Ouidah - December 2016

[Belatedly chronicling our visit to Benin...]

Created by the French during the war against the Dahomey (then-rulers of most of Benin), this cemetery was originally for Catholic converts who would no longer bury their dead in their homes/compounds. Soldiers from France and other parts of French West Africa were also buried here.

It had been 17 years since I last visited Benin, with some friends and fellow Vandals from the University of Ghana on a 5 day trip that also took in Togo. In 1999 we visited Lome, Cotonou, Ganvie (a touristy outing to the “Venice Africaine,” given that housing was built on the lagoon), and Ouidah. We were quite impressed with Ouidah and the Porte de Non Retour (Door of No Return), although on account of our short stay we rode zemidjans down rather than walking the Route des Esclaves (Slave Route).

Place Chacha, where slave auctions took place.

Ouidah is a couple of hours west of Cotonou, and was a major slave trading post for centuries. Portuguese slavers traded with the Dahomey kingdom in the interior. We reread “The Viceroy of Ouidah” by Bruce Chatwin which, while rather florid in its prose and fixated on its Brazilian protagonist's fate and suffering, it did describe in detail the extent to which slavery and slave raiding destroyed lives and the political fabric of the region. It's a dramatization of the life of Francisco Felix de Souza (known locally as Chacha), who was installed by the king of the Dahomey in 1818 to manage the slave trade in Ouidah.

The Tree of Forgetting: prisoners were walked around the tree (men nine times, women seven) with the goal that they would forget their past, their origins and their cultural identity in order to become people without the will to rebel. The slaves were also branded here.

The Tree of Forgetting was replaced by a statue of the goddess Mami Wata, who is known in various forms throughout western and central Africa.

Wall of Lamentations commemorating the many people who died while waiting for days or weeks in the Zomai (meaning "where the light does not go") Hut/Cabin before slaving ships arrived.

 After checking into our hotel, we decided to walk around Ouidah and visit Fortaleza São João Batista (the center of the slave trade in this area). After a delicious wakye breakfast, we bumped into Juste, a tour guide who expressed an interest in taking us along the walk of no return. We agreed to meet him the next day.

The governor/viceroy's residence at Fortaleza São João Batista, Ouidah. Built by the Portuguese in 1721, it remained under their control until the newly-independent Republic of Dahomey annexed it in 1961. Naturally, the Portuguese tried to burn it down before leaving.

At the fort we were given a perfunctory tour that bypassed an   of photographs by Pierre Verger, who had chronicled cultural practices in Benin and the African diaspora. The images juxtaposed Beninois ceremonies with those carried out in Bahia, Brazil. The similarities were striking, and contemporary practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religious groups called candombles proclaim the connection to their ancestral roots in southern Togo, Benin and Nigeria. We learned more about the Afro-Brasileiros who returned to the Gulf of Benin at the Casa do Brasil and in our subsequent visit to Porto Novo.

The Tree of Return: signifying that slaves' souls would return after their deaths. 

We walked with Juste down to the Porte de Non Retour (“door of no return”), passing numerous interesting trees, a cemetery, and an old train station that linked Ouidah with nearby Togo. Juste has been working as a guide on the route d’esclaves since 2008, keeping fairly busy as he described most seasons aside from September to November as busy.

Salt collection in the mangrove on the Route des Esclaves.

Compared to 1999, the area around the Porte de Non Retour was much more developed, featuring numerous restaurants and vendors. There’s also a new museum – Porte de Retour – aimed at celebrating the accomplishments of people in the diaspora. It wasn’t very well done, though, only featuring some posters, a few artifacts, and books turned to a relevant page that then had pieces of glass placed on top of them.

La Porte de Non Retour.

While in Ouidah, the Vodoun capital of Benin, we made the obligatory visit to the Python Temple (across the street from the cathedral). The snakes were suitably sleepy, and nobody considered the two religious sites (the temple and the church) to be in competition with one another.

