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CHAPTER 1

Touring the Forbidden

The reproduction of Vodun cults is increasingly becoming dependent on external tourism … as incomes deriving from religious service cannot alone sustain communities and their religious life. Vodun priestesses and priests take advantage of the opportunities that cross their paths and take up the challenge that the initiation of foreigners or the participation in tourism activity might carry.

—Forte 2010: 141

The untold story of Vodún’s contemporary expansion begins with a rise in what many Béninois simply call “Voodoo tourism.” Ouidah’s tourists typically follow a well-worn script. Most of them visit the Python Temple, where Dangbé, the python spirit, is served;¹ King Kpassé’s sacred forest, which is the seat of the vodún known as Lǒkò;² and the slave route (La Route des Esclaves) that was established in the early 1990s with support from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Landry 2011) and other foreign governments (especially Germany and France). While these three destinations form a “must-see” triumvirate of tourist sites in Ouidah, other places such as the palace of Daágbó Xùnɔ̀, the so-called supreme chief of Vodún in Bénin, are also becoming popular, as tourists become increasingly adventurous, following the advice of tour books about Bénin (e.g., Butler 2006), and as more Vodún priests and temples make themselves available to tourists in the hopes of earning extra money.

The average tourist is content to have a photo taken with a snake from the Python Temple wrapped around his or her neck; to walk through Kpassé’s sacred forest to see a permanent exhibition of Vodún-inspired art sculptures erected in the early 1990s for “Ouidah ’92: The First International Festival of Vodun Arts and Cultures” (Rush 2001); or even to hike the 2.5-kilometer sandy road from Ouidah’s center to the beach where some one million Africans boarded ships bound for the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade.³ However, for a minority of other tourists scripted activities are not enough. These tourists commonly speak of “adventure” or “going off the beaten path,” a desire to experience “the real Bénin” or, for many, “real Voodoo.” For them, it becomes important to capture a special photo of restricted or secret Vodún ceremonies, temples, or people that would lend “authenticity” to their “African adventure” or to their “frightening brush with Voodoo.” Some of these “adventure tourists,” as they often call themselves, seek out diviners to learn of their futures or to understand more clearly their pasts (e.g., Rosenthal 1998: 168–69; Clarke 2004: 239–56; Forte 2007: 134–36); some even strive to become initiated into one or more of the Vodún cults found in southern Bénin. As indigenous religions and international travel intersect in Bénin, a constellation of local and global forces has begun to push Vodún practices along several dimensions at once, impelling local and foreign peoples to collide. To chronicle these changes, in this chapter, I explore the ways in which tourism develops simultaneously alongside Vodún in Bénin. In this way, I deprovincialize religions such as Vodún that are frequently seen as being restricted to their locale and that play a decidedly “other” role in most Westerners’ imaginations. To illustrate the transnational practice of Vodún, I focus both on the politics of travel, attending especially to international visitors who wish to become initiated or use the “secret powers of Vodún” to gain control of their lives, and on how these themes contribute to Vodún’s transnational flow.

Understanding the Local Political Economy of Vodún

Spiritual tourists complain regularly about the cost of ceremonies, initiations, and even religious paraphernalia such as beads, special bird feathers, and other supplies needed to construct shrines for the spirits (see Landry 2016). Coupling the rising costs associated with livestock and other ritual supplies with a long-established precedent within Vodún linking money and religion (cf. Ogundiran 2002), spiritual undertakings such as initiations can be costly. Tourists may pay more than locals for the privilege of initiation, but local practitioners also pay relatively large sums of money to seek advice from diviners, to become priests, and even to placate—or thank—the spirits. Sometimes the financial expenditure is great—even for Béninois practitioners. Over a period of six months, Marie paid over 4.5 million CFA for her initiation ceremonies, her priestly regalia (such as expensive beads and prayer instruments), and the construction of a small temple attached to her house devoted to Tron, her new vodún.4 While Marie’s expenses were exorbitant, there exists an established and vibrant local spiritual economy whereby the costs associated with Vodún vary from paying only 100 CFA to receive divination to the high costs paid by Marie. However, most local costs fall between these two extremes and often come with a promise from the spirits that any money spent on Vodún will be returned exponentially. Even with spiritual promises of return, the day-to-day expenditure on Vodún can be daunting for many local residents. Working with Jean, I observed more than a dozen of his divination clients each pay in excess of 50,000 CFA for small ceremonies or sacrifices prescribed by Fá to regulate a given problem or issue. In addition, I watched five of Jean’s Béninois clients each pay more than 250,000 CFA for beginning-level initiations, and in one case a local man from Cotonou paid Jean 1 million CFA to receive the powerful and dangerous vodún known as Gbǎdù.⁵

