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D I A R Y
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2nd Trip
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Journal entry, 26.7.1992
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The train’s final stop is Cotonou-Abomey. The king does not permit any trains to come too close. No tracks for the last 27 km. From Abomey to Ouidah.
The sun is scorching my skin.
It is so hot that I am expecting the Coca Cola bottles to explode any minute. The asphalt is soft, the tires leaving deep ruts. The sun is like molasses. It’s hard to breathe.
A cannibalised truck, wheels reaching up to the sky, lays in the burning sun, like a beached whale gasping for air, or an elephant on Kilimanjaro after the coup de grace.
Underneath, dosing, sweating bodies. The heat is eating its way into my brain.
Captivating countryside. Teak forests as far as the eye can see, baobab trees towering out of the plains like lighthouses, a wind so hot, it feels like someone’s just opened the oven door. The shimmering above the road has ceased. Physics refusing to join in.
Mesme stepped on the gas, as much as the wheels could handle.
We arrived at last in Ouidah. Everything was exactly as it was four years ago.
Meeting Mahounon in the temple. A great Tohuwabohu.
Then something strange happened: as a present, I handed him the photograph I had taken four years ago, with Mahounon in front of the Iroco tree. Mahounon took the snapshot, and showed it round, excitedly.
At first, I thought he was joking, but then I realised he was really upset. He shouted, accusingly: I hadn’t asked permission to take the photograph. I didn’t know what he was talking about. We’d taken it together, and it hadn’t bothered him then. Mahounon was wildly gesticulating at the photograph and the tree. And then I realised that he was talking about the tree, not himself. We should have asked the tree for permission. It is a sacred tree. I had no alternative but to donate a sacrificial animal. That made everything alright.
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Journal entry, 1.8.1992
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National holiday in Benin. Just like home in Switzerland on 1st August! We took part in the military parade in Benin’s capital of Porto Novo. While Hans Christoph, GEO‘s Voodoo expert, sat on the rostrum in the shade, I was running around in the heat, dodging among the security forces, snapping away. Above us circled the only operational aircraft of the Benin Air Force, a helicopter normally used to supply beer to the workers on the oil rigs just off the coast. The military parade is odd: Marines without any battleships, airforce officers without any aircraft, followed by tank battalions without any tanks and paratroops without any parachutes - so it’s probably just as well they don’t have any planes. A crack regiment to safe-guard the government buildings, its soldiers in spotted combat uniforms, creeping forward like leopards, swinging their MP-batons aggressively. Then, a military band, a hundred strong, in red-green circus uniforms. A comical sight. A female battalion, modern descendants of the Amazons of the King of Dahomey.
Then came the gamekeepers with elephant tusks, buffalo skulls, antelope horns and – would you believe – a stuffed crocodile. Engineers showed off their flame throwers and firemen their hoses. Paramedics carrying stretchers and policemen speaking into their walkie-talkies, here called "Talkie-Walkies".
After the official march-past came representatives from all the various professional groups and, to the sound of the drums, every tribe, class and occupation of Benin got to its feet. Tailors, balancing their sewing machines on their heads. Boy scouts and young path-finders with red and blue neckerchiefs marching beside students of the Koran in their green robes. The Society of Fetishists from Ouidah and the Association of Voodoo Priests from Cotonou. Naked Somba warriors from the north, with bow and arrow, shield and spear.
A wild mixture of everything and anything that could possibly march in a parade.
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Journal entry, 12.8.1992
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An audience with the king in the old royal city of Abomey, his dynasty goes back to the 14th Century. The slave trade made his ancestors rich. A bloody history.
A Swiss, living in Benin, who runs a night club in Cotonou, arranged the audience for us.
The palace was guarded by a stone lion with bulging testicles and a Legba fetish with erect penis. Voodoo doesn’t stop at the king’s palace. After waiting for hours, we were finally led to the king. He used to be a police officer in Cotonou and misses his freedom. He wore a silver shield over his nose, so he didn’t have to breathe the same air as ordinary mortals. An imposing figure.
The formal ceremony was somewhat intimidating, but we were finally able to converse quite nicely with the man and - with general disregard for royal protocol, talked to him directly, not via a third party. He didn’t seem to mind. We felt honoured. I prostrated myself and must have looked funny; a white man in shorts lying at the feet of the black king. He complained about his regimented life style in the palace. He offered us one of his daughters in marriage – we refused, with thanks. "Seulement pour les vacances" ("Only for the holidays"). But that didn’t persuade us either.
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Journal entry, 14.8.1992
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I got a fax this afternoon, telling me that my father has had a stroke. He’s in a hospital in Switzerland. It doesn’t look good. He has gone blind and is paralysed down one side. My first reaction was to drop everything and go straight home. When Mahounon found out, he came to see me. It was not good to go right away. He would see what could be done. He would hold a ceremony tonight. As there was no sense in leaving today, I decided to stay one more night.
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Journal entry, 15.8.1992
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Mahounon spent the whole night sacrificing goats and chickens. I wasn’t allowed to be there. This morning he called me to him. We sat in the temple, beside the Legba offertory box, smeared with palm oil and blood, and he explained that I could now go to my father without danger. He said that when I got there and opened the door to my father’s room, he would be sitting in a chair in the corner. He would recognise me immediately, even though he’d been blind since the stroke. He would rise, come to me and take my hand, smiling. I found his prophecy both soothing and alarming at one and the same time. But now I felt that I could break my journey and go home.
Three days later in Zurich. My father recognised me from his chair in the corner, don’t ask me how. He stood up, came to me, and greeted me with a smile, happy to "see" his son. |
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Frenetic Films · Zürich Switzerland · mail@frenetic.ch
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