12.12.2018
We had a long drive ahead of us today and therefore had breakfast at 06:00 still in the dark – OK, I just arrived at 06:30 – no need to be there earlier while I could have another half an hour of sleep instead. Breakfast in the garden was good. Best was the fresh pineapple juice.
Departure was at 07:00 with first light. The drive up North to Natitingou would take all day. But before we got on the road, we stopped at the Post Office in Abomey – I had written my some postcards that needed to be posted. Vero had bought stamps for us yesterday while we visited the palaces, because this morning the Post Office was still closed. But I put the postcards in the – very French looking – post box and hopefully they will make it … eventually.
Leaving Abomey we reached the main RNIE 2 in Bohicon and took it North. Bohicon is a conurbation of Abomey lying 9 km east of the city and has a population of approx 113000 people. It is the crossroads of international trade at the center of Benin and is a relatively new city compared to Abomey. Bohicon was founded in the 20th century with the installation of the railway station on the Cotonou–Parakou railway and the central market.
There was a lot of cargo traffic – many truck going in either direction. It was only a narrow road and we passed many crashed cars and trucks. Also, often there were broken down trucks in the middle of the road. This road is the major arterial between Benin and Niger and with it being a land-locked country, all of its import/export comes along this road. There were all sorts of trucks on tour, in all sorts of condition, some should probably not even be on the roads …
… and all were piled high with goods. Sometimes we wondered if the center of gravity was calculated at all … seeing overturned trucks with the goods strewn around made the question unnecessary, however …
At one point we saw many people with those yellow plastic canisters running along the road. First we though they are going for water – in East Africa they use those yellow canisters for water. But then we remembered – in West Africa they seem to use those for gasoline – and blue barrels for water usually. And they were really running along the road.
Sure enough, a kilometer or so ahead a gasoline truck had crashed in the ditch! It was lying on its side and there was already a traffic jam all around it. Supposedly – from seeing all those car and truck skeletons along the road – there was no tow truck coming … While it could not have happened too long ago, already everybody who was in the greater vicinity was coming with canisters to take gasoline. That truck would probably stay lying there and it had a lot of gasoline in it. People came from all corners on foot or on motorbike to collect whatever they could get. There was a kilometer long line of trucks parked along the road side in either direction – they had probably stopped to fuel up. We could not see, if the drivers cabin had been greatly damaged – but even if it had … there was probably no ambulance in a radius of 50 km or more.
Along the road a bit further we passed a region where manioc cassava is calculated and sold as manioc and tapioca flour. Tapioca is a starch extracted from the manioc cassava plant (Manihot esculenta). This species is native to the north region and central-west region of Brazil. The plant was carried by Portuguese and Spanish explorers to most of the West Indies, Africa and Asia. It is a tropical, perennial shrub. Cassava thrives better in poor soils than many other food plants. Although tapioca is a staple food for millions of people in tropical countries, it provides only carbohydrate food value, and is low in protein, vitamins and minerals. In other countries, it is used as a thickening agent in various manufactured foods. Tapioca is eaten in regions of Nigeria, Benin and Ghana as a common meal usually at breakfast. In Ghana, cassava is peeled, boiled until tender, then pounded in a large wooden mortar and pestle until it becomes homogenous. This is called fufu. It is eaten with soup. We shall try this in a few days.
We stopped along the road to look at the big white bags with the flour. The road was lined with stall selling those for several kilometers. Those bags of flour were like 1 kg or so and cost some CFA 500 or so.
In the next bigger village – still a center of this trade – we stopped to buy some local peanut-chili-sticks. A bag of those cost CFA 200 and they were very hard and spicy, but a good snack for the road. We bought one bag each and munched away.
A while further up the road Natasha needed a peepee stop – or a health break as Maha always called it – and in Dassa-Zoumé was a hotel restaurant which had suitable facilities. We all went preventively. In the hotel shop they sold locally made Dassa soap – Savon de Dartrier – and I bought a bar as souvenir – I kind of accumulated a collection of special hand-crafted soaps over my years of travelling.
Dassa-Zoumé, often shortened to Dassa, is on the main north-south highway in Benin. The city is known as a place of pilgrimage – the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in La Grotte Maria Notre Dame d’Arigbo, around which a basilica has since been built, containing several shrines. We stopped there to visit the huge basilica.
The place has been a significant destination for Catholic pilgrims since the first National Pilgrimage, that took place in 1954, brought together many Christians from all over the Apostolic Vicariate of Dahomey. Every year since then, pilgrims from across West Africa and beyond have gathered there on the weekend that falls within or succeeding August 15 – the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – to pray at La Grotte Maria Notre Dame d’Arigbo – the Marian Grotto of Our Lady of Arigbo. It being December, there was not much happening here, the place looked rather deserted. We saw only one elderly woman praying at the grotto shrine and a couple other people by the church.
