The banks and delta of the Mono River in Benin are home to mangrove swamps that harbor fish and rare wild birds — and some are deemed sacred. The government has tried to protect them by imposing bans on overfishing and felling for firewood, but it has discovered that voodoo is more powerful than threats and is now seeking to co-opt traditional elders into its conservation plans.
In the southern village of Gogotinkpon, which lives off fishing in Lake Aheme, locals regularly turn to the deities to help mark off stretches of mangroves as sacred areas. To the rhythm of drums and gongs, they swirl and dance before voodoo masks in ceremonies to honor Zangbeto, the guardian of the night.
“This will allow the fish to multiply in peace and allow us to survive too,” said Antoinette Gnanlandjo, 70, who took part in one such ritual in a large square on the shores of the Aheme, Benin’s second-largest lake.
Photo: AFP
She is a follower of voodoo, an animist practice based on respect for nature, ancestors and invisible forces. Such ceremonies are common in villages in the 346,000-hectare Mono Biosphere Reserve on either side of the Mono River, which marks the border between Benin and Togo and is a magnet for nature-loving tourists.
Mangroves are tropical trees that have the unusual ability of thriving in brackish or salty water. They suck up planet-heating carbon and their underwater roots stop the land washing away. In Benin, this precious and fragile ecosystem is threatened by deforestation, coastal urbanization, pollution, overfishing and climate change, local communities and non-governmental organizations said. So the villagers turn to invisible powers for assistance.
During the ceremony Gnanlandjo attended, they fashioned two fetishes out of raffia, which a delegation of dignitaries — traditional leader Wilfreid Mesah, three villagers initiated into voodoo, two researchers and a red mask representing thunder — then took into the mangrove swamp by canoe. Chanting traditional songs, they tied the fetishes to the branches to ward off intruders intent on fishing or cutting into the mangroves for firewood.
Photo: AFP
“If someone tries to cut these branches, the vodun will whistle and stop them immediately. They’ll be stuck here. Then we voodoo dignitaries will come to find out what’s going on,” Mesah said.
He added that Zangbeto had stopped intrusions by four people in the past two decades, which showed it was effective. Anyone caught red-handed has to make offerings to the deity.
That could mean “a sheep, a pig, red oil, cash worth 50,000 CFA francs [about US$80] , palm wine or many other things,” Mesah said “Otherwise, you risk losing your life.”
Fear of divine punishment is more effective in protecting mangroves in the Mono nature reserve than any government bans, Juste Djagoun of environmental charity Eco-Benin said.
So the government plans to strengthen the role of traditional elders in the national plan to save the country’s mangroves and the wildlife they harbor. This could also help preserve ancient voodoo rites, which are not written down, but are transmitted orally from one generation to the next, said Senankpon Tcheton, a Beninese researcher in social and environmental sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
The traditions are in danger of disappearing as their initiates die off or migrate and society is influenced by other religions, he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS