Voyages Afrique de l'Ouest: Togo #3 Voodoos and Papal visits in Togoville
0Tuesday 4 March 2014 by Renee
Our final port of call in Togo was Togoville, Togo's historical centre of voodoo. To get to Togoville, we have to get to Agbodrafo, then take a pirouge canoe across Lac Togo to Togoville. Except of course there is no signage, so we had to overshoot it a few times before finding where to stop...
What isn't mentioned in the guide books is that Togoville's other claim to fame is that Pope John Paul 2 visited in 1985 after someone witnessed an apparition of Mary on the lake. So the tour is part voodoo tour, part retracing JP2's steps...
This church was originally built as a German Methodist church, but became Catholic when the French started running the show - practical huh?
I wish I had taken notes, but I think the story below went that if other sacrifices for fertility have not worked then you sacrifice a lamb and fling its guts against this door...
And finally, in classic West African nonchalance, the actual canoe that was used to bring Pope JP2 from Agbodrafo across the lake...
This church was originally built as a German Methodist church, but became Catholic when the French started running the show - practical huh?
But this outdoor amptheatre was added on to accommodate the congregation for JP2's mass overlooking the Lake...maybe less practical?
A replica of the canoe Our Lady of Lake Togo was seen on...
and then, the voodoo...Voodoo, if you didn't now (I sure didn't) actually comes from the Caribbean, and is basically a hydrid of traditional Western African (animist) beliefs, and the Catholicism slaves were exposed to. At the end of the slave trade, a lot of slaves in the Caribbean were sent back to West Africa, bringing their new hybrid religion with them. I think this was a fertility voodoun ...
Some more fetish objects, I think the iron is for strength?
I wish I had taken notes, but I think the story below went that if other sacrifices for fertility have not worked then you sacrifice a lamb and fling its guts against this door...
And finally, in classic West African nonchalance, the actual canoe that was used to bring Pope JP2 from Agbodrafo across the lake...