We also visited Fondation Zinsou's museum in an Afro-Brazilian villa built in the 1920s. The museum included historical artifacts, artwork and a beautiful cafe. It was a nice complement to Fondation Zinsou's main gallery in Cotonou.

Mami Wata in the Fondation Zinsou's garden, Ouidah.

At Fondation Zinsou, Ouidah. Letter to chief of security of Bukavu? (in the then Belgian Congo): "Sir, I have the honour of sharing with you photos of Bendelu Mukwalu and Sumaili Bulangi, who are monitors [practitioners?] of indigenous magic. You can see their tattoos, found on their chests and near their left hands. Both can be found in prison."

Casa do Brasil - former residence of the Brazilian Governor.

We visited Casa do Brasil / Maison de Bresil and got a tour of a large warehouse featuring artwork depicting elements of vodoun beliefs. As the caretaker helpfully pointed out, “This God stays in the home to protect it from evil. That’s his penis.”

Vandalism

The 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence is also Commonwealth Hall's 50th year. The Vandal City, as Commonwealth is dubbed, is renowned for the spirit and enthusiasm of its residents. I experienced this during my year at the University of Ghana. My hallmates (V-Mates) had initiations for freshmen (and foreign students), pre-dawn route marches around campus, weekly debates on the hall steps, and an annual hall week replete with school boy, traditional wear and crossdressing days.



For all the shenanigans, the Vandals are by and large excellent students. The hall is held in such regard that their Jubilee Durbar was attended by John Kufuor, the president of Ghana, among other luminaries.

While visiting an old friend (and Old Vandal) in Winneba, we came across a television programme on the history of Commonwealth and the ethos of Vandalism. Although not a very incisive look (it was funded by an Old Vandal), the show had some fun reminders, such as that the other residence halls are referred to as "the colonies." When I visited there I was uniformly greeted with shouts of V-Mate! and got to see that the spirit is still strong. The hall is actually in fairly good condition, although the old problems remain (the water wasn't on that day). It was fun to get back and reminisce about the days there, the closest I got to fraternity living.

An End to Ponding?

27 January 2006 -- I was listening to some listener feedback on the BBC World Service this morning. This is always entertaining, as the BBC will put just about any text message, now matter how deranged, on the air (Network Africa is especially fun because of this). Anyway, the callers and texters were commenting on a piece that focused on initiation rites at universities. The original story was about one man's experience with some form of hazing at a university in central Africa (I believe it was Congo-Kinshasa).

One of the respondents wrote about "ponding," a rite of passage into Commonwealth Hall (a.k.a. Vandal City) at the University of Ghana. Built by the Brits in the 1940s, the University features some nice architecture. Commonwealth, on top of the hill, has a terraced structure, and here and there are small rectangular ponds. It is into these ponds that new Vandals are violently dunked (in the case of Freshers) or allowed to gently roll in (exchange students such as myself). A little while ago, the listener wrote, one victim of a vigorous ponding (around 10 Vandals hold you and slam you up and down on the water) suffered a "sprained femur" and ended up missing the school year.

The university authorities suspended those responsible and banned ponding, draining the ponds (which I think have relied on rainwater rather than plumbing for the last few decades) for good measure. I was saddened to hear this, as I look back on that night with some fondness. To be sure, my initiation as a Vandal was gentler than more, but there was still plenty of vitriolic epithets to take in (not to mention the latent homoeroticism of young men carrying on in various states of undress). Another incident made this a seminal night in the early days of my stay in Ghana. Shortly before being carted off for ponding, our hardy crew (there were six of us from America in the dorm - me, Isaac, Ziggy, Kwame, Guy Jesus, and Snake) was robbed by a couple of shady guys (not university affiliated). The next several days saw us pushing the police into action (with much credit due to plying them with yoghurt ice creams) to capture the thieves. The eventual early morning raid (complete with automatic firearms) would not have been possible without the assistance of two young men who remain great friends to this day -- Senanu and Essel. Senanu's quite old now, though.