Togo, Voodoo and A Traditional Healer

by WV_No_Author, published Thursday, January 4th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

Throughout this trip at various border checks, a “money trader” would come on our vehicles carrying bags of money. He would then convert whatever we needed at black market rates. If there were too many military police standing around that hadn’t already received their daily graft, Godfried or Roberto would take our $$ and disappear behind a shack…materializing with wads of money. This trip was over Christmas and New Years and the usual comment from police, military or anyone that you wanted something from was…”do you have a Christmas present for me?” This is part of doing business in Africa and Roberto always knew exactly how many CFA’s or other cash to give them.

Togo is a small but interesting, French-speaking country. Lome, the capital, is a city of about 800,000, founded by the Eye tribe in the 18th century. Around 1884, the German colonial invasion started the the region became the capital of German Togoland. Lome is small, easy to get around and the ocean is only a few blocks from the center of town.

First up was Lome’s Grand Marche (Great Market) and the fascinating fetish market that sells traditional medicines needed for voodoo – entire bats, bat wings, snakes and their potions, monkey paws, and lots of other ingredients necessary to prepare magic potions.