BBtv WORLD: Roots of Voudun and Slavery's Legacy in Ouidah (Africa)
Today's Boing Boing tv is an installment of our ongoing BBtv WORLD series, in which we bring you first-person glimpses of life around the globe.
From the 17th to 19th centuries, millions of African people were sold into slavery, transported on ships to the Americas. With them came spiritual traditions including Voudun, which we now know as “voodoo.” Its roots are in the Dahomey kingdom on the West Coast of Africa, now the country of Benin.
In today’s episode, I travel to Benin’s port city of Ouidah, one of the most important slave trade ports, and a center of the Vodoun religion.
We visit the Temple of Pythons and learn about Voudun religious practices, and witness some of the most important sites in the history of the slave trade.
We walk along a beach that was the single most highly-trafficked embarkation point for West African slaves headed over the Atlantic to the Americas. One million people were forced on to ships here, many transported to Haiti and Brazil, where Voudun transmuted into voodoo and Candomblé.
Outsiders called this region the Slave Coast. Ouidah's residents today call the former boarding platform on this otherwise idyllic beach the Gate of No Return. -- XJ
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Xeni,
These videos that you and your team are putting together are really incredible. What struck me most about this segment, was the beautiful sculpture, bas relief (?) murals and pottery. However, the history of the sites you visited is truly unthinkable. (What was it about the culture of the time in Europe that allowed this to happen? Racism alone cannot account for a practice such as burying the sick and weak alive. The level of depravity is incomprehensible)
It is intersting to hear about the origins of Voodoo. The emphasis on nature (i.e. sacred tree) is notable. I also liked hearing about the "women priests." The music and dancing associated with the religious parades speaks to a life-affirming spirituality.
Great piece.
@Wolfiesma, thank you very, very much. I have to give a lot of extra respect here to Derek Bledsoe, and Keith Carunida, who edited and produced this piece, and did a really fantastic job telling this story. They are true pros, and I am so proud to be working with them, and very glad that you appreciate the work we're all doing on Boing Boing tv together.
One thing that was amazing for me to realize, when we were speaking with cultural experts and local folks there -- the slave trade could not have expanded to the degree it did without the participation of local people. So, there were complex and tragic stories of how intercultural warfare in the kingdom of Dahomey meant that POWs detained by one ethnolinguistic group would be delivered and sold off to white traders, who'd then export them as "goods" to the Americas. The French and Dutch could not have reached in to the inland regions where so many of the slaves came from -- they could not have done this without integrating the economy and distribution flow of this human trafficking with profit participants who were also African.
Everything is complicated. War, greed, and the lack of true freedom to make better decisions make people do terrible things.
Nice Ball Python!
I don't know why, but I always have trouble viewing BBtv embeds. I get sound, but no video. I can slide forward and see a frozen frame at any point in time, but no motion. Fedora 9 on x86, FFv3.0.2.
Hey pogorator -- we'll check that out and ping you, sorry about that. Have you tried viewing the MP4 instead? here's that link: http://bit.ly/1sVTVH
@xeni: thanks, the direct MP4 link does work fine for me (with mplayer).
Real Story about this place.
In 1978, my parents were visiting the coast from
Ivory Coast to Benin through Togo.
And here in Ouida, "la dame au serpent" received my mam under her tent and kicked out my dad.
After somme gri-gri with bones she said to my mam
that she was pregnant before it was possible to know it (on a scientific way) and said that It would be a boy.
It was me.
They reminded me this story when I went to Benin in 2000. I didn't go to Ouida though but parties in Cotonou are awesome !
Great Video..Thanks!
Awesome stuff...if you have anything more on the history of Voudun I'd love to see it, the religion has been a source of fascination to me ever since I read Gibson's "Count Zero" in the early 90s and the first half of Morrison's "The Invisibles" series in the mid-90s.
And thank you to you and your team for visiting these places, making these pieces, and not shying away from the darker parts of the history. It is only by knowing what we have already done to each other that we will be able to prevent ourselves from doing so again.