ANOTHER EMOTIONAL JOURNEY || OUIDAH || BENIN || July 2018

Day 12 (part 1) – Tuesday, July 31st, 2018

Alright so boom, picking back up where I left off. On day 12 my pastry chef friend and I woke up very early morning to a roach on the bath room door. Nature calls so I had to answer and didn’t notice the roach until I was washing my hands. You know how you feel a presence standing behind you? I looked in the mirror to find this big roach seemingly waiting in line to use the sink or something. I lost it!! We tried to stay up past the roach to kill it but we both fell back asleep but not without turning every light on first. Like in Togo, again, we were sleeping with the lights on burrito style but this time for a different reason entirely. At a more reasonable hour we called auntie T from Tennessee to come find the roach before we could go back in the bathroom and we’d been holding it for hours. Once the battle was over, we got dressed and went outside to watch the sunrise and the moon set.

Side Note: What’s the name of the bird that makes a rhythmic whoot sound all over the country? I can’t find the name of it or the sound on the google machine. If anyone knows please let me know!

Anyway, we ate breakfast and headed out. Breakfast was French style again with baguettes, eggs, butter, jam, tea, and fruit.

Our first stop after breakfast was the Gate of No Return which was another very emotional moment on the trip because we were taken along the route that hundreds of thousands of captured Africans, MY ANCESTORS, had to take to end up at the ports when they were stolen and forced into slavery in the Caribbean and the Americas. (run on sentence but necessary)

The 5 large ports of exit for Africans taken as slaves from Africa:

Congo - Pointe-Noire
Benin - Ouidah - the greatest amount of Africans came out of here.
Senegal - Gorée Island
Ghana - Elmina and Cape Coast
Tanzania - Zanzibar

Route of the Enslaved - they walked in swamps. Pain and suffering. Chained together 50 people per chain and had to walk.

Here were the stops:

1. Marketplace

2. Tree of forgetfulness - Africans were made to go around the tree 7 to 9 times in order to make them forget everything about their home and who they were.

3. Dark house – Africans were locked in here for 3 days to test them before they were made to boarding the ships.

Where Zomai was located. Zomai is a large dark house they housed the enslaved to approximate slave ship fit and disorient them to prevent revolt.

Had Africans that rebelled tied up in this position for a week on the sun until they died

4. Mass grave – This where all the sick or hurt are buried. These are the people who didn’t make it through the long grueling journey (people sometime were forced to walk all the way from Nigeria and other far places to these ports with little food or water), or through the time in the dark house. There were multiple mass graves along the journey. This is just one of them. The red represents the blood. The height of the monument is to represent the depth of the grave and the bodies piled. This went on for 400 years.

5. Tree of Remembrance – This tree is here so spirits of the dead would come back and wouldn’t revolt. Two captives, a black dog, and a black cat, were placed in a hole here, buried alive with leaves and herbs to make them unconscious and the tree was planted on top of their bodies.

Gateway of No Return – this is the last point before the Africans were made to board the ships.

Some of the symbolism and sculptures explained:

How the people were stored - naked, male and female and on their knees in a humble position. They were branding them with a hot iron on their back based on the colonizing country that stole them. The enslaved cursed them even as they branded them so they stuffed their mouth with wood to prevent them from speaking. All people at this port came from Nigeria, Togo, Benin – all part of the kingdom of Oyo.

Statues representing ebony - strong people they stole and enslaved.

Notice the three marks of the bottom face of the statute. Three marks on the faces of the statues represent the people captured from the kingdom of Oyo

Drum calls the spirits. Method of communication

Vodun / Orisha - spirit of God

Three heads - always more than one spirit together

Temple to vodun and god of thunder and lightning (shango)

Tree of return - has been there 300 years. Everybody went around the tree 3 times to remember.

One cannon for military use was traded for 21 women and 15 men. When the white people started capturing Africans many people ran into the temples and into the sacred forest because it was forbidden for the whites to come in; like claiming sanctuary at a place of worship. The kings collaborated with the whites so him and his court wouldn’t end up on the ships themselves. The whites brought whiskey to get the kings drunk to convince them to let them steal people from the temples. That’s how vodun got to the Americas. Because the people used vodun to defend themselves, the white people called it bad. The Black Power fist was originally the symbol of vodun which is kept in their left hand. Because of the symbol the fist represented, white people thought black people were doing vodun in the Americas but subconsciously vodun was what black people were doing; calling on the traditions of our ancestors.

Representation of Egun-Egun. The masks are said to have reincarnated spirits taking over them. The spirits perform the dances.

While touring the area, we saw a large group of the community helping pull the fishing boats in from the water.

And this goat who walked along the path with us.

Always remember my fellow brothers and sisters “We came from warriors, best of the best. They came from weakness.” Only weakness would allow such evil!

After our journey to the Gate of No Return and along the slave route we visited Ganvie. For the sake of length I’ll stop here and tell you about Ganvie next.

Thanks for reading all these words!

Love ya!

Taste Tutor

“Always honor and remember your ancestors - the ones you know and unknown; that way their souls won’t be in distress and maybe we can get ahead as a people in the Americas. Their distress is ya; being discriminated against, behind, poor, struggling, etc.”

TRAVEL BLOG THURSDAY - OUIDAH || part 2 || BENIN || July 2018