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