side of the gate. In Yoruba culture, Egungun are masked and costumed figures who honor their ancestors through religious ceremonies and dance. The spirits of the ancestors form a collective force that can protect and guide their living descendants, heightening the importance of the ritual at the Tree of Return which ensured each slave’s soul’s return to Africa all the more urgent. These Egungun call on the spirits of the two million slaves who departed from this beach to tell us of their stories and to never allow these atrocities to happen again.
As I stood with Guillaume admiring this final monument along the route, I was reminded of my own privilege I have as a white, American traveler. There are no “doors of no return” for me. My passport allows me access to most nations on this Earth and I have the means and opportunity to travel at relative will (barring Covid-19 restrictions, of course). International travel is a joy for me, but the origins of international travel come from a place of conquest and cruelty beyond our wildest imagination. It is incredibly humbling to visit such a “tourist attraction” as the Route des Esclaves and actually follow the procession each slave was forced to endure. It’s easy to get caught up in checking another country or world capital or UNESCO site off the list, but when you experience a punch to the gut like La Porte de Non Retour, you are reminded of why you are traveling in the first place. Maybe the spirits summoned by the Egungun are speaking to me through the likes of Richmond, Igor, Cousin, Edem and Robert. They have continued to guide me to be a better person; perhaps the Egungun also rubbed off on me a little after my visit, compelling me to tell their story to you now. Whatever the case may be, this trip to Ouidah and my three small West African nations have made an impression that will last a lifetime.
Tes intéressent
Merci bcp