Later, we were invited (and you must be invited) to attend a real voodoo ceremony in a local village with dancing and drumming
. The village was very serious about this and it was not just a money-making gimmack for the village. The word "voodoo" is traceable to an African word meaning "spirit" and practictioners were taken as slaves to Haiti, still a major center for voodoo. There are different forms of voodoo: Fetishes (items sold in the Togo Voodoo Market, e.g. the dried bats), spirit possession and sacrifices. Today's ceremony would involve spirit possession. The Ewe-speaking people have a strong attachment to animist beliefs even though many of them are Christians.
First Roberto got us settled in the background in the yard of a small compound surrounded by huts while the entire village assembled. The Ewe consider twins especially auspicious and lucky...many bronzes and wood carving show representations of twins...and one woman was nursing her twins at the same time...
waiting for the "spirit possession"
The dummers set up....and started beating a steady rhythm...
drummers
One after another, an individual woman listening to the drums would fall into a trance-like state and rise...start dancing...and eventually either faint, or go into convulsions, along with eye-rolling and grimaces. When that happened, the other women jump up, support the possessed woman and lead her into a hut until the trance wore off. Sweat was pouring off the drummers (one cleverly had a towel around his neck), the dancers and us.
trance dancing
fainting woman
baby sleeping on mother's back
After an exhausting ceremony, ex-Marine was surrounded by a crowd of children interested in his t-shirt with animals on it....View image...
This experience was unlike anything I had ever witnessed...the hypnotic drumming almost put me into a trance. Wrung out by all this possession, it was back in the vehicles when Roberto spotted something going on in a village we were passing. He raced the vehicles toward it and there was another ceremony going on with what looked like a dancing haystack.
dancing haystack
The straw haystack was spinning and turning with the villagers watching raptly. I have no idea what the dance was about (ex-Marine thinks it may have been a wedding) but it certainly was unusual and when it was over, the dancer turned over his haystack to show us what it looked like. It must have been hotter than blazes inside that!
inside of haystack costume
In Africa, there is always something happening. This is opportunistic touring at its best...with infinite possibilities and sights to see.
Our final destination tonight was Hotel le Lac still in Togo....
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Published by Sheila Simkin on January 4, 2007 01:22 PM
