Be prepared to wait. Time is the only thing everyone here has, and they have plenty.
When I told friends I was flying to Benin, alone, with no itinerary, their replies fell into two categories: "Why on earth?" and "Where is that?"
Why on earth is a very good question, though where travel is concerned I'm inclined to let the burden of proof rest in the camp of "Why not?" Among African nations, Benin doesn't have the faunal glamour of Kenya, the cultural cachet of Senegal, nor the political notoriety of Zaire or Somalia. But Africa pulls on me, the whole or any part; having rubbed against it in childhood like iron against a magnet, my poles of attraction are permanently set. Some acquaintances had recently moved to Benin and declared I was welcome to visit. And so, when other work took me as far as London, I stepped off the shelf of Europe into that bewitched place where anything might happen and your French need not be perfect: West Africa.
The second question--where?--is hardly easier to answer. The Republic of Benin, whose name prior to 1975 was Dahomey, passes almost unnoticed on a map: a slim knife of a country between Togo and Nigeria, it is roughly as large and populous as Tennessee. But its narrow borders contain a world of different nations. The climate changes along a north-south gradient from arid savannah down to humid coastal palm plantations, and like most African countries, the modern boundaries reflect colonial decisions that have nothing to do with ethnic unity. Within Benin, and overflowing its borders on all sides, are people who speak Fon, Mina, Yoruba, and other completely unrelated languages. In the northeastern drylands, Islamic influence is strong among the pastoral Fulani. They have little in common with their Somba neighbors, who build castlelike family compounds in the northwest, or the Fon farmers of the south, or the Aiza fishing people who travel by canoe and live in villages of stick houses on stilts over the coastal lagoons.
And so it was that when I asked, in a Cotonou restaurant, for a mashed-yam staple of the north called igname pile, the waiter grinned broadly and said, "You'll have to come home with me, then. These people down here in the south don't know how to cook."
Southerners are likely to be just as contemptuous of their northern neighbors, who wear startling scars and tattoos on their faces as tribal identifiers. "I would never dream of marrying a woman with tattoos," a Cotonou University student told me, and another young man insisted, when he learned I was going north, that the food in the markets up there is unclean. Members of different tribes, even when they move into the cities, tend to segregate themselves. When the Marxist government led by Ahmed Kerekou--a northerner--was overthrown in 1990, it was on regional grounds as much as ideological ones. Many northerners remain loyal to Kerekou.
In the past, these people had even less in the way of common interest: the Dahomey Kingdom dominated the region for centuries with its army, and amassed stunning wealth by selling the men and women of neighboring tribes into slavery.
Now these tribes, as different as stone, paper, and knife, are crowded into a single national domicile and expected to behave like family; to speak French, agree upon a president, and consider themselves "Beninois." It's a nice theory. The truth is far more interesting.
The 540-kilometer drive to Natitingou is a long, long day. As our bush taxi headed north from Cotonou, commerce gave way to countryside: deep fields of high grass, then forests defoliated from drought, then hillocks of rounded boulders. Termite nests poked up everywhere like gigantic sandcastles. The air hung thick with red dust. It was February, season of the harmattan--a hazy heat wave on a languid extended visit from the Sahara. No rain had fallen for four months, and none was expected until late March. Fat-trunked, flat-topped baobab trees punctuated the landscape with comic relief. The car startled a grouse from the roadside brush; the driver swerved, hit it, ran back to collect it. Later we would deliver it to his mother.
Whenever we stopped in a village, which happened often, we were mobbed by children selling bananas. I got out when I could, to walk among the thatch-roofed mud houses, and was greeted by cries of Yovo! Yovo!--"white person." I was the first they'd seen all day, maybe all year, and for kids it's a thrilling game. Adults simply say, "Bonjour, Yovo." I managed to force a smile, though I felt my pale skin fairly glowing.
"Well, what would you say to an African you saw in America?" a young woman asked, when I complained about this later.
I told her I would not, under any circumstances, say, "Hi, black person."
"Well, here we are all different tribes. We identify ourselves by tribe, and that's how we greet strangers."
