Hey People,

today I would like to talk to you about my experiences in Benin, a small country located in western Africa.

General Info and What Stood Out to Me

It is for example famous for being one of the epicenters of the voodoo culture. Voodoo is even an acknowledged religion. It's almost weird if you only know this word from movies, but the people practice voodoo, traditional local religions, Christianity and Islam all next to each other and sometimes also several at once. It is pretty unique. Benin is also associated with slave trade. Many african slaves were deported from here due to it's close location to the sea and connecting the triangle of Europe, Africa and North-America.

Of course

there are many more important cultural aspects of a whole entire country and I don't want to limit it to these things, but these aspects somehow seemed to caught my attention as a differentiating factor coming from the outside. So this is just a subjective report of my impressions.

I am still searching for photos of the countryside etc. which I will post another time. So sorry, here are mainly photos with me inside them.

Visiting a Python Temple

Coming from Europe, West-Africa of course, is a totally different universe. So as mentioned above, voodoo is practised in Benin, in which pythons are considered to be holy. These pythons are held in temples and tourists can come and visit them. So one day we went to these temples. You can imagine a garden with small colorful huts and people sitting around on chairs. We were lead to one of these huts and shown inside. On the wall there were a bunch of snakes just snaking around. I am not sure if I had ever seen so many snakes in one place in real life before. Of course I also had to put a snake around my neck and feel it which I had not done for a while. I don't think the snake minded though :D It was pretty calm.

(Obviously being not tense at all with a snake hanging around my neck)

Getting traditional clothing

The capitol of Benin is called Cotonu. There, many people wear traditional colorful clothing, which I think is super cool. In the center of Cotonu there is a huge market called Dantopka. On the outside market you can basically buy everything from clothes to food and electronic devices. Next to it, there is a building where you can buy even more things like jewellery. As we wanted to have a traditional „suite“ ( I am not sure of the term) made we went to buy some cloth there. You can choose between so many colors, motives and structures and the people are really nice. Just as a side story people overall were very gentle towards us. And children even will sing a song in French when you pass by which goes as follows: “Jovo (term for light-colored people), Jovo, Good day. How are you? Very well! Thank you“. Really cute! and cool as well. I never experienced something like this before. Anyways once we chose the cloth we went to an amazing tailor, had a couple of drinks with him and listened to his world-view. A couple of days later he brought us the suits and we were super happy.

(Being happy with my choice of cloth)

Getting around on motor-bikes

Many people worked as taxi drivers when we were there. Of course you could catch a taxi-car but most people get around on motor-bikes called Zémidjan. It's a faster and cheaper way of transportation as opposed to using cars. If you want to go somewhere you just stand on the street and wait for someone to come to you. Then you have to bargain the costs of transport. After a while you get used to that system and know which prices make sense. Since you are not required to wear protection and the traffic is going constantly you have to pay a little bit attention and maybe talk to your driver, if you are not used to that kind of traffic. Here again the drivers were really kind and willing to talk to you and explain aspects of their country.

(Feeling super cool riding around town)

There is definitely coming a part 2 and maybe event 3 of this trip. Hope you enjoyed and maybe even learned something new :)

Cheers!