Visiting Ouidah

After Cotonou, my next stop in Benin was Ouidah, one of the most important centers of Vodun and one of the most historically significant towns in the country. I came here knowing about its association with “voodoo” and the Atlantic slave trade, but both turned out to be considerably more complicated than I had understood before arriving.

A Vodun Procession

I didn’t have to wait long to see how different Ouidah was. While driving through town, I came across a large group moving down the main street in a spiritual procession. Everyone wore traditional clothing, people were chanting, and one of the leaders was ringing a bell as they walked.

I had already learned that some people participating in traditional ceremonies were extremely camera shy. In another village, I had seen people literally get up and run away once they realized I was nearby with a camera.

Because of that, I tried to be discreet here and avoided taking obvious face shots. Even so, one woman in the center of the group seemed to notice me immediately.

It was a much better introduction to Vodun than anything I could have gotten from a museum. This wasn’t something being performed solely for visitors. I was watching a living religious tradition taking place in the middle of town.

The Temple of Pythons

One of the first places I visited was the famous Temple of Pythons. This was especially interesting to me because I grew up loving snakes and had actually owned this exact species before: the ball python.

Back home in the United States, ball pythons are among the most common snakes kept as pets. So from my perspective, the snakes themselves weren’t particularly exotic. What made the temple interesting was their religious importance.

Pythons hold an important place in local Vodun traditions. The snakes here were nonvenomous and generally calm enough that visitors could handle them and even place one around their neck.

I initially thought Ouidah’s python temple might be unique, but later discovered that other Vodun communities had their own snake temples as well. Not every one was this relaxed. At another temple I visited elsewhere, I was told the snakes were considered too aggressive for visitors to enter.

The temple contained much more than reptiles. There were iron objects, effigies, and other items with spiritual importance. I couldn’t remember the significance of every object afterward, and I don’t want to pretend that I did.

One thing I did begin to understand throughout my time around Vodun sites was the emphasis on spirits connected with natural forces, places, ancestors, and certain objects. It was already very different from the image of “voodoo” I had grown up seeing in American movies.

The Sacred Forest

That connection with nature became even more obvious when I visited Ouidah’s Sacred Forest. Several trees within the forest are treated as sacred, and the site contains stories and traditions that have been passed down locally for generations.

I was told one story about workers who cut down a sacred tree, only to wake the next morning and supposedly find it standing again. Another local tradition says that a priest who lived here did not simply die at the end of his life but instead became part of a tree.

I obviously wasn’t in a position to verify stories like those, but that wasn’t really the point. Hearing them was a fascinating look at how people here understood the forest and its spiritual importance.

One tree was used as a place for prayers and wishes. The priest at the forest made one rule very clear to me: you were only supposed to wish for something good.

No revenge wishes allowed.

Spirits of the Sacred Forest

The forest contained numerous large figures representing different deities and powerful spirits. I wasn’t always sure which figures were considered gods, spirits, ancestors, or something else entirely, but that was part of the experience. I was learning about a religious system that I had barely understood before arriving in Benin.

One figure represented thunder and lightning, with metal extending from its mouth and a rod held in its hand.

There were others that were even stranger to me, including figures whose forms represented particular powers or characteristics. Some of the explanations were difficult to remember years later, so I’ve resisted trying to assign meanings to figures when I’m no longer certain what I was told.

I was told that the enormous foot on this figure symbolized strength. Other figures included a two-faced spirit said to see everything and a three-headed figure connected in local tradition with enslaved people returning spiritually from the Americas.

What I Learned About “Voodoo Dolls”

One of the most interesting conversations I had in the Sacred Forest involved something almost everyone in the United States associates with “voodoo”: the voodoo doll.

The priest was very clear that the idea of sticking pins into a doll to hurt someone was not how he understood Vodun at all. He described that sort of practice as black magic rather than part of the religion he practiced.

That stuck with me because, before visiting Benin, most of what I knew about “voodoo” came from Western movies and popular culture, where it is usually associated with curses, pain, dolls, zombies, and death.

What I encountered in Benin was much broader and much more connected with ancestors, nature, spirits, healing, protection, and community traditions. I certainly didn’t leave pretending to understand Vodun after a few visits, but I did leave realizing that much of what I thought I knew about it had come from stereotypes.

Ouidah and the Slave Trade

Ouidah is famous for Vodun, but its history as a major slave-trading port is just as important. Having also visited Badagry in Nigeria, I was beginning to see how the slave trade connected communities all along this part of the West African coast.

A former Portuguese fort in town had been converted into a museum covering the history of Ouidah, the kingdoms that controlled the region, European involvement, and the Atlantic slave trade. Unfortunately, the museum was closed when I visited, so I could only see the exterior.

From Ouidah, enormous numbers of enslaved Africans were taken toward the coast and shipped across the Atlantic. Many were transported to Portuguese-controlled Brazil, although people taken from this part of West Africa ended up throughout the Americas.

The Forgetting Tree

One part of Ouidah’s slave route immediately reminded me of something I had encountered in Nigeria. In Badagry, I had been told that enslaved people were made to drink from a special well as part of a ritual intended to make them forget their identities and homeland.

In Ouidah, I heard a different version of the same idea. Here, enslaved people were said to have been forced to circle a special tree several times as part of a ritual intended to make them forget their past before leaving Africa.

Whether every detail of these traditions happened exactly as they are now remembered wasn’t something I could determine. What struck me was encountering similar stories in two different places along the former slave routes. The idea of deliberately stripping people of their memory and identity added another disturbing dimension to an already horrific history.

Remembering the Countries Involved

Near the slave-route memorials, I saw a display of flags representing countries connected in various ways with the Atlantic slave trade. The symbolism felt appropriate. Ouidah’s history wasn’t isolated to Benin. What happened here connected West Africa with Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, North America, and other parts of the world.

African American History in Ouidah

Nearby were paintings and displays honoring well-known African Americans, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. I took their presence as a way of connecting Ouidah’s slave-trade history with the broader African diaspora and later struggles for civil rights, rather than suggesting that these specific people had ancestral connections to Ouidah.

I asked one local man if he knew who Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. were.

He didn’t.

So I ended up giving him a very quick American history lesson on both of them.

The Door of No Return

The slave route eventually continues toward the Atlantic, ending at one of Ouidah’s most recognizable monuments.

The Door of No Return commemorates the final part of the route followed by enslaved people before they were forced aboard ships bound for the Americas. Like the Point of No Return I visited in Badagry, its location on the coast makes the history unusually tangible. After following the route inland, you eventually arrive at the ocean that separated these people permanently from everything they had known.

My Time in Ouidah

Ouidah ended up being one of the most important places I visited in Benin because it forced me to rethink several things I thought I understood before arriving.

I came knowing it was famous for “voodoo,” but most of what I associated with that word came from Western popular culture. Seeing the temples, sacred trees, ceremonies, pythons, priests, and religious figures in person gave me a much more complicated picture of Vodun as a living religion rather than the collection of curses and frightening imagery I had seen in movies.

At the same time, Ouidah’s slave route reinforced what I had begun learning in Badagry about the enormous human tragedy that connected this coastline with places thousands of miles away. Walking through places associated with both histories made Ouidah feel very different from an ordinary sightseeing destination.

Few places I visited in West Africa combined living religion, local tradition, colonial history, and the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade as intensely as Ouidah.