Voodoo Kingdoms And Dodgy Places: Travels in Timbuktu, Burkina Faso And Other West African Lands

VOODOO KINGDOMS AND DODGY PLACES

Travels in Timbuktu, Burkina Faso And Other West African Lands

Tan Wee Cheng

Published by Marymount LLP at Smashwords

Text Copyright @ 2012 Tan Wee Cheng

http://weecheng.com

ISBN: 978-981-07-2717-8

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Maps

Preface

Ghana: Fancy Coffins & Golden Stools

Côte d’Ivoire: Humpty Dumpty & Cocoa

Liberia: The President’s Blood Diamonds

Sierra Leone: The Supermodel’s Blood Diamonds

Senegal: The President’s Dodgy Statues

Cape Verde: Drake’s Forgotten Rampage

Guinea-Bissau: The Palace Has No Roof

The Gambia: The Admiral of the Navy of Nebraska

Burkina Faso: Almost Busted in Ouagadougou

Niger: Giraffe-Safari In A Taxi

Benin: Voodoo Kingdom & Male Sex Slaves

Togo: A Dictator Crowned By God

Mali: The Timbuktu Cat Eaters

Notes

About The Author

Maps

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Preface

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Winds howled loudly across the perpetually grey skies of northern China one May afternoon. Phallic chimneys smoking evil-looking fumes here and afar in what was the most polluted countryside in the world. Dogs barked loudly outside while I sat at my messy desk, surrounded by mountains of reports. I was still recovering from a hangover from the previous night’s outing with bankers and brokers at some dodgy loud outfit.

Those were the days when I was a corporate slave. One week working powerpoint with analysts and bankers in New York, and shuffling papers through the wee hours with lawyers in Singapore the following week. Then off to factory halls in China ticking dusty printouts during day time, and drowning endless glasses of vicious baijiu through hypocritical toasts with bureaucrats and businessmen in the evenings.

Was this how I wanted to live my life? I did enjoy the excitement of high finance and the challenges of creating and running businesses. But deep in my heart, ever since I was a child, I was intrigued by faraway lands and unfamiliar cultures, and imbued by the tales of great explorers and their exploits. Sometimes, even while I sat in a boardroom meeting hidden in one of the many glass towers in Singapore’s Shenton Way or Hong Kong’s IFC, my mind wandered off to forgotten kingdoms and lost tribes.

I soon handed in my resignation letter and within a few months began a journey to places I have never been. The biggest blank spot on my world map laid in Africa. Apart from parts of Arab North Africa and scattered islands in the Indian Ocean, much of Africa was a mystery to me. With a long career break ahead of me, I decided that I have to begin my journey in a part of Africa that was difficult to reach.

My attention was drawn to West Africa, the land of Timbuktu, the very epitome of remoteness, and of the enigmatic voodoo kingdoms in Benin and Togo. I was mobbed by former child soldiers in Liberia, was caught in a riot in Burkina Faso and chased after desert giraffes in a taxi in Niger. I watched mysterious Dogon sacred dances in Mali and attended a voodoo ceremony in Benin where the gods searched amongst the audience for someone to be raped.

Bizarre it might have been, I was also intrigued by the dictators and mad personalities that have shaped this region in the past half century since independence. This journey had proven to be a difficult one, due to the complicated paper chase to obtain entry visas, annoyingly rampant corruption as well as the pathetic state of public transport in the entire region.

Much of Africa seems hardly interested in chasing foreign investment and tourist dollars. Long misruled by corrupt politicians and brutal dictators, many countries in the region now have a lower standard of living and poorer infrastructure than the colonial era. I will not attempt to summarise reasons for the overall phenomena but I will discuss specific observations and share my thoughts and bite size analyses on what had gone wrong.

