Gods made of blood, animal sacrifices ? William Rhode becomes a voodoo child
It was only when a two-foot spear was thrust in my face that I truly understood I was at a voodoo initiation ceremony. The hugely muscled man holding the pointed edge at my eye had come hurtling through the torrential rain and mud towards me, screaming furious words. He was possessed by the hunter vodun, Kunde, and he didn?t want me taking photographs. Instinctively, I cowered like a submissive dog (an appropriate gesture, for Kunde likes to eat dog, and gruesome puppy sacrifices are frequently made in his name) as a Ghanaian woman hissed: ?You have to go to the shrine and make an offering.? For several seconds I was frozen to the spot, half expecting to be dragged off and sacrificed myself, until a scary- looking woman with bleached black skin (whom I later dis- covered to be a carer for the possessed) wrapped her arms around the crazed man and led him gently away into the swirl of the dancefloor and the roar of the drums.
Shivering with fear and cold, I tried to take the whole scene in. People?s faces were twisted by the shadows of the night and the amphetamine effects of kola nut; they stood and sat in a circle under quick-dripping canopies unable to fend off the monsoon rain. They chewed on the bitter-tasting nut and sang the appropriate responses to the complex rhythms being driven out by the wild-eyed, sweating drummers.
My brother was the initiatee ? his head had been shaved and his body cut with a razor blade as he stood half-naked among the troupe, thumping a bow-shaped stick against a large Blekete drum that hung from his shoulder. His eyes were fixed with maniacal concentration.
A goat, tethered to an iron railing, attempted to sleep, blissfully unaware that at dawn its throat would be slit.
Suddenly, just as two women got up and started to flap their arms and pump their chests forward like strutting chickens, as part of a traditional ritual dance, there was another scream and the sight of a body flying into the air. This time it was a woman who had become possessed by the god Ablewa.
As she landed on her feet, she was bent double by a seemingly external force and spun in circles with increasing speed. Her arms were spread and arched behind her back, her fingers clawing at the air as if she were trying to slow herself down. People rushed towards her.
Three men, clapping in time with the music, sang into her ears. One man lit a small pile of gunpowder at her spinning feet. There was a brief flash, then a plume of smoke engulfed her.
The carer arrived with a plastic kettle full of water just as the woman came to a sudden halt and clasped her hands together, the physical incarnation of the god desperate to wash upon arrival into the human world. Water was quickly poured over her hands, then her head, and finally in a large circle in the mud around her, before she was slowly led away to the shrine where she would be dressed and properly prepared.
Edward ? my brother?s drum teacher, guide and friend, responsible for arranging this initiation ? approached me.
?The gods are ready for you now. Come.? He took me by the wrist and led me towards the shrine. I glanced across towards my brother, but he didn?t see me.
As we approached the shrine, I was told to take off my shoes. We passed through a red-, black- and white-striped flag that covered a doorway into a small room lit only by a dim bulb. There was the funk of sweat in the air.
I could see the possessed woman, half-naked, being dressed in the white clothing customary to Ablewa by an effeminate-looking male priest with sharp cheekbones and thick rims of dark eyeliner.
On the other side of the room sat the effigies. I could make out a chicken claw and wreaths of hair sticking out of one gruesome figure; and, in another, the multicoloured plastic handles of knives that had been driven into an indistinguishable carcass, on top of an effigy that was stiff and purple-black with coagulated blood.
To the right stood another pair of blood-blackened effigies, their faces depicted with small seashells. I later learnt that these were images of Kunde and Ablewa together, as husband and wife, father and mother, all in one. A shrine dedicated solely to Kunde, the god I had offended, sat in the far-left corner, with the decapitated head of a small dog on top. I could see the flaps of its heart muscle sticking out from between its teeth. As if in a scene from The Blair Witch Project, childlike, bloody handprints decorated the wall around it.
Edward approached Kunde and started to ask the god questions, the answers to which were determined by the lie of small seashells that he threw to the ground. I watched nervously as Edward questioned Kunde with increasing agitation. My sense of foreboding wasn?t helped by the possessed woman, who was talking in a language from the north that she had never learnt.
After what seemed like a very long time, she was finally dressed and led back out into the trance of the night, leaving just Edward, his grim-faced father (the owner of the shrine) and me with the gods.
Edward finally turned towards me.
?Kunde wants for you to vomit your intentions,? he said.
?I?m sorry?? I replied.
?Kunde says there is something on your mind,? Edward said to me. ?In Ewe culture, we believe that if there is something on your mind, it sits on the stomach, making you sick. Please, kneel here in front of Kunde and vomit your intention, speak your mind.?
Nervously, I knelt down and mumbled something about how I had come here to see my brother, who has spent several years in Ghana and Benin studying voodoo for a PhD. I said that I needed to take pictures for the newspaper. I said that I hadn?t meant to offend Kunde and that I was sorry.
Edward and his father nodded with approval at me, then I was told to give some money. My brother had already explained to me that pretty much everything in western Africa came down to money. Even if I had offended the gods horribly, all could be miraculously settled with a payout.
Kunde offered me kola nut in return for my cash, and I had to accept. I chewed my way through the bitterness, then I was given a shot of akpeteshi, Ghana?s palm-based moonshine. After downing what tasted like lighter fuel, I dripped the remaining drops to the floor in the customary offering to the gods, and had to stem the urge to be sick. Then it was back out into the rain, the mud, the drums and the dancing.
The ceremony went on through the night. I learnt the two main ritual dances and found myself stepping across the dancefloor with an increasing sense for the music?s 12/8 timing, concentrating on the ringing of the bell until it became like a voice in my mind. I was soon soaked through, my feet and ankles caked in mud.
And then, at first light, I hit what my brother had already described to me as ?the biggest rush in the world?. Charged with lack of sleep, kola nut and akpeteshi, I quickly found myself buzzing with ecstasy, ravenous for the rhythmic trance of the drums.
I was told by people who could see my face and the mad stare in my eyes to calm down, but I couldn?t. I became filled with a sense of euphoric conversion; a new, enlightened understanding of the world. I was flying, and I didn?t want to stop.
With the sunrise, the drum troupe led us out of the shrine enclave and into the mud streets of the town around us. Edward and his family lived in Ashai- man, an impoverished ghetto-town roughly 15 miles east of Ghana?s capital, Accra. It was amazing to see the reaction of the people as they were rudely awakened by our loud procession. Christians, Muslims, everybody seemed to enjoy the music, and gradually our numbers swelled. By the time we returned to the enclave, there were more than 200 people.
As the music and dancing continued, animal sacrifices were made: another dog, the goat and two chickens, their blood poured from their slit throats over the effigies. I found myself watching this grim process without emo- tion. It looked like black magic ? some might call it devil worship ? but for some reason, it wasn?t scary any more.
IT WAS only well into the following day that I realised I had spent the previous five hours dancing with the very same man who had stuck a spear in my face. It seemed that we had somehow since become close friends.
Frightening as it had been in the beginning, I had been welcomed at the ceremony and had been asked to pay very little to witness and photograph such an incredible and secretive event.
At least, until I returned to the UK and discovered that baggage handlers had stolen my camera. All the photos I had taken of that night were lost. Kunde, it seemed, truly didn?t want any pictures.
