not so much so that access is denied completely.
I too had my suspicions, but I never confirmed or denied them to Michelle or Christine. After they had retired to their room that evening, Bernard and I met at the hotel bar for a drink. I asked him, “Bernard, just between you and me, that place you took us to today; was it real?”
“Of course! I don’t bring tourists to fake places,” he retorted, defending his choice.
Bernard was invested in the perceived authenticity of the site so that he could make a living. Yet tourists, myself included, were skeptical. Or perhaps part of the site was real and part was a fabrication created for tourists. Ethnographic moments such as this one have long inspired scholars to explore the relationship between tourism and authenticity (MacCannell 1999 [1976]; Urry 2002; Bruner 2005). Dean MacCannell is famous in tourism studies for his “backstage”/”frontstage” dichotomy (1999 [1976])—in which “real” culture is hidden backstage from tourists while they are allowed to participate in a frontstage version of local culture. Still others, like Edward Bruner, have attempted to eschew MacCannell’s preoccupation with the authentic, calling it a “red herring, to be examined only when the tourist, the locals, or the producers themselves use the term” (2005: 5). What seems to be happening in the case of Michelle and Christine seems to rest between MacCannell’s model (all tourist productions are inherently “inauthentic”) and Bruner’s model (all tourist productions are inherently “authentic”). Michelle and Christine were not, at least from their perspective, given a “backstage” performance of “authentic” Vodún. The performance that we all experienced, whether staged or not, was an attempt to present to us the authentic “Voodoo” of our imaginations. Unfortunately, in this case, the Vodún priest failed to present a believable version of Vodún. His performance was not only lacking in resistance, but also a “hyperreality”—a caricature—of U.S. and European imagination (see Eco 1983 [1973]).
Divination, Cultural Brokerage, and the Marketing of Knowledge
Michelle and Christine’s Vodún encounter had been devastating for them. Pointing to the priest’s attempt to sell them charms, and to their absolute freedom of movement in the temple, for fifteen minutes they talked about how “inauthentic” or “fake” the temple seemed. Although Bernard spoke to Michelle and Christine in French—sometimes using me as a linguistic intermediary when their understanding of French proved inadequate—he intermittently spoke rudimentarily in English as well. Keying into Michelle’s and Christine’s body language, and picking up on their dissatisfaction from the English he was able to understand, Bernard suggested the women go see a “real diviner”—“one of the best,” Bernard explained. Eager to move past their experience in the “Voodoo village,” the women agreed ecstatically.
“It’s just a short walk up the road,” Bernard offered.
Over the next fifteen to twenty minutes, both Bernard and I explained to Michelle and Christine what they should expect from the diviner (bokɔ́nɔ̀). They began worrying about which types of questions they should ask him and which areas of their lives needed, and deserved, this kind of spiritual attention.
“Just let the diviner do his job. Don’t worry about what you should ask—he’ll know what you need to ask,” I explained. They each looked at me and smiled in agreement as we continued down the narrow trail that led into the forest. After approximately ten minutes we arrived at the diviner’s home. He was at least eighty years old and stood no more than 5’5” tall. He wore an old torn, khaki, uniform like outfit and carried his divining tools in a well-worn, faux-leather briefcase. He greeted us with a customary cup of water and began talking to us about the reason for our visit.
“The ladies would like to consult with Fá,” Bernard explained.
The diviner handed Michelle a small nut and asked her to “talk to the nut” and “tell the nut all her worries.” After softly confiding in the small nut, she set it down in front of the diviner, along with 2,000 CFA—much more than was customary. After the diviner said his opening prayers and lightly tossed his divining chain onto the ground in front of him, he began detailing Michelle’s future while also providing solutions to the employment problems she was experiencing.
After just a few moments into her consultation, the diviner told Michelle, “You must receive a cleansing ceremony to ensure your future success.” “You should also receive Fá and become an initiate,” the diviner continued. After these two spiritual prescriptions, I stopped listening, as my mind began to drift more than two years into the past when I had received my first divination from a priest who did not know me from the next foreign client he may have seen. “You should become a diviner and a priest of Tron,” the diviner had explained to me. At the time, I was unwilling to undergo the rituals—partly due to time and partly due to cost. But over the two years that had passed between my divination and Michelle’s, several diviners had insisted that I undergo certain rituals—rituals that would have cost me more than 3 million CFA—rituals that I almost always refused. Michelle and I were not unique. While tourists were not always told that they should become initiated, most tourists I encountered who sought a diviner’s guidance were told that they should undergo one ritual or another—all for large sums of money, and almost always for more money than local people would be expected to pay for the same spiritual intervention.
Diviners consistently serve as religious brokers—selling ceremonies or other spiritual services such as spiritual baths or charms (bǒ)—for local and foreign spiritual seekers alike. Divination is far more than having your future told and serves greater purposes than mere entertainment. For a diviner to be effective, he or she must provide his or her client with solutions to his or her challenges, or ways to reinforce and maintain blessings; telling clients that they are ill is of little use if the diviner cannot help them to heal. For Béninois, divination is about achieving well-being. Understanding the commitment not just to receiving divination but also to the treatment, many Béninois approach Fá (and other forms of divination) cautiously, as a trip to a diviner, much like a trip to the doctor, can cost them a great deal, once offerings and post-divinatory ceremonies and rituals are considered.
Although foreign spiritual seekers may be charged more for the same ceremony, Béninois certainly pay for the guidance, advice, and ceremonial intervention of ritual specialists. In fact, even among local people, a sliding scale of services exists—family members often enjoying ritual services at a greatly reduced rate, and middle- to upper-class Béninois pay a premium that approaches what tourists may pay.11 Remarkably, Western spiritual seekers, all of whom have spent a great deal of money to travel to West Africa to become initiated, often balk at the cost of ceremonies, arguing that “Africa is supposed to be cheap.”12
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