West Africa is not an easy, comfortable or safe region to travel around, and I was glad that I had the company of my old friend, Gordon Browne, without whose companionship I might not have contemplated the journey. Once again, I have to thank Vernon Voon who, for the umpteenth time, helped to review and proofread my work, as well as Eng Teck and my family and friends, who have always encouraged me during my travels and provided moral support during the many months I spent writing this book.

Ghana: Fancy Coffins & Golden Stools

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Shimmering light from the setting sun shone onto the fine beaches. Gentle light reflected off the muscled shoulders of local fishermen, who were busy pulling their nets off their boats, while singing aloud. Akan ladies, in their blue and red finery, helped their men with the fish – flies already hovering over them - by placing them onto straw baskets which they carried on their heads. They walked up and down the beaches towards the roadside stalls, where fresh fish were eagerly sought after by a crowd that has already gathered there.

At these stalls, the oversized Mama Africa traders have been busy the last few hours, cutting the catch, clearing the bones, gills and offal, beating off the flies and the over-inquisitive cats which have congregated on the spot. What serenity! It was difficult to imagine the terrible atrocities and tragedies of the human trade which once dominated this coast a few hundred years ago.

Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Slave Coast: these were stretches of West African coast whose names were drawn from centuries of trade in ivory tusks, exuberant tribal carvings, precious minerals and human slaves. These lands, despite and perhaps due to the abundance of mineral and natural wealth, continue to evoke imageries of tropical exoticism, mystical voodoo sacrifices and blatant brutality today.

Ghana, once known as the Gold Coast and renowned for the gold carvings of its tribes, was where I began my West African journey. The Europeans arrived here in the 15th century looking for precious metals and ivory but soon found the trade in human slaves more lucrative instead. This evil trade began when the Portuguese brought fifteen young African men to Portugal to train as priests. These trainees also worked in the fields and mines in order to pay for their upkeep. They worked too hard, which convinced the Portuguese that these young men were better kept as slaves than to be trained as priests.

And so began the trade in humans in West Africa. During its entire course from the 15th to the 19th century, an estimated 15 to 25 million Africans were shipped to the Americas and Europe. For every slave that reached the New World, another died in the long ship journey, mainly from disease suffered in the crowded, ill-ventilated ship hold. There were others who jumped overboard to escape the misery of falling into slavery and a guaranteed lifetime of suffering.

From Accra, Ghana’s capital, we explored Cape Coast and Elmina Castles, two of the 50 castles built in Ghana by European slaving powers, including the UK, Portugal, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Prussia-Brandenburg. Yes –the nowadays do-good-do-no-evil Scandinavians were slave traders. From the Danish fortress in what is to later become Accra, slaves were shipped to the Caribbean island of St Thomas, then a Danish slave centre but later sold to the Americans to become the US Virgin Islands. Virgins and slaves. Sounds like an arcade game.

Captives were taken by African slave-traders, often from war, raids, or even direct from debt courts, and marched many weeks through deserts, savannah or tropical jungles to the coast, where they were sold to European traders in these fortresses. The slaves were kept in pathetic conditions in dungeons, where faeces and vomit were piled as high as half a metre on the dungeon floor, until the slave ship came to bring them to the New World, through a low door known as the Door of No Return.

It is also interesting to note that people of those days had the Bible to justify slavery, just as they used the Bible to justify racial segregation in the American South and Apartheid in South Africa, and as some continue to use to justify homophobia and discrimination against sexual minorities in many countries. This, to me, is no different from Islamic fundamentalists who use obscure sections of the Quran to justify killing of the innocent in their eternal jihad. People everywhere must be alert of fundamentalists of all kinds and defend the secular nature of their countries and societies.

Coconut palms swayed to the Atlantic breeze, with white sandy beaches and picturesque fishing boats in the foreground. This idyllic scene masked the atrocious deeds that went on in these castles during that cruel era. These castles must be terribly haunted. It was said that Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, often had sleepless nights in the government headquarters at the former Danish trading fort, Christianborg Castle (now Osu Castle), due to strange noises in the rooms and frightened barks of his pet dog.