I felt faintly consoled, and tried to represent myself--in this land of differences--as a cheerful, upstanding member of the Yovo tribe. Eventually I arrived in Natitingou about the same color as anyone, covered from teeth to shoes in fine red grit. I gratefully showered at the home of my friends, Peace Corps volunteers who taught in Natitingou's secondary school. Their cement house nestled with several others under the canopy of a cashew tree. All night long the apple-sized cashew fruits dropped, socking the tin roof like wayward softballs. Around midnight the bats began to sing in unearthly voices that rang like bells. I lay under my mosquito net, wide awake, unable either to shut away or resist the foreign night.
Northwestern Benin, divided by the dramatic escarpments of the Atakora Chain, is rolling savannah, baobab trees, the Pendjari National Wildlife Refuge, and the remarkable tatas of the Somba people. These compounds, scattered out of earshot of one another over the plain, are built of hard red mud like the termite nests and bulge in the same organic way, each one housing an extended family. The cylindrical towers hold stored grain, and high walls connecting them enclose private courtyards. Animals dwell on the ground floor; people sleep upstairs.
I'd been warned that the Somba people are private. But I was fascinated by the lumpy, castlelike tatas, and too curious. After visiting the market one day I ambled out across a rutted mealie field, vaguely in the direction of a tata. Whistling, I paused to inspect the baobab trees, the ants, the sky, enjoying my nature walk. When I stepped within a stone's throw of the tata, an old woman flew out the door, brandishing over her head a yam the size of my arm. I hastened away.
I'd caught only a glimpse of the inner courtyard and its host of fetishes--low mud pedestals crowned with calabash bowls--representing the spirits of ancestors and a conduit to higher powers. Not only the tatas but most other villages have fetishes. Usually they appear darkly spattered with fresh blood, a disturbing sight for eyes unaccustomed to such. In Beninois markets I'd seen surly dogs lined up for sale--not as pets. And once along a roadside I caught sight of a procession of young women with live chickens clasped to their heads, dancing toward a ceremonial animal sacrifice.
This part of Africa is the birthplace of vodoun, which emigrated with the slave trade to Haiti, Brazil, and other lands where voodoo still thrives. Seventy percent of Beninois place themselves in the category of "animist," where religion is concerned, and nearly everyone wears the gris-gris, a personal fetish to ward off bad luck and bad will. It doesn't necessarily preclude belief in Catholicism or Islam; it's simply an acknowledgment of the powers at work here.
My visit happened to coincide with a much-publicized vodoun festival, and a pamphlet published for this event explained, in its way, the premise: "Every creature--animal, vegetable, or human, in an obligatory rapport with nature--disposes an energy intermingled with and dependent upon the vibrations of Djoogbe, the most powerful of the vodoun mysteries."
I began to fathom the extent of these mysteries while talking with a man named Julian, who was born in the north but went to Cotonou for a university education. I found him articulate, practical, and by his own assertion, not religious. When we spoke of his family he told me his mother had ten children, of whom five were killed.
I asked, "Five of them died?"
"They were killed," he repeated, pointedly. "My father's other wife was very jealous of my mother."
I was incredulous. "So she murdered your brothers and sisters?"
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nbsp; "No, not herself." He was patient with my ignorance. "She went to a fetisher who knew how to use vodoun."
Several days later, on the road south again, I kept my eyes on the horizon, where lightning was glancing up like sparks in dry grass. Suddenly the sky broke open and drenched the land. A red flood gushed through village streets, women's draped skirts clung to their legs, and kids danced, ankle-deep. I could not help but point out that there was supposed to be a month left of the dry season. The taxi driver answered flatly, "It's that festival they're having in the south. All those feticheurs in one place mess up the weather."