The origin of the pilgrimage centre has been a subject of speculations. One version of the story says that Dassa-Zoumé was declared a pilgrimage centre after Mary first appeared atop the rocky hill behind the centre. Another legend says the place where the centre now stands was inhabited by locals who always went to fetch water and do their washing at the stream at the base of the rocky hill and one day a woman went to that place to fetch water when Mary appeared to her. She later related the story to the church authorities. But apparently the true story is that the origin of the centre is not in any way linked to any apparition. The centre was created to accommodate Catholic faithful within the locality who could not afford the cost of travelling to Our Lady of Lourdes Pilgrimage Centre in France for a similar spiritual exercise.
The church was very big. Of course, it was a church like we know from Europe – old, dark, baroque, gothic, whatever. This was huge, had a tin roof and was clearly built to accommodate a lot of people. Nevertheless, it was imaginable how lively this place would be in times of pilgrimage.
In Dassa we turned off the RNIE 2 and took the RNIE 3 Northwest. The first like 80 km or so were good, brand new asphalt road and the drive was quick. There was a lot of cargo traffic. Bush taxis loaded up with all kinds of goods were mainly going North, while trucks piled up with whatever were going south. Ir maybe it just seemed like that and cargo was going in all directions.
Bush taxis come in different varieties – Typically, they are Peugeot 504 station wagons or mini-buses. They are called a bush taxi because they often are barreling through the bush, bumping along dirt roads and tearing through village-land. The poorer the country, the more people they will jam and squeeze and essentially purée into the musty confines of the rusty car. While in Ghana they call it shared taxi and really fit only 4 people in, here those cars a jam-packed with people and good.
Almost anything goes in a West African bush taxi – your horizons for what you think is possible and permissible on the road will broaden very widely down here.
We reached Savalou, a city with a population of approx 35400 people. It is, by the way, the birthplace of Olympic Beninese hurdler Odile Ahouanwanou – a Beninese heptathlete, who also specialises in the 100 m hurdles. She holds Beninese records in both events and competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics, the 2015 African Games and 2 African Championships in Athletics and won a silver medal in the heptathlon at the 2015 African Games. Most surprised I was, that Benin has an Olympic team …
After we passed Savalou the road was much more deteriorated and often just a gravel track. There was still a lot truck traffic here. Just past Savalou we stopped at Place Dancoli – it is supposed to be the biggest Voodoo fetish in West Africa. It is basically located in the middle of nowhere just beside the road. The Dancoli Fetish is the most powerful fetish in Benin and some say in all of West Africa. The fetish tree – or what is left of it – is located conveniently located right next to the road. Most passing cars would make a stop here to get blessing for their journey.
When we stopped, some men where in the midst of carving up a sacrificed, slaughtered cow. Even in Voodoo practice nothing goes to waste – the cow will be eaten. Reminded me of that Kali Temple in Bangladesh, where I watched a goat being sacrificed in 2011. That goat was really worshiped first – probably it was put into a bit of a trance as well – then put into some sort of guillotine and before you could blink the goat was dead and soon taken to the kitchen behind the temple to be cooked and eaten by the people who sacrificed it.
Quite frankly, for the uninitiated – as us – this roadside shrine just reassembled a rotting, stinking pile of organic rubbish and blood. There were some stakes and tree stumps sticking out of piles of feathers, blood and goo – and the smell …
“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”
-Rudyard Kipling-
Do not be fooled, for the Dancoli Fetish is, in actual fact, the strongest and most powerful fetish in West Africa. The gods are so close here that you do not even need a priest to act as a middleman between you and the gods. You simply speak directly with the spirits who will pass on your messages and requests. It is said that anything you ask for will come true within a year. – Today not even Natasha wanted to make a wish … I am not even sure if she actually got out of the van … I blanked her out of my mind for most of the time …
This is a popular site of pilgrimage with a steady stream of believers looking for answers arriving all the time. There were quite a few people coming and going in the few minutes we were there. Maha said afterwards that it had not been busy at all today. It was for us. There was plenty to see and take in.