Ghana was the first of the English-speaking states to gain independence from Britain and at that time in 1957, held great promise due to its relatively high literacy rate, fertile soil and abundant gold and other minerals. In fact, the old Gold Coast Colony had renamed itself after the ancient Ghana Empire that was located further north in Mali and Mauritania, on claims that the people of Ghana today were descendants of migrants from ancient Ghana. More likely, it was to rub off some of the historic glories associated with what was then a powerful and wealthy state, whose king sat in audience with officials, pages, horses and even dogs which were adorned with gold-embroidered cloth and collars.

Hopes were dashed, as Nkrumah was more interested in the rhetoric of Nkrumahism, African liberation, Pan-Africanism, African unification, the Non-aligned Movement and other lofty ideas than the more mundane and boring tasks of building a new nation and developing its economy. Before long, misguided socialism, corruption and mismanagement bankrupted the country, and Nkrumah himself was overthrown by the military in 1966, the year The Sound of Music won the Academy Awards and the Cultural Revolution was proclaimed in China. Celebratory signboards such as No More Animal Farm appeared on the streets of Accra. Mobs ransacked the capital and decapitated Nkrumah’s bronze statue in Accra.

Ghana then came under a series of military rulers, one more corrupt than the rest. Coups and counter-coups were common place. The most ridiculous attempt was Operation Guitar Boy staged by a Lieutenant Arthur, who confessed to wanting to be the first junior rank officer to ever stage a coup anywhere. The coup named after a popular Nigerian pop song about how the sea goddess gave the composer a guitar, saw tanks on the streets and the killing of senior army generals. But ultimately it failed and Lt. Arthur and his gang leaders were publicly executed by a firing squad.

Even the twodecade rule by Jerry Rawlings, a charismatic half-Scottish air force pilot who staged not one but two coups and gained popularity by executing a few past military rulers, was riddled by corruption and severe economic decline, especially after Rawlings implemented populist left wing policies.

The country only began to grow again after drastic policy reversals following directives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Rawlings’ rule was also marked by massive human rights abuses. Brandon, our taxi driver for a few days, said, I will never forget the killing of my aunt, who was beaten to death when Rawlings’ soldiers found a spare tyre and accused her of smuggling and hoarding goods. They killed many people and yet they still walk around freely.

Since 2000, Ghana has been governed by President Kufuor’s New Patriotic Party, after defeating Rawlings’ nominated successor. The country has been growing rapidly by African standards and has once again become the poster boy of growth and prosperity. Kufour retired in 2009, and won praises for good governance as well as for handing over power despite the loss of his preferred candidate in the elections.

Fair elections and peaceful handover of power are rarities in Africa, especially in countries where a resource boom is expected. Ghana struck the lottery in 2007, when oil was discovered off its coast. Commentators were concerned that the stakes were high and the incumbents wouldn’t give up the wealth on hand. Their worries were proven wrong and Ghana finally seems to be heading in the right direction.

The Ghanaian people are friendly and easy-going. Brandon claimed that the Ghanaians were the friendliest of the West Africans. Referring to the people of the French-speaking African countries, Brandon said, The French are rude, nasty and cheats. They would lie and take everything from you if you are not careful. But he reserved his worst criticisms for the Nigerians, who like the Ghanaians were English-speaking. They are all criminals. They would pretend to be nice and then murder you. They rob Ghanaians who visit Nigeria, and also rob Ghanaians when they (the Nigerians) visit Ghana. Beware of them!

Ghana is a poor country. When I was there, quite a few people asked for tips and bribes albeit in a friendly, subdued manner. In fact, the immigration officer I met when I arrived in Accra Airport was the first of the lot, when he asked for something to buy a Coca Cola. I gave him US$1. And as I departed from Ghana a week later at Accra Airport, another immigration officer asked for a bribe too. I feigned ignorance and he merely smiled and returned me my passport.