Benin, I must admit is a country I never even thought about visiting or knew much about really. It’s known for its connection with Voodoo and the Slave trade mainly and ended its colonial rule under French control. It to the east of Ghana after Togo and like Togo is about half the width of Ghana but the same length.
The plan was to head off from Koforidua early in the morning on the 28th on a Tro heading to Accra; from there we could catch a Tro to the border with Togo. There was 9 of us leaving from Koforidua (Aidan, Cath, Mike, Pat, Patricia, Laura, Krista and myself, we arrange to meet Alison, Pete and Pete’s friend from the UK, Mike in Accra. This all went smoothly enough, a bit of a pain with some people trying to change money and it is taking an hour to be told this was not possible, things don’t always move as fast as you want here.
The border crossing into Togo was a piece of cake, we got out seven-day Togolese visa out of a makeshift shack, a bit less formal then the proper building Ghana had. We spent one hour haggling for two cars to take the 11 of us to Cotonou, which is the largest city in Benin. It was getting late it the day and we weren’t sure if we could make it all the way there. We really wanted to make it all the way there as we had to drop our passports off to have the Benin Visa Extended. We finally got on our way and crossed Togo in about one hour, a lot smaller country than I expected (width wise at least).
The Border Crossing was easy but they only issue 48 Hour visas at the border, which was why we were heading to Cotonou to extend it. We lost an hour when we crossed the border because of the change in time zone. We were three hours away from Cotonou we decided that we would see what we can do about t the Visa later and decided to head for Ouidah which was a city a lot closed and one we had planned on visiting. Cotonou was only going to be a stopover because there was not too much we wanted to-do there.
Ouidah was great, a quiet little city on the coast. It is a tourist stop because it was the port where a lot of slaves from West Africa were loaded on to boats and sent to their various destinations. There are also Voodoo ties, this how Voodoo was transferred to the Caribbean and the Americas. We spent the day checking out various sites, a scared forest that contains voodoo statues and a tree that is said to have been the villages first king, who when pursued by attackers turned himself into a tree for safety. The market contained a few Voodoo fetish items, lost of dead and dried animals, or just various pieces of them. The dried lizards and Birds were ok; it was the Dog and Cat heads that were a bit much to look at.
Museums in Africa are generally mediocre at best, and the Slavery museum was no different. The written information was not the powerful aspect, it was the paintings and carvings showing people in chains, people being beheaded and disemboweled and killed in various manors. There were the white colonial masters looking down on it all and the black chiefs next to them providing the people and showing their power through human sacrifices.
Two things hit me the most, one was a set of shackles that had been excavated, they were brutal looking things and to know what they had been used for putting a lot of weight behind them. The second was a carving someone made that said “The Black Chiefs did not initiate the Slave Trade, but they profited heavily from it “which was evident in the paintings around it.
There was a lot of information about where the people came from and what they went through, a lot killed themselves (a lot by ripping out their own tongue) because they didn’t know what was going to happen to them, a lot thought they were going to be eaten.
The museum was housed in a Portuguese fort that was used by the various colonial powers to protect the area and used as a place to collect the slaves before sending them to the various colonies. The “Route des Esclave” started from here and continued down to the beach, this was the last walk for the slaves before they got loaded onto the ships. It’s about 4km long down a sandy path and in the sun with no shade, we walked it, but I can’t imagine what it was like for the slaves. Along the way were a few monuments, the “Tree of Forgetfulness” being the most memorable. The slaves were made to pass around this tree (10 times for Males, 8 times for Females) to forget their past, culture, land so they would become beings with no identity whose only purpose was to serve.
On the beach there were two monuments, “The Point of No Return” which is where the slaves passed through as they boarded the ships. In 2000 the “Door of Return” was erected as a way for the departed to return in spirit. The whole walk was an experience, one that I of course will never fully understand. We went for a swim in the Atlantic here; the beach with the waves crashing onto was beautiful and peaceful. I can’t even imagine the horrors the beach had seen and the waves even for all their noise did not mention the past.
From Ouidah we headed to Abomey. Pete and his buddy Mike set off back to Ghana as they had lest time for travel. We had to go through Cotonou. We spent only a few hours there but that was enough for me. The standard busy over crowded city, the amount of motorbikes was impressive. It was so busy that it made Accra looks peaceful. We grabbed a Tro and headed up north to Abomey.
We had decided not to extend the visa. This may have been a bad idea, the visa was only for 48 hours, but because it was New Years, so we weren’t going to get our passports back till the day after we were going to leave, so we put it in fate’s hands.
Abomey was once the home for the Kings of the Dahomey people, they were a bloody lot, becoming rich from the slave trade and taking part in all manner of human sacrifices. The many palaces show the wealth and the art show their love of spilling human blood. A lot of the palaces have fallen into ruin but the museum complex, consisting of two palaces, is an impressive place. It houses various displays on weapons, daily life, war, and other artefacts. The most impressive is one of the Kings (Ghezo) thrones, a large wooden throne mounted on the skulls of four of his enemies.
On an interesting side note the name Dahomey comes from one of the first kings, Akaba. He insulted his enemy Dan and told him he would build in his belly. True to form Dan ended up being killed with his belly cut open and a tree planted in it. So, the name of the kingdom mixes “Dan” with “ho” meaning belly and “mey” meaning inside. I wouldn’t want to have been on his bad side.
From Abomey we set off to Porto Novo. This was a strange city, for a capital it was sleepy and deserted. You could see that it once would have been a beautiful city, with beautiful streets lined with colonial style buildings; this unfortunately would have been during the slave trade. Today the buildings lie unlooked after and run down, the city is a stark comparison to Cotonou’s busyness. There wasn’t much to-do here, but we had a good time relaxing.
We spent New Year’s Eve here. To celebrate we went out for a nice meal at a good French restaurant. I had a Pepper steak and French Fries, the food was amazing one of the best meals I have had since I have been here. Good meat is hard to come by here, and good meat without the bones, skin and innards is even more so. The looks on the faces around the table showed the pure joy of all involved at having a proper real meal. After dinner we headed out for a drink. The city was dead, the spots were dead, so we found a place with music grabbed a bottle of gin and set about getting merry. At Midnight there was only the nine of us and the staff in the place. We celebrated in true western style and spent the rest of the night dancing. About 1am the place started to get busy and was packed at 4 when we left. The next day we found out how they celebrate in Benin, New Years day is more important than the eve. Everyone was dressed in their best cloths and spent the day with family.
On the 2nd we headed to the Togo Benin border. We had technically been Illegally in Benin for 3 days now and we had no idea what would happen at the border, we were hoping that worst comes to worst we would just have to bribe them.
At the border we explained what had happened, looked a bit helpless and got away with only buying another visa for 10k CFA, this was 5K CFA cheaper than if we had got the visa extended so not to bad at all. We got our visas and got stamped out of Benin. The Togo visa was a seven-day multiple entry visa, so we didn’t have to get another one, but we figured it would be easier to just get another one than go an try and extend the one we had, which ended the next day. Again, no problem with this and we got stamped into Togo.
I did breathe a little easier once we were in Togo, in all honestly, I was a bit worried what would happen at the border and I think we had luck on our side, I’m going to try an avoid this situation in the future I think. Anyway, Togo beckons.
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