Presumably a local “guide” was pestering us – or rather Maha who was supposed to tell us – with a small stake and a bottle of palm oil in his hand. It is sure enough perfectly possible for foreigners to make a request – which you should keep secret – and promising to return to make a sacrifice when your request is answered. You put the stake in the fetish pile, then the deal is sealed by pouring some palm oil on to the stake and repeating the request and sacrificial promise again. Then one must spit a mouthful of the specially prepared schnapps – it is better not to ask what is in it – at that stake whilst repeating the request again. Then move over to the Legba representation – a huge penis sticking out of the ground – I am pretty sure we did not see that because it was hidden underneath that pile of feathers and goo. Then the oil-pouring, schnapps-spitting process has to be repeated again before moving on to the two holes in the ground called The Twins – we did not see a hole either with all those feathers and organic rubbish around – and then the process needs to be repeated again.
There was a couple of women with dead chickens in their hands plucking the feathers. And also some kids with those plucked and already cooked – at least they looked like it – chickens in hand running around, shouting not to take photos. Around the relatively small fetish site were a few wooden stalls – not occupied – but evidence of more busy times. Kids of all ages were hanging around gawking at the foreigners. In between it all a baby sat eating his lunch …
Of course even the gods need a little incentive to grant wishes, so one must finally return to the wooden peg and place a suitable financial donation next to it and then pour more oil and schnapps onto it and … one year later whatever has been wished for is granted – but do not forget to return and make a sacrifice, because nothing irks the gods as much as not getting what was promised to them!
On the other side of the horrific pile of whatever, there was a man grilling at least 4 entire goats over a fire in the midst of all those feathers, palm oil goo and blood.
Nobody could tell us what would happen to a financial donation made here to the fetish … there did not seem to be an appointed priest here – but maybe we just did not meet the person in charge. After only a few minutes walking around and taking photos we basically got shouted at and complimented away. If you do not want to make a donation or sacrifice – get out! But I got a lot of photos in before that – anticipating something like that. So we quickly got back in the van and were off.
Going further north the road got more and more rough. It was basically just a dirt track and sometimes many potholes. In Bassila we stopped for lunch today. The main ethnic groups in Bassila area are Yoruba – who are the native dwellers – as well as smaller migrant communities of Anii and Tem people otherwise known as Kotokoli. The town of Bassila is largely Anii and is the largest Anii-speaking village. Given that it is located in proximity to the border with Togo, a significant proportion of the population are also of Togolese origin. The gravel track RNIE 3 passed right through the center of the village.
There was one local bar restaurant and we sat in the outside sitting area in the back – it was more airy there and not as dark as in the main room next to the kitchen. Deciding we would brave some very local food today, we ordered Pâte Blanche – the rice was not finished yet, they said. 2 women were cooking in a dark kitchen on huge pots.
They basically only had Pâte Blanche with brown sauce and optionally okra soup and chicken or beef could be ordered. I chose the beef. Pâte Blanche is basically something like grits – the traditional Beninese dish is composed of water and a starch using corn flour. The sauce was some sort of tomato sauce with spices – a traditional spicy soup – and had 2 chewy pieced of beef in it – good thing I had taken my pocket knife out today … The okra soup is prepared using the edible green seed pods of the okra flowering plant. In Sub-Saharan Africa okra soup is a delicacy. While the pâte and brown soup with beef were quite good, actually, I did not like the okra at all. My food only cost CFA 500 and it was good and filling. Natasha stated – This was the best food we had so far on this trip! – For once she did not complain – surprise!
We ordered beer from a window opposite the kitchen. and the food was brought to our table by a woman with orange hair. Well, I read somewhere, if you ever wanted your hair braided, then do in West Africa …
Vero had ordered some sort of fried cheese – It is called wagasi here and is a specialty cows-milk cheese of northern Benin made by the Fulani people, and is abundantly available in cities and we saw ladies selling those at junctions. It is a soft cheese with a mild flavor and a red rind, and used often in Beninese cooking. It looked and tasted a lot like the paneer I know from India.
After lunch – before we continued the drive North along the RNIE 3 – Natasha and me had a medicinal schnapps in the van. Of course our bottle of Sodabi was long from finished and after so much food some medicine was in order. Natasha had been lamenting about her stomach issues – travellers’ diarrhea – and I had as usual the direct opposite. So we took a thimble – a bottle cap full of schnapps each before leaving. Some kids on the way to or from school stopped next to the van and curiously watched what we were doing.
On the way North I took my mandatory afternoon nap in the bus and woke up shortly before we reached the city of Djougou. The road was still a gravel track, but in regular intervals there were toll stations – believe it or not! Usually, before or after towns. And the toll was usually something in between CFA 200 and 500 for the van. In Germany they are still discussing to introduce a toll for the autobahn, but here – in West Africa! – and in the rest of Europe for that matter – an annual fee for a vignette or toll are more than common – even on a gravel track.