The Royal Palace Museum at Abomey, in central Benin, is a monument made of red clay soil and blood. The twelve successive kings of the Dahomey Empire struck fear through West Africa for two and a half centuries, prior to the French conquest in 1892. When a Dahomey king died, his subjects killed huge numbers of war prisoners in his honor and mixed their blood into the walls of a temple built to house his spirit. The prisoners would otherwise have been sold to Portuguese slave traders, so it's hard to assess the exact degree of their bad luck. I felt chilled, considering their lives, as a museum guide led me through the labyrinth of the palace's red walls. We entered a hall of huge carved animals, the royal icons for different kings: a blue chameleon, a copper-covered lion, a hyena with a poor wide-eyed, half-swallowed goat sticking out of its mouth. (That one, I was told, symbolizes the king's lack of compassion for enemies.) Specifics of history were recorded on giant appliqued tapestries on the wall. The one devoted to Guezo, ninth in the line of kings, showed Guezo himself engaged in one of his legendary sports: beating an enemy over the head with the unfortunate's own dismembered leg. In the long hall that housed all twelve kings' wooden thrones, Guezo's stood out, twice as high as the others, resting on the skulls of four of his important enemies. "They were Yoruba," the guide stated placidly as I stared at the varnished skulls. "From north of here."
In another courtyard, a small temple held the remains of wives of the tenth ruler, Glele. When a king died, the guide explained, forty-one of his wives were also killed, to keep him company. ("Would those have been his most or least favorite?" I asked; the guide said, "Probably the prettiest." So. A high price for beauty.) We crossed the compound, past a long row of cannons bought from the Portuguese for fifteen slaves apiece, and arrived at the tomb of Glele himself. I was asked to remove my sandals, out of respect, before ducking through a doorway into the dim clay room. A fabric-draped bed marked the burial spot. On market days, townspeople bring food here to leave as offerings.
I returned blinking to the bright courtyard, wondering what it could be in this ferocious history that still inspires devotion. African political scientists point out that tribal wars are a legacy of colonialism, with its doctrines of cultural superiority and its habit of roping different cultures together inside arbitrary borders. Undoubtedly this is true, but Abomey stands as a testimony to precolonial horrors. Silently I walked past piles of charred animal bones left behind from a recent ceremony. Yesterday's rain had settled the dust, and in the palms above me even the birds seemed subdued.
Ouidah, the historic point of departure for most of the slaves sold from West Africa, had been chosen as the noisy heart of the International Vodoun Festival. The old Portuguese fort, which houses a museum on slavery, I found crowded with African tourists participating in what mostly resembled a street fair.
On the edge of town, just out of earshot of all the hubbub, was the Sacred Forest, a shadowy glen where fetish chiefs are buried. Huge statues of vodoun divinities had been erected there among the trees, for the tourists. I walked among them, stopping to admire Legba, a household protector: he sported the horns of a bull and a huge, erect penis. A woman standing beside me was wearing the image of Pope John Paul II all over her body--a special edition of wax cloth commemorating the recent papal visit. She fanned herself in the steamy heat and rested a hand on Legba's giant bronze foot.
As the only Yovo in sight, I'd attracted a crowd of children. One of them cried whenever I looked at him. Several asked for money, and another wanted to know if I'd marry him. "How many wives are you going to have, total?" I asked. He thought six. "Then forget it," I said.
My entourage and I left the forest and walked through the outskirts of town. I heard a deep boom like a foghorn, then saw, emerging from a doorway, a six-foot, writhing haystack. The children screamed, "Feticheur!" and we followed him as he boomed and danced through Ouidah's narrow back streets. In the plaza our fetish joined other dancing haystacks, one of whom had a devil's head. The dancing would go on into the night.
I wandered behind the fort and by pure dumb accident stumbled onto the vodoun market. Dozens of fetishers had laid out their wares on the ground: rows of animal skins and bird bodies, turtle skulls, dried chameleons, dark monkey hands lined up in a beseeching row, palms up. I was horrified by this trade in literal flesh and bone (wondering how much of the pharmacopeia was rare or endangered), but also enthralled by the sense of secret business. For nearly an hour I eavesdropped on customers as they recited their maladies and received their prescriptions.
