Madventures/Blog

Lome is a typical African port town. The hustle and bustle never ends, the heat, the humidity and haze hits you like a hammer as you try to make your way through the multitudes that all seem to be selling, buying, exporting or importing something.

It’s no wonder Lome is also the home to a Akodessewa fetish market – a veritable supermarket of bones, body parts and mummified versions of every African animal imaginable.

The practitioners of voodoo – that is, most of the country – find everything they need in their ceremonies in Marche des Fetishes.

We visited a local healer, a bokor with uncanny powers of observation. Without telling him, this medicine man right away noticed that we had underwent through a powerful ritual recently and he asked for our confirmation.

A bit taken aback, we told him about our Ayahuasca experience in Brazil. The bokor nodded knowingly. Hand on heart, there was no way he could have known about something that had took place on the other side of the Atlantic earlier.

Despite the crazy stuff we do in the show, Riku especially considers himself a man of reason and science, but when the bokor told him he must undergo a healing ritual to finish what Don Francisco started in the Amazon basin or otherwise the malevolent spirits might possess him anytime, even Riku felt a cold sensation running down his spine.

We decided not take any risks – this was clearly a serious man who had pride in his profession and I’ve been raised to respect my elders. So, the next thing we know Riku is getting rubbed by a live chicken and standing starkers in the medicine man’s yard, where he started to poke tiny holes in Riku’s love handles with what can be best describe as voodoo vaccination needles.

We’re glad to report that it worked; Riku has not been possessed by any evil spirits since that day.

Africa is often called the Dark Continent. And although the noted explorer Henry Stanley meant it was unknown terrain for white men, the description also fits literally. The fact that the days are mostly filled with almost blinding sunlight only seems to make the darkness more impenetrable.

Traveling through the African night, our thoughts were constantly drawn into the scenarios of the childhood adventure books. Hungry lions stalking in the grass, restless natives pricking their ears to the sound of distant yet threatening drums, the sense of high adventure carried by the night wind.

Of course, the truth is very far from that image.

Colonialism has been happily over for a long time, the tribes cling on to many traditions savage to westerners but massacre of strangers, especially of the Caucasian persuasion, is not one of them. And the lions – I guess they are just too scared of the population centers, cars and other modern conveniences to do much stalking near them.

Yet the point of view of Edgar Rice Burroughs, even Ernest Hemingway and especially Hollywood and all the rest who looked at Africa through a very narrow cultural eye seems to prevail in our minds. Africa still carries the stigma of darkness.

Do yourself a favor and travel there. You might just see the light.