Djougou is the largest city in northwestern Benin. It is an important market town and has a population of approx 182000 people. Like most of Benin, Djougou has a young and growing population. Large families and multiple wives are common – leading to a large number of young and school-aged children. The population of Djougou is predominantly Muslim, with each neighborhood boasting at least one mosque. There is a considerable Catholic presence in Djougou as well with a large cathedral, a convent, seminary, and Catholic school system that runs through secondary school.
We only skirted the town and turned then off onto a very small gravel path – it was leading approx 5 km past fields to a village of Taneka. On a rocky hill of the Atakora mountain range here in the remote area of northern Benin, there are several villages of the Taneka. The people arrived here in the second half of the 18th century from different regions of Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Niger. They were all running away from the gangs of slave hunters coming from the Kingdom of Dahomey and the Ashanti Empire. The refugees found a natural fort in these hills – steep and rocky, full of natural caves and with a commanding view of the surrounding area. They built their villages mixing with the other ethnic groups without fear.
At the end of the bumpy path the van was parked and we had to continue on foot. First we had to do our health break, though. And there even was a toilet hut for visitors. Of course we used it! And it reminded me once more that I always regret not to have taken photos of all the toilets I have encountered since I started travelling in the early 1990s … Had I taken a photo of all the funny pots, I could now make book of the evolution – or stagnation – of toilets … But before digital photography, I had to set priorities …
For maybe 10 min we hiked towards the village and passed some yam fields – the soil had been prepared in rows of little mounts to keep as much moisture as possible near the plants. I had seen fields like this before – now I knew the purpose.
The Taneka villages reflect the different origins of the different groups that make up the Taneka – in fact a village is more a group of micro villages, that together form a larger complex. It is as if the villages had different sections inside them, bordered by low stone walls and small cultivated plots, each with a political leader, a spiritual guide, and with its own sanctuaries and fetishes.
The people of Taneka, though they practice animistic rituals, are of muslim religion and in the area of the village is always a small mosque. Here it was a little below the actual village and we passed it on our hike. We noticed a beehive developing above the entrance door and Maha said – You can always tell, when there are not many practicing muslims in the village, when the bees take over the mosque!
Reaching the actual village we first encountered – of course – children. A van could stop in the middle of nowhere and immediately children would come running from who knows where to look at the strangers. P.s. That makes nature health breaks – say peepee breaks – rather impossible in Africa. Believe me, I speak of experience … That one time in Ethiopia in 2014 … No, do not let me get started …
We visited the Village of Taneka-Beri. It was made up of round huts with conical roofs made of straw. The top was always protected by a clay jar. Many homes seem uninhabited – our guide told us that this was due to the fact that people are moving, periodically and for several months or years, to the plains to cultivate the fields.
All the huts are used by families every 5 years, however, on the occasion of the feast of purification – during this holiday each family returns to their village and takes an ox to be sacrificed, the meat is then distributed among the people of the village. Even though rectangular buildings with metal roofs are now coming up as well, no one would dream of celebrating life’s event in them, though. Only round huts built according to the tradition are used in these cases.
An important part of the village was the area of the King of the tribe – the audience hut was similar to the others, but larger in size and inside there was a masonry bench on which the king sat at meetings with the population and with the foreigners. We were granted an audience with the King today and where let inside to sit on the wooden benches along the far wall.
The king was a tall man named Suleman Tinigassawa, King of Taneka-Beri, and he was maybe 15 years already king. He had taken over from his uncle. He told us he ruled over maybe 800 people in his villages. He was wearing his traditional clothes, held his scepter, but – as a friend pointed out when looking at my photo of the king – his shoes were somewhat stylistic inconsistent. He spoke no French or English – again we had Maha talk French to a local guide from the village who then translated into the local language of the king and so on.
Our audience with the king lasted maybe 20 min and was rather interesting – definitely better than the one we had with the Voodoo priestess a few days ago … Leaving the king’s house we walked through the village to the upper part. We passed a hut compound where they produced millet beer. This region is also known for its tchouk – a fermented-millet beer that seems to be drunk everywhere in this region. They were sort of cooking it here in huge pots.
Set on the side of the hill, the village reached a remarkable extension – the top of the village, however, is the area reserved for feticheurs, the fetish dignitaries – these are the spiritual leaders and are recognizable for their clothing, composed only of a thong and a headgear. They hold spiritual secrets and people turn to them to ask for an intercession, bringing food offerings – the feticheurs devote themselves to contemplation and deprive anything of theirs, except for a small pocket and a long pipe that they keep always on.
