30 October, 2024
By David Goodman
David Goodman in Benin. Photo courtesy of David Goodman.
Of all the breasts I’ve ever seen in real life, the majority now belong to West African women I’ve never met. The fact that women in certain cultures sometimes go topless is something I used to know intellectually but never quite believe —until, my first week in Benin, I took a canoe several hours into the rural marshes near Nigeria. There, in traditional fishing communities that still live in huts constructed on stilts, I saw groups of women, many my age, bathing half-nude in the saline water. They stared at me as my pirogue floated past, the inexplicable white man in their village, and I tried very hard to not stare back.
A hut and pirogues alongside a Benin wetland. Photo by David Goodman.
It wasn’t the only culture shock I’d receive. Since coming to West Africa to work as a field biologist, my colleagues Abiola, Yendoubouam, and Kaboumba have shepherded me through many such situations too alien for my western brain to comprehend. They are uniquely qualified guides: all three were born in rural villages, they speak 12 languages between them, and Abiola, like many of the locals, has ritual scars on his cheeks that he received as a boy. Our common language is the richly textured, bareknuckle backroom brawl version of French spoken in francophone Africa. When I arrived in Benin, it took about a week before I could consistently understand what anyone was talking about.
Kaboumba, David, Abiola, and Yendoubouam at a market in Benin. Photo by Kaboumba Lin-Ernni Mikégraba.
Abiola, Yendoubouam, and Kaboumba work with IBCP in West Africa; Abiola in Benin and Yendoubouam and Kaboumba in Togo. We just finished a 6-week fact finding mission in the region, surveying bird populations, voodoo markets, and slaughterhouses in several countries. Each of the local men was an expert in his region and took over organizing when we entered his domain. Being from Wilmington, Delaware, I was an expert in nowhere and nothing, and was never in charge of anything. I was just grateful to have such qualified guides. Our mission was investigating the impacts of hunting, habitat destruction, and the black market voodoo trade. After habitat destruction, the hunting of animals for religious purposes (read: to use as ingredients in voodoo and gris-gris rituals) may be the largest pressure on many endangered animals in West Africa.
Birds and other animals offered for use in rituals in a voodoo market in Benin. Photo by David Goodman.
Local voodoo markets – dozens of rickety wooden stalls crowded together in dusty fields outside town – are full of thousands of desiccated corpses of threatened species. Upon visiting one of these ‘fetish’ markets after my arrival in Benin, I was shocked by the sheer diversity of the animals present, especially the birds. Voodoo rituals don’t demand a mere category of bird, but often a specific species. If you want your potion to be effective, for example, you might need a Fanti Sawing. Not just any species of swallow will do. If you want your sacrifice to be accepted, it can’t just be any hornbill. It must be a Black-and-white-casqued Hornbill. This specificity, baked into voodoo and gris-gris, keeps trappers motivated to find members of a species even after it has become rare. It is part of why the markets pose such a threat to endangered animals.
Discussing the need for bird conservation in Benin. Photo by Kaboumba Lin-Ernni Mikégraba.
We were also investigating local attitudes towards conservation, which is how I found myself talking to voodoo priests and 'fetisheurs,' or witch doctors. These interviews are difficult for multiple reasons. First, the markets where they happen are horrifying. A professor I met recently in Madagascar described them as “carnivals of animal suffering.” While doubtless disturbing, seeing thousands of dead animals is at least made bearable by telling oneself that they are no longer suffering. The living animals are another matter. Most are kept in atrocious conditions, barely sufficient to keep them alive long enough to be sacrificed to a voodoo god. They are caged and mutilated and harassed for sport. I will spare you the gory details.
Releasing a Lesser Moorhen (Paragallinula angulata) trapped by a local hunter back to the wild. Photo by Abiola Sylvestre Chaffra.
Suffice it to say that I saw a Black Kite — a bird of prey that probably mates for life and can fly up to 100 kilometers per hour — hopping around a market, both its wings broken. Another day I saw a cage full of puppies. The market is a hellish place. Interactions in the market are also difficult because I often have to hide that I’m a conservation biologist. Unsurprisingly, black market merchants in the poached animal trade tend to be hostile towards western conservation scientists. Luckily, most merchants assume I’m a European tourist when I arrive in the market. This assumption is not as weird as it sounds — apparently European adventure tourists sometimes visit the markets to look for the “real West Africa.”