In a country in which the average per capita income is around 1,500 USD (in 2011 dollars), most people cannot afford to initiate. Nevertheless, many people engage in Vodún’s religious economy in smaller ways. When praying at a shrine, it is customary to leave a small amount of money (usually 50–100 CFA) for the spirits. During ceremonies, people will often press money on the foreheads of good dancers and drummers to show their appreciation for their contribution to the ceremony.⁶ The amount given in this situation varies from 50 CFA to 10,000 CFA, depending on the giver’s actual—or perceived—wealth. When the community perceived individuals to be rich, they would often give more than they could comfortably afford to avoid being shamed.

While some Vodún priests have other ways of making money, the vast majority of the priests and priestesses I met took care of their families from the proceeds they made from serving the community as religious specialists. In the case of Jean, he had clients who came to him from all over southern Bénin and Togo. A day rarely passed when Jean did not perform divination, ceremony, or ritual for either a client, a member of his family, or a resident of Fátòmɛ̀. His proficiency in Fá divination attracted people regularly and helped him to develop a solid reputation as one of the best diviners in the area, and he was one of the few who could accurately construct Gbǎdù, the female vodún who is believed to be the source of Fá’s power. Jean’s reputation even reached into Cotonou (an hour’s drive from Ouidah) and found its way into the lives of foreigners living in Bénin who needed a diviner’s assistance.

During my time in Fátòmɛ̀, Jean was visited by half a dozen foreign clients (French, American, and Brazilian) seeking his help—which ranged from a simple consultation to complex requests for initiation into Fá or other spirits found at Fátòmɛ̀. With a steady stream of both local and international clients, Jean made a good living. His wealth allowed him to build a massive two-story cement home, provide additional homes for his four wives, keep his adolescent children in school, and support his community in times of crisis. Aside from being an important diviner in the community, Jean also filled the role of the family’s vǐgán, (literally, “the chief of the children”).⁷ As the vǐgán, Jean served as a liaison between the members of his family, the family head, and his father, the village chief (togán)⁸ In this capacity, he resolved disputes between villagers, and he decided when the village’s elders needed to become involved. Jean’s political power, along with his spiritual obligations and ritual skill, came with a great deal of responsibility and communal pressure.

The community benefited greatly from Jean’s success, as he frequently agreed to initiate young men in the village in exchange for work—often paying the cost of these ceremonies out of his own pocket. With a steady influx of clients, meat from the sacrifices he performed on a daily basis was always available, and Jean shared this meat with his community. Keeping in mind the taboos that keep women from consuming the meat of animals sacrificed to Gbǎdù, or men from consuming the meat of animals sacrificed to a diviner’s sacred staff of office (fásɛ́n), Jean made every effort to distribute meat evenly and fairly to the three major lineages who lived in Fátòmɛ̀.

From paying for ceremonies with money or labor to paying for divination, leaving money at shrines to pray, and even giving exceptional dancers, singers, and drummers money in appreciation for their work and their acɛ̀, money is clearly an important component of Vodún. Whether in the form of contemporary currency or as cowrie shells, money is a dominant symbol found in almost all Vodún ceremonies and rituals—as it is among many other religious systems across West Africa (e.g., M. Johnson 1970a, 1970b; Bascom 1980; Gottlieb 1995; Gregory 1996; Saul 2008). In many ways, the use of money in Vodún indexes the client’s power and spiritual success. Prayers to the vodún almost always include requests for financial wealth—and therefore the accumulation of wealth and the public display of one’s wealth during ceremony and ritual. Whether it is in the clothes and beads a priest wears or in his or her ability to give larger sums of money to the dancers, singers, and drummers, money serves as evidence of one’s spiritual power and favor with the spirits—and, by extension, of one’s power as a priest.

