and Brazilians pay as little as 1,500 USD and as much as 3,000 USD for the same rituals Luiz was in discussion to receive. Local people often paid half these prices—but not always. Many Béninois explained to me that Gbădù was particularly expensive because of her immense power and because of her ability to make new diviners. Her required presence during Fá initiations made her a valuable international religious commodity.
Sensing Luiz’s worry, Thomas leaned into him and whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s not expensive. You realize that with Gbădù you can make the money back after a few initiations? Vodún Gbădù will bless you.”
“But I need to learn how to make Gbădù. Is there anything I can do to convince you to teach me?” Luiz begged, desperate to learn Gbădù’s secrets.
“No, maybe next time you come—but not this time. She’s dangerous. I need to trust you before giving you that much power. I need to know what you’re going to do with it.”
In a moment of desperation, Luiz retorted, “But how will I know that you didn’t put cocaine in the shrine? I need to watch you make the shrine for my own protection.”
Thomas shrugged and said, “There’s nothing in Gbădù that will get you into trouble.”
From Luiz’s encounter one can see how spiritual tourists might attempt to gain access to Vodún’s secrets. Luiz’s case was quite representative of the dozens of interactions I experienced. The vast majority of the spiritual tourists I met made their entrée into Vodún through a diviner. During these encounters Béninois practitioners often delicately provide information to foreign spiritual seekers while simultaneously holding back religious secrets that they intend to reveal at a later date or guard indefinitely for their own families. Conversely, foreign spiritual seekers such as Luiz, motivated by their own anxieties, often tap into racist fears of Africa. In Luiz’s case, he begged Thomas in a moment of desperation for permission to watch him construct Gbădù because he worried Thomas might add illegal drugs into the vodún during the shrine’s construction. Having postcolonial, racist imaginings of a corrupt illicit Africa, many tourists I met expressed fears that Africans might construct shrines using marijuana, illegal animal parts (e.g., leopard hides or elephant ivory), or, in one case, even human remains.
Despite the challenges that these exchanges bring, an amicable conclusion in which Béninois teach some religious secrets to a foreign spiritual seeker while retaining others is almost always achieved. For Luiz, he was able to come up with the money for his initiation after a few weeks. He finally conceded that Gbădù would bless him and that he would be able to make his money back once he could do initiations on his own when he had returned to Brazil. Though he never learned how to make Gbădù, he received the shrine, and, despite his objections to being kept from viewing the shrine’s construction, he and Gbădù made it to Brazil safely.
When one combines Bénin’s colonial history with an influx of tourists seeking to learn and participate in a worldview that many Béninois feel is the last secret that they have as their own, it is no surprise that Béninois are cautious about whom they can trust and at what cost. These costs are, in some cases, reduced after a certain amount of time, but in other cases they may require tourists, who are for the most part inseparably members of the “Western world,” to lubricate the social frictions generated by secrecy. Heightened by a long history of colonial and postcolonial interactions, other gestures are often economic in nature and beyond a simple promise.
Tourism and the Friction of “Authenticity”
Local tour guides often facilitate tourist experiences, including photographic access. These tour guides, who have learned what foreigners enjoy seeing, photographing, and experiencing, tend to congregate around hotels or tourist centers. One afternoon while resting in the beautiful gardens of one of Abomey’s small hotels, I met Bernard, a local tour guide. Over the months, Bernard and I became good friends as we discussed the local tourism market, and he disclosed some of the requests that tourists had made of him. From hiring local sex workers to ensuring access to important Vodún ceremonies, Bernard had done it all. Over the years, he made his living by approaching hotel guests who he thought might be interested in local tours of the ancient palace buildings of Dahomey, one of Abomey’s sacred forests, and even, on occasion, Vodún ceremonies. The hotel was particularly busy one July afternoon, and Bernard was making his rounds, explaining his services to all the tourists lounging around the hotel’s manicured gardens. He finally approached two British women, both in their mid-twenties, who agreed to take Bernard up on his offer to visit some of the local Vodún temples—especially as he promised to take them to temples that were “rarely seen by outsiders.” After sharing a few cold beers and talking about what the women might like to see, both Bernard and the tourists invited me to come along with them. I eagerly packed a small day bag and climbed onto the back of Bernard’s motorcycle. The four of us left the hotel’s gardens and rode off into the countryside for some twenty minutes. After a bumpy drive, we finally arrived at the place he called the “Voodoo village”—a small village at the edge of the forest that, according to Bernard, was known for Vodún.
Upon our arrival, people scurried about looking for chairs and fresh water so they could greet us in the customary way. Bernard explained to the villagers that we were interested in learning more about the vodún they worshiped. An old man came from a mud-brick home positioned across the courtyard. He shook our hands, led us into his temple, and showed us a series of wooden carved statues (bòcyɔ́) that were half-buried in the dry red, cracked earth. After offering little explanation of what we were looking at, he became irate that we were not taking pictures.
“Aren’t [my vodún] good enough to photograph?” he asked through Bernard.
“Of course they are!” Christine, one of the tourists, responded. Then, while taking pictures, she looked at me and asked in English, “I thought we weren’t supposed to take pictures of things like this. Is this place even real?”
“Let’s watch and find out,” I replied.
After a few moments of picture-taking, we were ushered into the next room, where the Vodún priest demonstrated how to pray and dance for the spirits. His prayers were unusually loud. He danced while holding two buffalo horns as if he were mimicking the way they would have grown had humans had horns. His display seemed to be a caricature of countless dances I had seen before. He was clearly performing and catering to foreign, perhaps racist, sensibilities. After his dramatic performance, he settled down into a small wooden chair, reached into a black cloth bag, and retrieved small balls of tightly spun red thread. “These are charms that will protect you from accidents,” he explained. “I sell them for 5,000 CFA,” he quickly added.
After his failed sales pitch, he took us to a small courtyard where he showed us more shrines, drawing our attention to one shrine in particular that hung from the branches of a tree. He explained that the shrine was “bloody” because he had just sacrificed a chicken to the nameless arboreal spirit that morning. The “blood” was red—very red, not brownish-red like dried blood often looks when applied to white cloth. The tourists never commented on the redness of the blood—perhaps it was just as they expected it to be—and I never pointed it out but it made me suspicious. As I internally struggled with this site’s authenticity, the tourists discussed it openly.
“I don’t think that place was real,” Michelle stated.
“Why not?” I asked curiously.
“He didn’t care that we took pictures. The shrines were too clean and the priest just wants to sell us charms! It looks like a scam to me. This place is like a theme park—it isn’t real,” Michelle concluded.
For Michelle and Christine, this site was too open and too free. To have what they would
