West Africa: The Spirit Coast

From a darkened back room in Lomé to the "door of no return" at Cape Coast, a voyage through West Africa where the old gods, and the old wounds, are still very much in residence.

Words and pictures by Roderick Eime

"You will travel far, and the spirits will guide you safely through many perils." Anthony whispers it into his cupped hands, slides a tiny wooden pin into a tinier shaft and presents me with my travelling talisman. Anthony is not his real name, I'm certain. He has the glow of a man who has just sold a very good used car.

We are in a darkened back room at the Akodessewa Fetish Market in Lomé, the capital of Togo, a walled compound billed as the largest voodoo market on earth. Beside me, Dr David Conrad, an African studies scholar, surveys the assortment on the little table. "You won't find these legba out in the market," he says through barely moving lips. "These are the real deal."

Anthony, not his real name I'm sure, entices us to view his magic idols. (Roderick Eime)

He accepts one of the idols with the solemnity of a holy treasure, though this roughly carved figure, about the size of a premature foetus, has none of the beauty we usually associate with the divine. Its gnarled body is furred with dust and cobwebs and daubed with lumpy red stains that need no further description. David raises one thick, wiry eyebrow in my direction. "This one."

For about US$20, I leave with a genuine West African voodoo doll and, as a sweetener, a couple of talismans.

Visitors inspect the trinkets in the Voodoo market. (Roderick Eime)

Out front, the market proper does what every African market does. Hopeful young hucksters bound up to thrust trinkets in your face, only here the souvenirs are tiny figurines bristling with nails, or amalgams of animal parts that defy description. "These are just for the tourists," David says, waving the horde away in broken French. The serious business happens in the booths at the rear, where you can engage a witch doctor or clairvoyant to seek a remedy for your ills, or your revenge.

Vodun, a word that means "spirit," has outlasted centuries of Christian influence along the Gulf of Guinea and is practised in some shape or form from Nigeria to Ghana, in cities and villages alike. When West Africans were shipped in their thousands to the Caribbean and the Americas, it travelled with them and became "voodoo," and something else again.

Which brings us to the other half of what this coast offers: memory.

Ghana and Cape Coast Castles (Roderick Eime)

In neighbouring Ghana, we descend into the underground cells of Cape Coast Castle, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. We stand transfixed, listening to a kind of supernatural white noise that waxes and wanes at the edge of hearing. Hearts quicken. Skin tingles. Over the centuries, thousands of captives shuffled along these corridors toward the infamous "door of no return." Some of us emerge feeling touched by something no longer of this world.

A portion of the Ancestors Project (part of the Nkyinkyim Museum) in Ghana, created by artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo.

Further along the coast, whitewashed Elmina Castle squats above the surf. The Portuguese raised it in 1482, which makes it the oldest European building south of the Sahara. The Dutch took it in 1637.

The map we're navigating is itself a kind of souvenir. The borders were drawn in the 19th and 20th centuries to please colonial masters, with scant regard for traditional homelands. French and English, and in Togo's case once German, lie awkwardly over older Portuguese and Dutch, and over local Niger-Congo languages such as Akan, which carries across much of Ghana.

Peter Baxter, historian, author and inveterate Africa field guide, is quick to remind us that this is not a continent for rubber-necking voyeurs. It faces a long list of environmental and humanitarian challenges, from messy resource exploitation to threadbare grass-roots medical care. Tourism, he argues, can be part of the answer.

"Apart from the obvious revenue benefits, well-managed tourism maintains the viability of local culture, providing an incentive for both its remaining alive and vibrant, but also a framework for it to continue evolving, bearing in mind that culture is fundamentally organic," Baxter tells me. "A lack of formats such as ours for local cultural display will obviously result in many stagnating and ultimately disappearing under the weight of modern influences."

When we part company in Senegal, the former French colony, it is with a suitcase of rather alarming carvings and a stubborn optimism. The old march of manacled captives to the shore has been replaced by files of khaki-clad travellers hoping to make a difference. Whether we do is a question for the next ten years.

Anthony promised the spirits would see me safely home. I'm choosing to treat that as a binding contract.

IF YOU GO

West African itineraries tend to be opportunistic and infrequent, so it's best to stay in touch with expedition cruise companies who have offered these trips in the past. Recently, they have been offered by Swan Hellenic, Variety and Oceania.

The writer travelled with assistance from G Adventures.

All material (c) Copyright Traveloscopy.com unless noted otherwise.