We were allowed to visit the one in charge of child’s diseases. We were allowed to take photos and Oliver wanted one together with him. With the help of our multiple translators the holy man agreed and asked who is Oliver’s wife. Following my habit of making up imaginary spouses, I pointed to Vero – She is the wife! – And before they could blink they were married and posing for the wedding picture with the holy man!
We noticed the signs of the people’s original ethnicity – different sacrificial scars in the face. For example – the Kabye, originating in Togo, have on their face 2 small vertical scarifications for both men and women, the Bariba are recognizable by a deep cut upright on one side of the face or both and finally the Gourmantche having 4 small cuts for women and 3 small cuts for men.
Walking through the village we also found a strange tree with even stranger fruits. The fruits looked a lot like small red quince, but they were not.
Vero said it was a cheese tree … hmmmm ….. I picked up a fallen fruit and peeled it open. It looked funny inside with a big seed and a yellowish fruit shaped like a brain. I found out later it was Ackee – a tropical fruit native to West Africa, but it is legendary in Jamaica. Brought to the Caribbeans in the 18th century, it is the National Fruit of Jamaica and one half of Jamaica’s signature dish – Ackee & saltfish. Ackee is a member of the Sapindaceae family, an extensive family also referred to as soapberry. Species within this family include the tropical fruits lychee, longan and guarana … and an additional 2000 others. But none of these have a history quite like the ackee, and it starts with its scientific name. According to a legend, the ackee – Blighia sapida – is named after the individual who brought specimens from the Caribbean to the famed Kew Gardens in London in 1793, Captain William Bligh of the “Mutiny on the Bounty”. The ackee fruit grows on evergreen trees that can be up to 15 m tall. The fruit itself are pods, grown in clusters, that ripen from green to red, and are harvested when the pod splits open. Once open and mature, the seeds, numbering from 3 to 5, are clearly visible. Not all of the fruit is edible, though. Only the fleshy arilli – looking like a brain – covering the massive black seeds are used. The seed pod and seeds are discarded. The arilli are tender and cooked through when the cream-colored ackee turns yellow. I really wanted to taste it, but Maha vehemently said no. Apparently it was not ripe yet and therefore not eatable. Oh well.
We walked through the village back to the van and of course encountered more children. All of them big smiles and curious eyes for the foreigners.
Back by the van we had caught up with Natasha who had skipped once more part of the tour because of the heat and whatever. The drive to Natitingou took maybe one more hour and we reached our hotel around 18:30. Natitingou is a city in north-western Benin. The town was founded by the Waama ethnic groups but is populated with Ditammari, Dendi, Nateni, Fulani, Fon and many other ethnic groups. The region takes its name from the word Nantibatingou – the Waama root “Nanto” refers to “crush” as the local people were renowned growers and processor of sorghum, which was native to the area, and later millet. Natitingou is evenly divided between Christians and Muslims and, like the rest of Benin, is notable for its ethnic and religious tolerance. The mountains surrounding the region to the east and west sides are important in local animist beliefs and believed to be inhabited by spirits.
Our Hotel Tata Somba had a nice courtyard with a pool. My room was small and the AC was broken. But here way up north it was not that hot during the night, anyway. Again the devil had a shit – Natasha had a not working AC as well and demanded to change the room … WIFI was not even working near reception – supposedly it was just overloaded by all the users in the evening. Every tourist was returning from the day’s sightseeing and wanted to get online at the same time.
We had dinner in the nice courtyard next to the pool. Service was quick and attentive. Maha had pre-ordered our food en route. We started with a cold beer – of course – and vegetable soup. For main course I had guinea fowl with green beans. And I have to say it was – hands down – the best dish I had in Benin so far – OK, apart from the seafood in Grand-Popo … It was half a guinea fowl cooked in a rich tomato-capsicum sauce – what we call Letscho – a thick actually Hungarian vegetable ragout – and green beans are just a favourite of mine anyway. It was absolutely delicious. Flo did not want to eat so much meat, so I took part of her guinea fowl as well. And I ate it all up. It was so yummy!
We sat chatting for a while after dinner – Vero was with us. Maha and Rock, the trainee – had left to find local food and a place to sleep. We had a couple Sodabi – strictly medicinal purposes again, of course. Somehow conversation ended up with Natasha complaining again about anything and everything – and now I had enough! I did say something – being a paying customer I can do that … I was friendly but firm and told her a piece of my mind. Basically – Please, do us all a favour and stop complaining while we are on this tour! Yes, you are old, but please complain somewhere else! You chose to be here and now stick it out! So! – Phew! That felt good! Cheers!
