Golden hour settles over a village in Ouidah, Benin, deepening the red of the dusty earth beneath my feet. I sit on a bench and watch a towering conical structure layered with raffia and dried leaves of pink and blue spin on its axis. These moving leaves are chased by male villagers to the soundtrack of maracas and a pulsing drum. They dart forward to tap the spinning form before backing away again, teasingly as if testing its limits.
I am watching a Zangbeto ceremony, and the haystack-like figure is understood as the literal embodiment of a Vodun spirit, the “night watchman” who wards off ill will by patrolling communities. Practiced for centuries among Ogu and Yoruba communities in Benin and Nigeria, the ritual holds both spiritual and social power. I am privy to it on a trip that feels both meticulously organised and deeply personal: a 15-day journey through Benin, Togo, and Ghana, and my first time in West Africa. As the drum continues to pulse, we are invited to peer inside the structure (to prove no one is inside, although I suspect someone is hiding among the leaves), I realise I stand somewhere between observer and returnee, trying to understand what it means to witness something that my own ancestors may have practiced.
Voodoo, or Vodun, as it is known here, is a polytheistic religion originating in West Africa, among the Fon, Ewe, and Yoruba peoples in Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria. It focuses on the worship of deities and has long been maligned by the West. Yet it is less about animal sacrifice and more a way of life; a spiritual and communal practice that shapes daily existence. My presence in West Africa also carries a significance deeper than journalistic curiosity, there is a pull that feels almost cellular. After growing up in a white family, I took a series of DNA tests 10 years ago and learned that half of my ancestry traces back to Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, a fact that was not disclosed to me by my parents, who chose not to address my mother’s affair until my dad who raised me, passed away in 2015 from cancer.
Now, I am standing in Benin, a place which holds a part of my heritage, watching the rhythm of the crowd and the invocation of spirits, and thinking of the father who raised me—and also the other who doesn’t know of my existence.