Togo (the Togolese Republic) is situated in West Africa, bordering Burkina Faso, Benin, and Ghana. (This was a trivia question on the ship and we got it correct thanks to prepping this blog!) Anyway, the largest city and capital of Togo is the city of Lomé. This is where we were.

Our excursion here was to a voodoo ceremony in a nearby village. The drive took about an hour and during that time we were given many facts about the country, its people, and the practice of voodoo. Some of the things that stood out to me include the following: Like many countries in West Africa, the official language in Togo is French. It is a fairly young country in terms of its inhabitants. According to the CIA World Factbook, the median age of Togo’s population is 20 years. By way of comparison, for example, the median age of the population of Monaco, the world’s most elderly country, is 55.4. In Togo, almost 60% of the population is under the age of 25. Part of this is also that Togo has a low life expectancy of 71.36 years.

Another fact that completely shocked me was when the tour guide told us that the illiteracy rate in Togo is 90%. I have become accustomed to tour guides sharing the literacy rate, but usually with much higher numbers (nearing 90% or higher literacy rates in some parts of Asia). But here it was the opposite. I suppose some of it could be the age fact noted above, but I think it was more about the poverty levels and inherent infrastructure. They rely on other countries for their basic needs – such as relying on Ghana for their electricity. There wasn’t much in the way of schools or hospitals, and the poverty levels were incredibly high and readily apparent as we drove around. It was quite sad to see.

Perhaps in part driven by the desperate need for money, tiven a large focus of our around-the-world trip has been on elephants, I’ll share a (not-so-fun) fact about Togo and elephants… namely, about the ivory trade. In Togo, in January 2014, an ivory trafficking case saw the largest ivory seizure on the African continent since a global ivory ban took effect in 1990. Officials seized 3.8 metric tons of ivory, representing an estimated 380 or more elephants.

On our way to the voodoo ceremony, we had to move off the main (recently paved) road and onto the typical road of the country – and I fully expected us to get stuck. It had recently rained and there were such large mudholes that we had to circumnavigate the bus to avoid being stuck. Here are pictures of the road.

My back has been acting up but on the mend, but this bumpy trip over the uneven road didn’t help. I was quite thankful to reach our destination (though we would, of course, have to return on these same roads after the ceremony).

Onto the voodoo ceremony… the Aja, Ewe, and Fon peoples of Togo practice the religion Vodun aka Vodon, Vodoun, Vodou, Vudu, Voudou, and Voodoo. However, voodooism does not have the negative implications it has in the West. In Togo, voodooism is a belief system extending to culture, philosophy, language, art, dance, music, and medicine.

Our ceremony was in the village of Sanguera. We got off our shuttle busses and began walking toward the village.

Prior to entering the village, we were greeted by the chief priest who did a mini welcoming ceremony. In this ceremony, he did some chanting and poured liquid from a bowl into three spots on the ground in front of him. He did this several times, and then another guy gave him what appeared to be liquor from a bottle into what looked like a shot glass, which he then poured out into the same piles on the ground. After that, we were able to enter the main village area where the full ceremony would occur.

Something you can’t see in the photo above is that there were some members of the village standing taking our photos from their cell phones as we took photos of them with ours. I found that quite fitting in a way as it was clear that we were likely quite the spectacle to them as they were to us.

Within the village, we were seated on benches around the main center area. The village people began the ceremony complete with dancing, chanting, and rhythmic drum banging. Several ‘performers’ had mud covering their faces and they spun and gyrated around the center area.

At one point, a live chicken was placed on somebody’s head and they proceeded to do something with string to the bird. I wasn’t in a good position to see exactly what was occurring, but the chicken ultimately was killed as the dancing and chanting continued around it.

At some point during the ceremony, they served refreshments. We had our choice of a soda or a beer. I chose a local pilsner, which was nice and cold. Many people opted against a drink, I think in part due to all of the warnings we keep receiving about eating and drinking off the ship (for fear of cholera) but given it was fully sealed I was among those who viewed this as safe and partook in the beverage. For the record, it was all good.

Following the ceremony, we slowly made our way back to the busses and back to the port. On the drive back, we learned that the ceremony we had just seen was one that prepared them for war, making them bullet proof and fire proof to ensure the safety of all attendees. This could come in handy if pirates decide to attack us on the remainder of our trip…

Actually, now’s as good a time as any to share that we have been in high risk areas for pirates. We were in a similar situation on the eastern side of Africa when we passed Somalia, but this time we have been taking greater precautions. We received the following letter from Oceania:

The drill wasn’t anything big – just letting us know that if pirates are sighted or we are in danger, we’ll be asked to get low and away from windows as the ship will be doing evasive maneuvers that will rock the boat. At night, all shades on the ship have been drawn (which was eerie at first in the buffet area to see the windows closed but now after a week of this I’m used to it). They also turn off all the outside lights so the pool deck is completely dark at night – also spooky after being accustomed to it always being well lit. We can’t eat outside on the back deck during dinner, which is a bummer, but understandable. Other than those things, you wouldn’t necessarily know we were in any semblance of danger. Oh, and there are snipers on board just in case, so we see these muscled, tattooed men walking around and that’s a reminder we’re in dangerous waters. They were here near Somalia too, so it’s just another thing we’ve become used to at this point. I’m not sure how much longer we’re in the high risk area, but we’ll know because the lights will come back on at night and blinds won’t be needed for the windows anymore. My guess is it will occur near the Canary Islands.

Always an adventure! 😊