With the dominance of vodún such as Dàn (the serpent spirit of riches), Mamíwátá (the mermaid spirit of abundance), and Yalóɖè (the Yorùbá river spirit of material wealth), it is easy to see a cultural preoccupation with money and its accumulation. Indeed, money has become an important symbol of spiritual prowess and evidence of favor from the spirits, marking the rich as spiritually connected and the poor as spiritually incapable.

While money dominates the symbolic repertoire for Fon and Yorùbá peoples, many tourists come to Bénin and Nigeria unaware of these important cultural structures and symbolic forces. A tourist’s lack of awareness of the symbolic power of outward wealth is further complicated by false imaginings, usually spurred on by U.S. and European media, that Africa is “cheap.” When the long-established economy of Vodún collides with U.S. and European imaginings of Africa, tourists are often left feeling exploited, while locals are often convinced that international spiritual seekers are trying to coerce them into revealing their cultural secrets for a pittance.

Tourist and Local Imaginings of the Other

These feelings of exploitation—felt, ironically, by both tourists and locals—are a result of a long colonial history that is deeply intertwined with contemporary manifestations of racism, power, privilege (Rodney 1981), and processes of “othering” (Bond 2006). On the one hand, spiritual tourists feel as though they are being exploited financially because they often sense that they are required to pay more than what a local resident might expect to pay for the same ceremony. On the other hand, local residents feel Western tourists are trying to gain access to secret religious powers for little to no money so that they can then return home to sell the information to others and become even richer.

One evening, while talking with Jean and his family, a young Béninois man in his twenties told me, “We can’t teach everything to white people. We can’t give them all our secrets. If we do, they will take those secrets and fight us with them.” Echoing a similar sentiment, another young Béninois man in his late twenties told me, “We can’t just initiate any white person. We have to be selective. White people are smart. They are always thinking about how to do things better. Black people only think about how to make quick money. But white people like to improve on things to make money. If we give them Vodún, they will make Vodún better and take our culture away.”

Both of these troubling statements illustrate the devastating power that colonial regimes have had on personhood and consciousness in southern Bénin, and how spiritual tourism has the potential to develop into a form of neocolonialism. Local fears that “white people” will improve on Vodún, or that “white people” may take Vodún’s secrets and turn them against Vodún’s historical custodians, are felt by many Béninois. Indeed, many of my informants spoke of Vodún as their “last real weapon” that they could use to fight off a “foreign invasion.” Sadly, many local people imagine foreign visitors to be smarter, richer, and more focused on the future.

Opposed to these views are tourists’ impressions that access to Vodún should be “given to anyone who seeks it.” While some priests, such as Daágbó, reinforce this notion by arguing that “Vodún is for the world,” tourists often come to this realization on their own without local promptings. Many tourists I spoke with argued that “Vodún is a religion, not a culture,” or that “Vodún, like Christianity, is a religion for the world and should be accessible to anyone who seeks to learn.” I never met a Béninois priest who denied Vodún’s international presence or value. However, many tourists I encountered neglected to appreciate the cultural system to which Vodún belongs; it often seemed that they were trying to pry Vodún from the cultural hands of Béninois in order to propel it into the global and international arena for anyone to practice, learn, and even transform. These politics have made access to Vodún a significant point of contention between Béninois Vodúnisants and foreign spiritual seekers, where access to restricted religious knowledge is often discussed vigorously.

