Damn, I had a couple of articles and a bunch of pictures I was going to to post but I lost my USB key with some work including a project for a grant to build an adult education center that I had been working on for days. But nothing I can't do over again, and I was able to salvage a couple of pics that I wanted to post.

I had written an article on the cultural diversity of Africa, on how many different languages, and the cultures that can be found in West Africa and the different types of scarifications and tattoos that they use to distinguish each other or to represent what tribe they are from.

Since I have arrived to Africa nothing has fascinated more than the faces I have seen, and these pictures are only but a few examples. The pictures will tell the story.

Voodoo 101

First off, forget about everything you ever learned about voodoo from Hollywood, sorry to disappoint and let you down but no zombies and living dead here. Benin is the region where Voodoo was born, during the slave trade many of the slaves that went to the New World such as Brazil, Haiti and the United States came from what is now known as Benin. Since Christianity was forced down their throats by Western colonizers, slaves merged their native believes and traditions with Christianity and along the way somethings changed and voodoo was born. From what I have learned, I am going to try to do the best to explain what voodoo is, I am sure I am going to get somethings wrong but it is hard to get this correct since there is no written history and stories change from region and according to people, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
The best way I can explain voodoo is to compare it to the Native American religious believes, that the world is alive, that spirits are all around us, our dead ancestors are not dead but they are among us in different forms. Those spirits can protect us, bring good fortune and prosperity or the spirits can be vengeful and bring bad luck and hardship. We can contact the spirits through certain actions and rituals and there are certain people who have been given the gift of talking to spirits. These people will go into a trance and communicate with the spirits. There is a national holiday in January that celebrates voodoo and people gather in Ouida, the cradle of voodoo, where people dance in a trance and slash themselves with knives and brake bottles on their heads to prove that their body is in this world but their spirits are in another world.

Voodoo in Benin is known as Grigri. Grigri is very present in the everyday lives and the people still hold a very strong believe that grigri plays a part of their lives, a large portion of Africans are animist and have combined Islam or Christianity to their believes but grigri is seen in the biggest to smallest details of their lives. For example certain hospitals in rural and medium size town will have grigri as a cause of death on their death certificate. It is common to see mud statues that represent deceased members of the family and depending the size and accessories that the statue has, you can tell how important the person was, but the actual purpose of the statue is to represent that the person is still among the living. Sweeping after sundown is seen as taboo, cause the spirits come out at night and sweeping might anger the spirits. Going to the outdoor markets is a very interesting experience, there are grigri sections where you can find monkey bones, animal skins, dried animals potions made of god knows what, and various types of strange roots and herbs, there are also markets that sell nothing but grigri objects.