Ouidah

Ouidah is a town of two memories on the coast of Benin, forty kilometres west of Cotonou: it is the capital of vodun, the religion that West Africa gave to Haiti, Cuba and Bahia — with a Temple of Pythons that faces the Catholic basilica across the square, a Sacred Forest where the kings' spirits live among bronze statues, and a festival on the tenth of January that fills the beach with drums —, and it is a town of the slave trade, from which more than a million people were shipped: the Portuguese fort of 1721, now the town's museum; the square where the auctions were held under the eye of the Brazilian trader they called Chacha; and the Route des Esclaves, four kilometres of red road that runs from the square, past the Tree of Forgetfulness and the Tree of Return and the memorial of Zomachi, across the lagoon to the beach, where an arch called the Door of No Return stands open onto the Atlantic since 1995. The Agudas — descendants of freed slaves who came back from Brazil — gave it its Casa do Brasil, its churches and its surnames; a foundation of contemporary art has taken a villa in the middle of it.

The traveller comes from Cotonou for the day, or sleeps a night in one of the old houses turned guesthouses, and begins at the fort and its museum, for the story told in one place; crosses to the Temple of Pythons — the snakes are handled by the priests and placed, if you wish, on your shoulders — and the basilica opposite; walks the lanes of the Agudas' houses to the Sacred Forest, and stands under the iroko of King Kpassè with the guardian; and then, on foot or on the back of a zem, follows the Route des Esclaves south — the square, the trees, the memorial, the lagoon, the fishermen — to the beach and the Door, and stays until the sun goes into the sea. On the tenth of January he does it all in a crowd, with the drums.

The Guide's honesty: Ouidah asks for two kinds of respect at once — vodun is a living religion, not a show, and the traveller enters its temples and forest with a guide, with permission and with the small fees that keep them; the Route is a road of memory, and the traveller walks it as such, quietly, and does not pose in the Door; the pythons are gentle and the priests are used to visitors — the choice to hold one is yours; the festival on the tenth of January is extraordinary and full, and beds in Ouidah go months ahead — sleep in Cotonou if you must; the town is safe, hot and slow, and the zems are the way to move; the beach is not for swimming, the current is fierce; and the two memories of the town are one memory — the traveller who feels the drums and the silence in the same afternoon has understood Ouidah.