In Bénin, individuals most commonly negotiate access to Vodún while in consultation with a diviner. In these moments, potential initiates are informed of the rituals they may or may not undergo and are provided with general advice as they take their first steps into Vodún. One such man was Luiz, a forty-three-year-old Brazilian man, who in 1990 was first initiated into Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion with roots in the West African forest. During this trip to Bénin, Luiz hoped to become a diviner. His encounter with a Fá diviner typifies many pre-initiation discussions. While consulting Fá, the oracular spirit of knowledge, Luiz and Thomas, a well-known Fá diviner in Ouidah, negotiated the cost of initiation and access to cherished religious secrecy. When I asked Luiz why he chose to come to Bénin, he said, “I came to Bénin to experience Candomblé’s source. The Ketu [Yorùbá] spirits are important to us. This is where they come from.” Like most of the Brazilian spiritual tourists I encountered, Luiz emphasized those spirits in Candomblé that belong to the Nagô-Jeje nação (nation). These spirits, which are characterized by a historical connection to Yorùbá (Nagô) or Gbe (Jeje) cults, can still be found thriving in Bénin today (P. Johnson 2002).

Seeking to revitalize existing relationships with his spirits and possibly bring new spirits back to his family in Brazil, Luiz asked Marie to help him to find a respected diviner. Within a few days Marie had arranged for Luiz to meet with Thomas, a diviner and priest of Sakpatá (the vodún of the earth and of smallpox) who lived in Ouidah.⁹ Within a few days of making the arrangements, Luiz, Marie, and I made our way to Thomas’s house. Luiz was filled with anticipation.

“I hope he gives me good news. I really want to become a diviner. I want to bring Odù [Gbǎdù] back to Brazil with me. Do you think he can do all of this? Do you think he can help me?”

“We will see,” Marie offered quietly.

“Kɔkɔkɔ!” We announced ourselves as we walked into his compound.

“Kúabɔ̀! Welcome! Come in. Wait outside on the bench,” a disembodied voice shouted from inside one of the four temple structures. After ten minutes, Thomas emerged from the temple and greeted us customarily with a bottle of soɖabì (a strong, locally distilled palm liquor).

“You’re here to consult Fá?” Thomas asked, looking at Luiz.

I had met Thomas before. He looked to be in his late thirties and was respected for his proficiency with Fá divination and known as someone who could successfully fight witchcraft. Some even suggested the reason Thomas could fight witchcraft and divine so well is because he himself is a witch (azètɔ́).

Luiz answered, “Yes. I came to Bénin to receive Fá, and I want to know how to begin.” Thomas opened a small cloth bag and pulled from this bag a divining chain (akplɛkàn) and a few divination indicators (vode) that are used to ask Fá direct questions.¹⁰ Sitting on a straw mat with his back against a wall, Thomas poured a small amount of water onto the mat and began singing praise songs to Fá, welcoming the purveyor of all knowledge into our space. After a few moments, Thomas tossed his divining chain onto the mat to reveal Fá’s message for Luiz.

“Letè-Meji!” Thomas announced. “You’re right. Fá says you must become a diviner.”

“Can you do that for me? Can I also receive make Gbădù? Can I learn how to make Gbădù?” Luiz inquired in quick succession. make Gbădù was one of the most secretive and most restrictive and dangerous spirits in Vodún. Many Béninois fear make Gbădù for her association with Mĭnɔna (the primordial mothers) and witchcraft. Though exceedingly dangerous without proper initiation, make Gbădù’s worship promises unbridled protection from any number of occult and mundane forces. But Luiz, and almost every spiritual seeker like him, did not want to receive make Gbădù for her ability to protect. Luiz needed make Gbădù because her help is required to make new diviners. If Luiz ever wanted to initiate others authentically into Fá, he needed make Gbădù in his home.

“Yeah, I can make make Gbădù for you,” Thomas responded. “But I can’t show you how to make make Gbădù. Not yet.”

“Well, how much will the initiation cost me?” Luiz anxiously inquired.

“One million CFA,” Thomas responded quickly as if he were anticipating the question.

Luiz’s demeanor changed. He instantly went from exuding excitement and enthusiasm to being obviously melancholy and worried.

“How will I find 2,000 dollars?” Luiz asked me in English.

For Thomas this was the cost of entry into one of Vodún’s most protected secrets. This cost was not unusual for foreigners. During my time in Bénin I watched Americans, Europeans, 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 call an authentic experience, they wanted to be told that they could not take pictures. They wanted to be restricted. They wanted to experience and then negotiate their way through the social friction that secrecy generates. In the case of Vodún, foreign travelers hope to be met with just enough resistance to authenticate the experience but 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