{"id":426,"date":"2012-07-04T09:53:07","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T09:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/?p=426"},"modified":"2014-06-18T03:12:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T03:12:00","slug":"into-benin-auberge-de-grand-popo-and-intro-to-voodoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/?p=426","title":{"rendered":"Into Benin, Auberge de Grand Popo and Intro to Voodoo"},"content":{"rendered":"

We crossed the border into Benin on a Sunday afternoon after an uneventful hour long drive across narrow Togo from Lome.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The border crossing was also uneventful, the officials at both sides of the border were polite and professional.<\/p>\n

Timing was great for a late afternoon arrival at Auberge de Grand Popo, a very laid back beach spot along the western coast Benin near the Mono River.\u00c2\u00a0 Its features include an almost idyllic campsite set just back from the beach among trees.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 There are basic sanitation facilities for campers, but the\u00c2\u00a0 restaurant and small pool set in bushes are only a short walk down a path.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 We are here in the off season so it is very quiet, but we really liked this place and it was from here that we made our first foray into the\u00c2\u00a0 culture and environment of Benin.<\/p>\n

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Many African countries have varying degrees of voodoo traditions but Benin is considered to be the source.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the slaves that were exported from here\u00c2\u00a0 went to Haiti and Brazil, and took with them beliefs and practices that are known as voodoo.\u00c2\u00a0 To understand this better we hired a guide to take us into a so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153voodoo village\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a good place to go because we are off what tourist circuit as exists here, so there did not appear to be any thing being put on for tourists. \u00c2\u00a0The guide we went with takes people there so they are accustomed to visitors and were somewhat accommodating, we had schnapps at 11:00 AM with the voodoo priest, who had just buried his son, who died at age 50.
\nThe principal physical manifestation of the culture consists of several simple, occasionally disturbing, shrines constructed throughout the village.<\/p>\n

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There are many different “gods” serving many purposes.\u00c2\u00a0 There was an overal “Dieu protecteur du village”, another for good fishing, another to protect against smallpox, etc etc.\u00c2\u00a0 Some are figurative, others appear to be collections of assorted materials, almost like found art.<\/p>\n

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Laura and our guide Mathias at one of the voodoo shrines<\/p><\/div>\n

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Strolling through the voodoo village<\/p><\/div>\n

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Our visit also gave us the opportunity to see some community development in action.\u00c2\u00a0 The village was in the process of constructing a maternity wing on the health centre and needed to raise the level of the land to prevent flooding.\u00c2\u00a0 The site was at one end of the village, at the other end end\u00c2\u00a0 was a huge pile of sand that had been dredged from the Mono River.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 There were about 10 men shovelling sand into a big old dump truck (which did not seem to have brakes, someone had to thr0w down a block of wood in front of a tire to make it stop!) , at the other end there were as many women taking the sand dumped by the truck into pans and distributing it around the site.<\/p>\n

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Women buidling maternity ward – there is at least one baby seen here being carried in the traditional way<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We crossed the border into Benin on a Sunday afternoon after an uneventful hour long drive across narrow Togo from Lome.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The border crossing was also uneventful, the officials at both sides of the border were polite and professional. Timing was great for a late afternoon arrival at Auberge de Grand Popo, a very laid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16,25,27,13,24,14,15,22,21,23],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-west-african-wander-taking-it-on-the-road","tag-4x4","tag-africa","tag-benin","tag-defender","tag-expedition","tag-land-rover","tag-overland","tag-overlanding","tag-west-africa","tag-wheatcroft","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}