Design that Matters Field Journal

Ouidah

This afternoon's adventure was a day trip to Ouidah, a former Portuguese slave port and now the capital of Voudun (voodoo) in Benin, where among other cultural landmarks we visited the Python Temple. In baby pictures, Liz wore a surpisingly similar expression when holding her little brother Dave for the first time.

Of course, it being the Python Temple, we both had to try wearing the pythons.

We hiked all the way out to the Sacred Forest, an important Voudun site, but it was closed for the day as the gardener was (apparently) occupied in chopping down all of the (presumably sacred) trees. The walk did give us the opportunity to tour the charming suburbs of Ouidah, and some of city's old colonial buildings.

After visiting the Ouidah Museum, set in a Portuguese fort from the 1600's, we set off via zemidjan down the sandy, four-kilometer Slave Road to the sea, which was lined with large, green statues of various divinities from the Voudun pantheon. At the shore, UNESCO and the government of Benin have built an immense arch marking the Point of No Return.

You could get a great view of the bas-relief columns of unlucky slaves chained together by their necks from one of the bars or gift shops crowding the site. There was a luxury hotel just down the road, next to what looked like a new condo development. As at Elmina in Ghana, I found the mix of history and the banal to be confusing and depressing.