African Jacana (Actophilornis africanus) walking in a wetland. Photo by Grzegorz Walczak.
How anyone could visit the nightmarish voodoo markets without running away screaming and converting to a life of militant vegan asceticism is beyond me. In any case, the tourists’ callousness benefits me, providing a plausible cover story as I pretend to peruse the market and ask innocent questions about where the animals come from. Unfortunately, allowing voodoo practitioners to make this assumption means I have to feign polite interest as they offer me spells, potions, and products intended to increase the girth and “power” of one’s penis. The first time I was offered a potion that would give me “une grosse bite,” I thought that I had misheard the offer. “I’m sorry, what will this potion give me??” I asked. “Une grosse bite!” the man repeated, this time with a helpful hand gesture. Turns out that voodoo has a strong emphasis on male virility, as you can see below. Apparently, my virility is clearly lacking.
Idol statue at a voodoo priest’s house. Photo by David Goodman.
Upon visiting a voodoo priest’s house, Kaboumba refused to step inside, citing a fear of evil spirits. At the end of this visit, the priest asked for a donation and I accidentally gave him far too much money, the equivalent of about $15 USD. When I told the guys about this, they all exchanged knowing glances. “You got voodoo’d” they said simply. “I don’t think I got voodoo’d guys,” I protested, “I’ve just switched currencies like 4 times this week.” They looked at me with pity, assured me it wasn’t my fault (“He must have very powerful spirits”) and considered the debate closed. The white man had been voodoo’d. Such is the risk of toying with power.
Voodoo priests call the zangbéto, which translates to “night hunter” or guardian of the night. Photo by Abiola Sylvestre Chaffra.
It is easy to understand the respect that West Africans hold for voodoo. Despite Christianity and Islam having more followers in this region, voodoo is recognized as an official religion in Benin and holds a powerful place in West African psychology. When I asked my companions whether Christianity or voodoo took precedence, they explained it to me like this: when some Christian priests have a problem, they will sneak through a voodoo priest’s backdoor in the dead of night to ask for assistance. The voodoo priest, however, would never set foot in a church. My colleagues’ respect of voodoo is endemic to the culture in which they were raised.
Voodoo ceremony conducted as part of a consecration of wetland sites. Video by Abiola Sylvestre Chaffra.
It’s this understanding of the culture which makes Abiola, Yendoubouam and Kaboumba such effective conservationists in West Africa. When fighting something as culturally specific, complicated, and idiosyncratic as the voodoo trade, only someone with native fluency in the polyvalent nature of the issue has any chance of success. At a rookery in southwest Benin, for example, Abiola managed to stop the hunting of nesting waterbirds practically overnight by convincing local voodoo practitioners to sanctify the rookery as a sacred forest. This idea would surely have been less obvious to someone who hadn’t grown up with the ancestral beliefs they still cherish and fear in equal measure.
Consecrating an island used by herons and other birds for nesting sites encourages the protection of birds and nature. Photo by Abiola Sylvestre Chaffra.
When we’re not in the markets, Abiola, Yendoubouam, Kaboumba and I are usually in the forest, savannah, or marshes looking for birds. The transects and backcountry camping are familiar, besides a few local twists. The armed guards that accompany us as protection against poachers and elephants are new. As is the fact that Abiola and Kaboumba refuse to use camping mats, preferring instead to sleep directly on the concrete slabs of the eco-guard station. When I asked if we could buy me a pad and pillow, they made fun of me ruthlessly for being a soft Westerner. “I didn’t start sleeping on straw beds until I was 15!” announced Yendoubouam proudly “We made do with the ground!”
Green-backed Heron (Butorides striata). Photo by Grzegorz Walczak.
I thought about the four-poster canopy bed in my childhood bedroom and, for the millionth time this month, considered how different my life was from my new friends. The differences between us really cannot be overstated. Opinionated to a fault, I have always worried that this flaw would preclude my having friendships with those truly different from me. I’ve been profoundly relieved as Abiola, Yendoubouam, Kaboumba and I have forged a genuine friendship, laughing at inside jokes, teasing each other, sharing fears and aspirations. I am sad to leave and hope they keep me in mind the next time they consult a voodoo priest.
Abiola Sylvestre Chaffra, David Goodman, and Kaboumba Lin-Ernni Mikégraba at a field site in Djidja, north of Abomey, Benin. Photo by Yendoubouam Kourdjouak.
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