So far the craziest thing that I have seen in the last 5 months that I have been here is a festival that takes place in this little village in the middle of nowhere, where nobody has electricity or running water nor do most of the people speak French but their local languages, but this village is famous throughout Africa for their Whipping Festival that takes place the last days of October. The Whipping Festival is like a coming of age for young boys and where men prove their manly hood by whipping the hell out of each other, I guess that is along the lines of a quince añera in Latin American tradition, sweet sixteen or a Bar Mitzvah but with an interesting twist, whips.

Luckily there is a Peace Corps Volunteer in just about every other town in Benin, so a couple of us first year volunteers got together and set out to find this infamous event, we rented an old beat-up 1983 Peugeot, that broke down on us and later the door swung open and I almost fell out, but that did not slow us down, we were determined to find this festival. Every time we asked somebody where the festival was, we got a different response until we heard drums playing and whistles going off behind a large cornfield. When we got there, there where a lot of people dancing to the drums and the whistles, most of them were dressed in traditional elaborate costumes or funny outfits, a couple of them were even dressed as women from head to toe, kind of strange for a festival that proves manly hood. Well after about 10 minutes of dancing to the drums the music stops and the people started forming a circle, then two men jump out and they start whipping the fuck out of each other, I mean they go at it full force they hold nothing back, just the sound of the whips cracking on their skins sounds painful but they do not even flinch they just keep whipping each other then a couple seconds later 4 more men join the other 2 and it’s a freaking all out whipping party. Whips are flying everywhere and whistles are being blown and the crowd goes wild.

After a couple minuets the drums start again and the whipping stops and they start dancing and this time everybody joins in the dancing even the kids and the older women. The music continues for another 15 minutes and once again they start dancing, yelling, jumping and showing of their whips and battle wounds. After the music stops they form a circle and this time the gladiators in the circle are younger boys, ranging from about the age of 8 till 18 and they start whipping the shit out of each other just as hard as the older men, but I can tell they cannot tolerate the pain like the older men and I could see their eyes start to water, but crying is considered a sign of weakness so they hold in their tears the best they can. After about an hour of alternating from dancing and whipping I start to see bloody backs and arms, scars, their skins start blemishing and their wounds are very visible even at a distance you can see the marks that the whips have left. I can tell that some of these whippings they have received will leave permanent scars and disfigurement on their skin, because the wounds are so deep and they are not treated.


Although the whipping festival sounds like a savage and primitive event, things never got out of hand nor escalated to fights or hard feelings between the people who were whipping the shit out of each other. There were always people standing by making sure that things were not getting out of hand and jumping in between the contenders after a couple of minuets, just to make sure nobody was really hurt. I tried to figure out the origin of the festival, but figuring out the origin was like asking for directions, ask 20 people and you will get 20 completely different responses. The only thing I was able to figure out was that this is a weeklong event that starts in the neighboring country of Togo and everyday of the week it changes village.