Eventually I collected my nerve and approached the young apprentice of a fetisher. "Something for my love life," I told him. "Ah oui, mademoiselle" he said, nodding, with the precise demeanor of a young physician. He introduced himself, asked some diagnostic questions, then led me into a small tent. My heart began to pound. Inside, lined up museumlike, were hundreds of gris-gris. There are different types, he explained clinically, for success in business, for improving the memory, for safe travel. He briefly assessed his inventory and produced my love charm: two small sticks bound to a piece of bone, stained dark with blood. This is a powerful one, he said, blessed in a fire ceremony at the temple in Abomey. It has la force Africaine. He provided me with extremely complex instructions, promising that if correctly used my gris-gris would repel all the wrong sorts of men, attract the right one, and keep him interested. Then he produced a bell from some hidden place, rang it forcefully in my ears, and sang an elaborate chant from which I could pick out only my name, repeated three times. He touched the charm to my collarbone, and then it was mine. For approximately three dollars I walked away with a guarantee of future bliss.
Back at the street fair, in the smoky heat among vendors of souvenirs and street food, a flock of kids danced around a boom box playing Lionel Richie. In the shadow of the Portuguese fort, the history of slavery, and the dark thunderclouds attracted by too many fetishers in one place, this carnival atmosphere struck me as bizarre, if not outright glib. I had a beer at a makeshift cafe and met a university student, Soulemaine Moreira, whose last name came from the Brazilian family that owned his grandparents. I asked him, "Don't you think about the people who got sent out from this port?"
"We think of them, of course," he replied. "We couldn't forget. Slavery was a terrible tragedy. But look at how it contributed to the cultural development of the New World."
Lionel Richie picked up a new beat, and a woman grilling meat nearby began to dance, elbows out, her fork in the air. Like the Moreira family, this music had made a long, circular trip home. I tried to imagine an America without Michael Jackson or Magic Johnson, without jazz, Motown, break dancing, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Taj Mahal, George Washington Carver, James Earl Jones, Maya Angelou. I couldn't picture it--anymore, I'm sure, than Soulemaine Moreira could imagine a Benin without Peugeot taxis. The legacy of colonialism is a world of hurt and cross-pollinated beauty, and we take it from there.
In the gathering dusk I walked through town watching drummers work in tight knots beneath overarching trees, driving their rhythms through crowds who swept with bare feet the dirt floors of these secret amphitheaters. Women moved with babies on their backs. No one kept still.
Finally, very late, I left Ouidah to return to Cotonou in a bush taxi. There were eight of us wedged in. Incredibly, we took on a ninth. In the way of oxygen we had to accept each other's exhalations. Conversations erupted in at least three dif
ferent languages. I found myself pressed--too tightly to draw a full breath--against the shoulders and thighs of two handsome men. My love charm was burning a hole in my pocket.
It's a hot place, Benin, where everybody has a different story to tell, but every creature has its rapport with nature. It's best to be prepared.
INFERNAL PARADISE
In the darkness before dawn I stood on the precipice of a wilderness. Inches in front of my toes, a lava cliff dropped away into the mammoth bowl of Haleakala, the world's largest dormant volcano. Behind me lay a long green slope where clouds rolled up from the sea, great tumbleweeds of vapor, passing through the pastures and eucalyptus forests of upland Maui to the volcano's crest, then spilling over its edge into the abyss.
Above the rimrock and roiling vapor, the sun was about to break. Far from the world where "Aloha Oe" whines through hotel lobbies, I stood in a remote place at an impossibly silent hour.
But pandemonium had an appointment. Grunting, hissing, a dozen buses pulled up behind me and threw open their doors. Tourists swarmed like ants over the tiny visitors' center at the crater's edge. Loading cameras, dancing from foot to foot in the cold, they positioned for the spectacle. "Darn," a man griped through his viewfinder. "I can't get it all in."
"Take two shots, then," his wife advised.
In the throng I lost and then relocated Steven, my fellow traveler. In his hiking boots, sturdy fedora, and backpack, he apparently struck such a picturesque silhouette against the dawn he'd been cornered by a pro and enlisted as foreground. "Perfect for a wilderness catalog," the photographer testified, while his camera whirred meaningfully.
Sunrise over Haleakala is a packaged Maui tradition: tourists in the beachfront hotels can catch a bus at 3 A.M., ride the winding road to the summit, witness the daybreak moment, and return in time for a late breakfast. As religious experiences go, this one is succinct. In fifteen minutes the crowd was gone.