physical relief from hardships, pain, or worries (Turner and Turner 1978). But for many foreign initiates, their trip to Bénin marked their first steps into Vodún. They were looking for what Alan Morinis called a “place or a state that [they] believe to embody a valued ideal” (1992: 4). Their initiation experiences are cultivated in their imaginations long before they arrive in Bénin. By reading voraciously, interacting with other future and past initiates on Facebook, and searching YouTube for any videos that might reveal a small glimpse of the rituals they seek to undergo, spiritual seekers achieve a sort of revelation and a longing for West Africa and the secrets that are protected by the forest. In this sense, they are pilgrims. But they are also true neophytes. They arrive speaking little to no Fɔngbè or French and they have a clumsy understanding of basic cultural rules and social norms. Unlike what one might expect from pilgrims, they do not come to Bénin in search of solutions or remedies or even to confirm their trust in the spirits. Instead they come hoping to find new ways of relating to the divine.
Like C. Lynn Carr (2015), who examined what she called “cultural newcomers” to Lucumí in the United States, I found that many foreign spiritual seekers came to Vodún looking for religion. They yearned for a sort of Durkheimian effervescence (1965 [1912]) that simultaneously brought them closer to the divine but further from Western Christian conservatism (e.g., Fuller 2001). Despite the religious foci of foreign spiritual seekers’ trips to West Africa, describing them as pilgrims seemed just as deficient as calling them tourists. Indeed, for many of them, the domain of the tourist and that of the pilgrim had begun to blur in meaningful ways (e.g., Badone and Roseman 2004). Or, was it that, in the words of Victor and Edith Turner, “a tourist is [always] half a pilgrim, and a pilgrim [always] is half a tourist” (1978: 20)? Indeed, I prefer to think about a tourist and a pilgrim as two points on a spectrum upon which individuals can meaningfully move as they search for religious experiences that are, to them, “really real” (Geertz 1973).
Foreign spiritual seekers and West African Vodúnisants often mobilize one term over the other; understand them as concentric experiences with a great deal of overlap; or reject either category all together. It is in these moments of creative contestation, where pilgrim and tourist, insider and outsider, initiate and noninitiate coalesce, that I argue the “really real” is found. It is where religious ownership gets hashed out. It is where access to secret religious knowledge and beings is negotiated. It is where the entrée into desired moments of religious effervescence is realized. It is where Vodún becomes global. Throughout the book I use the terms “spiritual tourist” and “foreign spiritual seeker” interchangeably out of convenience. In this way, I avoid the pilgrim-tourist divide but retain the precision I need to discuss how foreign and Béninois Vodúnisants interact and work to transform Vodún into a global phenomenon.
Ouidah and Its Historical Legacy
While spiritual tourism in Bénin might be a relatively new phenomenon, the history of foreign involvement in Vodún spans more than three centuries. I chose Ouidah as the ideal locale to examine Vodún’s global reach because of the city’s long-standing position as a multiethnic and multinational port; its 350-year connection to the Americas; and Vodún’s centrality to Ouidah’s landscape. Ouidah rests on the shore of the Republic of Bénin, the former West African “Slave Coast,” and on the coast of the present-day Bight of Benin along the Gulf of Guinea. With a population of approximately 92,000 people (as of 2012), Ouidah is a modest but vibrant town. Yet, despite Ouidah’s relatively small population, its particular precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial histories have made the city an important cosmopolitan player in Africa’s long-term global flows (cf. Hannerz 1990). As one of West Africa’s largest former slave ports, Ouidah has occupied an important international geopolitical space for nearly 350 years.5 The former kingdom of Xweɖá, from which present-day Ouidah drew its name, was conquered in 1727 by Agajá, the fourth ruler (axɔ́sú) of Dahomey.6 As a result, Dahomey took control of Xweɖá and the smaller kingdom of Savì—which lay seven kilometers to the north of Ouidah. Today, in part because of Ouidah’s political past, the town has become an ethnically rich area where one can find people who identify as Ajǎ, Gùn, Xweɖá, Maxí, Fon, and Yorùbá (Nàgó)—most of whom are Fɔ̀ngbè speakers. In addition to Ouidah’s local diversity, the city has also been influenced greatly by its historical connection to Portugal and Brazil. In 1818, Francisco Felix de Souza, a Brazilian man born to a Portuguese father and a Native American mother, aided Gakpe, the Dahomean king’s brother, in a coup d’état, which resulted in Gakpe taking the throne from Adándózàn (r. 1797–1818). Gakpe then took the name “Gezò” (r. 1818–58) and became the ninth—and most infamous—ruler of Dahomey (Bay 1998: 166–78). From 1820 until his death in 1849, de Souza sold African slaves to European buyers on Gezò’s behalf.
