A Voodoo Ceremony

I was feeling better after a nap and decided to have dinner in the hotel garden, when the woman came to take my order I asked her what the two tattoo’s on her arm said. She told me they were names, one of them was her own name and the other name was Adem… she doesn’t know who Adem is, but his name is tattooed on her. 

A Japanese man was the only other person at the hotel so I struck up conversation, as I tended to do when I met other travellers. His name was Tomo and he’d been travelling for two years. He started in Russia, saw a lot of Europe then went on to Latin America and now Africa. His plan is to return home once he is fluent in five languages apart from Japanese. I asked him what his biggest disappointment with his travels so far was and he said not getting robbed in Rio, apparently he wanted a story to tell his friends so at 2 one morning he took some cash and nothing else and walked the streets alone for hours before going home defeated, cash still in hand.

I told him that during the day I asked some young guys on a street corner if anything was happening in the evening and they had told me about a Voodoo drumming ceremony, I convinced him to come along.

We got a zemi and went into town where I had been directed by the guys earlier. From several blocks away we heard the sound of beating drums and the streets gradually jammed with people. Tomo and I jumped off and worked our way through the crowds. A man named Rafue, with the five Voodoo scars etched on his face nominated himself as our personal guide. When we neared the centre of the mob four people in costume danced out the door of a little mud shack. Their costumes were made of colourful but well worn out material, somehow over time it had managed to maintain a slightly box shape. They wore tight stockings and pointy-toed cloth slippers. Their faces were completely covered in a dirty cream mesh. Two of the four dances marched right up to tomo and I and I took two steps back, I always feel uneasy when I can’t see someone’s face. They held out their hand for money. Tomo gave them a coin, not worth much, and through the translation of Rafue they told us we are to stand back and not come close to them.

Standing back I watched the crowd form a circle around the dancers. The beating of the drums intensified as the crowd got louder and louder, cheering and chanting to the rhythm of the beat. The four costumed men twirled and danced in the centre of the circle as the crowd stamped their feet and clapped their hands. Louder and faster the drum beat grew and louder and faster the four men spun. The intensity grew and grew, it reached a peak and then 

Whack!

At the sound of the crack the crowd ran it was a mini stampede. Those at the back fled up the street and those in the centre scrambled on each other trying to clamber away. My heart began to pound louder than the drums that had just broken into silence.

Whack!

As the crowd dispersed I could see one of the men in costume, stick raised above his head ready to bring it down on a man who was caught in the thick of the crowd. 

One by one I saw the other costumed men, each with a stick in hand, lashing out at the nearest back.

Nearly as quickly as the crowd had dispersed they began to regroup. The drum beat began again and the four men in costume lowered their sticks and began to dance and twirl once more. The crowd were laughing, cheering and began to move along to the beat of the drums.

The costumed dancers in the centre could be likened to a mix of Chinese New Year performers and Turkish Whirling Dervishes. They would vigorously shake the head piece of their costumes like a Chinese New Year dragon, bobbing up and down and waving their arms around then they would spin in circles on the spot, their coats flung out around them spinning faster and faster like a Whirling Dervish. 

Stop. A second’s pause as breaths are held in anticipation…

Whack.

Again the crowds would disperse and people would jump out of the way of the descending sticks.

Only a few people genuinely seemed scared of getting struck, the rest of the crowd seemed to take delight in the game.

The ceremony lasted about a half hour before the costumed characters retreated back into the little mud hut again and people slowly wandered back down the lanes to wherever it was they came from.

Tomo and I decided to de-brief over a beer. Rafue dropped us to a bar lined street on the back of his bike and as we climbed off he grabbed hold of my leg and begged me to stay with him. The only way I could get him to let go was to promise to meet him the next day.

My favourite thing to do on a hot, sticky West African night, after a long exhausting day, was to sit on a street corner with a cold beer. I could sit for hours and watch the locals go about their daily business. I loved watching the kids play with whatever bit of scrap they could find – a bicycle wheel, a couple of sticks and some string or a tin can. I liked watching to women still at work, packing away their food stalls, cooking their children’s dinner, while the men sat idly with their friends drinking beer. It was even better doing it with Tomo, not just for the conversation but for the protection of unwanted attention from men.

Children that passed were far more interested in Tomo then me, they were convinced he was Jackie Chan and demanded he do some kung fu for them. Actually, Tomo had a black belt in karate but was foresighted enough not to start performing knowing too well that if he did they would never leave us alone.

It was nice having company and Tomo’s travel experiences inspired me and excited me for my own still to come. He was leaving the next day, heading for the Congo, and I still had the Voodoo doctor to see the next day. Although most days were frustrating and exhausting, this was one of those moments where I really felt content to be so far away from home. That evening in a place so foreign to anywhere I had known, in the company of a fascinating friend I will never see again, I sat back and smiled, I was sitting in the thick of my dream.