OUIDAH, Benin, Jan 11 (Reuters) – On Benin’s nationwide voodoo vacation, performers dressed as guardians of the night time swirled in costumes resembling technicolour haystacks, delighting worshippers and vacationers alike.
Over a thousand folks gathered within the small Atlantic coast city of Ouidah on Tuesday, as soon as an essential port within the slave commerce, to observe the frilly annual rituals of dance and drumming to honour the 500-year-old faith’s panoply of gods and spirits.
“They arrive in rising numbers as a result of voodoo is not thought-about sorcery, it’s not thought-about barbarism,” mentioned voodoo non secular chief Daagbo Hounon Houna II, adorned in vibrant beads and a prime hat.
Voodoo is practiced by round 12% of the West African nation’s inhabitants of 13 million folks, however the authorities additionally need to use these deep non secular roots and spectacular customs to draw extra vacationers and enhance the agriculture-dependent economic system.
In Ouidah, dance teams transfer to spellbound drumming and chants as spectators watched and shot movies on their telephones.
Nigerian therapist Flora Domenis, 44, travelled to the competition with associates from the Caribbean, who she mentioned had a particular curiosity in these form of traditions resulting from their shared African heritage.
[1/7] Devotees carry out as they participate within the annual celebration of Voodoo competition in Cotonou, Benin January 10, 2023. REUTERS/ Charles Placide Tossou
“For them, there may be lots of curiosity in discovering the roots of our ancestors, the African roots,” she mentioned.
Spectator Jean Marie Ngondjibangangte from Cameroon was notably impressed by the multi-coloured masks and feminine dancers’ intricate footwork.
Voodoo “is extraordinary and we as Africans should do all the pieces we are able to to advertise this tradition,” he mentioned.
As a part of its growth plan, the federal government has put aside a stretch of beachfront between the principle metropolis Cotonou and Ouidah as a particular tourism zone for guests, who it hopes may even be eager to go to historic slave websites, pre-colonial palaces, and tour the pure wonders of Benin’s inside.
There’s a method to go. Solely round 350,000 vacationers visited Benin in 2020, though numbers have been rising steadily since 292,000 visited in 2016, in accordance with the newest annual knowledge from the World Tourism Group.
French vacationer Elodie Wine, 23, mentioned seeing the group dances and fantastical costumes of the Ouidah competition was prone to be the spotlight of her journey to Benin.
“It was stunning. We did not suppose there can be so many individuals right here, but it surely’s superior to see,” the trainee midwife mentioned.
Writing by Alessandra Prentice;
Modifying by Bate Felix and Conor Humphries
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