In 1835, during the height of Gezò’s reign, the Brazilian region of Bahia experienced a slave uprising that led to the “Great Revolt” (also known as the “Malê Revolt”).7 In the aftermath of the failed revolt, the Brazilian government deported back to West Africa those people of African descent who were suspected of having inspired the revolt. According to Robin Law, “the re-emigration then continued on a more or less voluntary basis through the rest of the nineteenth century” [and] “in the immediate aftermath of the rebellion … one party of 200 free blacks were deported from Bahia … to Ouidah” (2004: 179–80). This large influx of returnees to Ouidah from Brazil—and, for different reasons, from other lusophone countries such as Madeira, São Tomé, and Angola (Law 2004: 185–90)—greatly, and permanently, influenced the social and political lives of the people of Ouidah. For example, Portuguese architecture, with its distinctive “shuttered windows, ornate mouldings, colonnades and verandahs” (Law 2004: 187), still decorates the landscape, and descendants of Francisco Felix de Souza still inhabit Ouidah today.
An increase in the Portuguese and Afro-Brazilian presence in Ouidah was not the only cultural change that was supported and encouraged by the reemigration of ex-slaves from countries such as Brazil. Because Yorùbá captives had made up a large majority of Africans who were sent from Bénin to Brazil, Ouidah experienced an upsurge of Yorùbá-speaking peoples returning to the area. This, coupled with an influx of domestic Yorùbá slaves who worked for households such as that of the de Souza family, further added to Ouidah’s unique ethnic and national diversity. The incorporation of these diverse peoples into the kingdom of Dahomey points to the “Fon propensity to embrace and adopt influences from many directions: Europe by way of the Atlantic coast, Akan areas to the west, Yoruba-speaking lands to the north and east, and to a far lesser extent, Islamic West Africa to the north” (Bay 2008: 4).
As far back as documented history reveals, Fon society has always been one of inclusivity, absorption, and flexibility—a mentality that continues into the present, as Béninois become important players in the transnational and global flow of African religious ideologies such as Vodún. Contributing to Vodún’s expansion, Ouidah has been marketed as the “spiritual capital of [Bénin] with a thriving and lively Voodoo culture” (Butler 2006: 114), and it is highlighted on a “Cradle of Voodoo” tour provided by Explore, a British “adventure travel” company, as the home of Bénin’s “ancient snake cult.” Because of Ouidah’s long-standing and sometimes tumultuous relationship with the West, its position as an international and multiethnic border zone, coupled with its centrality to “Voodoo tourism,” makes the city the most compelling space in Bénin to observe the interplay between local religion, international tourism, and processes of globalization and transnationalism.8
Ouidah and Its Contemporary Importance
Despite Bénin’s current interest in spotlighting its Vodún heritage as a marketable international commodity, Vodún has not always enjoyed this national prestige. In 1890 the French invaded Dahomey and formally dethroned Gbɛ̀hánzìn (r. 1889–94) in 1892; after two years of hiding, Gbɛ̀hánzìn surrendered to the French in 1894, officially making Dahomey a French protectorate. After forcing Gbɛ̀hánzìn and his family into exile onto the West Indian island of Martinique, French officials installed
