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Ouidah – from slavery to voodoo capital

Place du Chacha

Place du Chacha

Quite a few memorials remind of the dark past of this city, most of them along the route de esclaves, a 4km sandy track that starts at Place Chacha where the slaves were auctioned off. Shaded by a large tree the square now radiates an almost idyllic ambience. Francisco Felix de Souza, the Brazilian slave trader, resided right there, his former villa seems almost modest considering the money he must have made trafficking human cargo to Brazil. Local narrative has Souza watching the horrid business transactions from this very villa, he would even check on the ships leaving through his binoculars until they disappeared on the horizon.

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Ouidah – festival du voodoo

Voodoo pope

The who is who of voodoo in Benin, the "pope" is the person with the green hat

The tranquility of Ouidah changes abruptly on the 10th of January when the town hosts Benin’s annual Voodoo-festival. The ceremony starts in the morning at the house of “the pope”, together with “the who is who of voodism” he leads the two-hour long procession through Oudiah.

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