Brigantino pirate # 1 - Porto Novo (07/24/2010)
The ironies abound. No one who exchanges specifically for a l. Who points out the obscene shape of the borders. Not to mention the jokes about blacks, which are inevitable between the Boy Scouts in flight to Africa and its missions to double-sided. No. Benin is not "that" kind of country. Fears that Freud bring on the last daughters have yet to be defeated, because the black man here, continues to be one and paradoxically white. What startles the break of dawn, when two guards stealthily approaching the Libyan embassy in search of a left Maison des Allemands. What brings down the eyes of others when their shells on a family of blind, but is hesitant step with intent to cross the road by bike rocketed crazy. What I can not 'believe sudden explosion in a taxi queue sull'interstatale between Cotonou and Porto Novo, where the bodies are charred care of improvised
photographers with the inevitable phone in tow, yet lacking in the number of fire department or Red Cross. Not be explained otherwise grim faces and hostile under the canopies of the former house slave Da Silva, which leads a written in large letters that mark as the fire, "the slave trade is a crime against humanity": the bodies hanging from loops, torn to pieces by rabid dogs in the throat, raped beams, suffocated in the mud, panel after panel until the front door, which is announced this evening for an incredible fashion show beauty of Benin, celebrating 50 years independence of the country. Certainly not a defaillance. Only the desire to leave behind a stereotype dies hard, to claim before the hosts once the wonder of a people able to rise from their ashes. Able to give life, in a handful of acres earned a quarter of a century ago by a father lit a company
sustainable agricultural present a model for 15 countries in West Africa. It 's true: this is' the window of the south, young and arrembante which forgets its palaces Afro-Brazilians in the dust, but also the worship of ancestors and the bitter life of the village. The launches of cowries at the foot of the fon pregnant women, so 'as the Yoruba hunters run out of arrows. Masks geledé crossed by birds of prey and the drums that kick in the eardrums. The markets where the crow's feet are worth far more than 'of tainted milk from Nestlé, or a Japanese radio survived a Bruce Lee movie.
Pascal, that shows off a perfect English ecosostenile jewel among the visitors of the Songhai, does not believe that man is a bore. Do not passively accept the paternalism of a culture inoculated as a virus. Watch Kalashnikov belonged to his father Marxist and yawns. The revolution? Decidedly out of fashion. Internet promises remote oases and builds bridges wherever his heart beating. It matters little to know how solid. Go! Go! To return, there is always time. Perhaps the dream in which he believes is already under her eyes, but still can not see it, just as the little family dangling blind to the wrong side.
Bananas for everyone!
The Cobra Verde
Brigantino pirate No.2 - Aguégué (25/07/2010)
Zac! Caught in the act immediately. The Curse Freud did not fail to strike the first delay. Agile and swift as an antelope in the Parc W, yesterday I was incredibly stealthy way into voodoo temple in the first meeting in Porto Novo, a kind of cousin IT giant with red bulbs for eyes of Braga and a cowlick in the form of those little umbrellas in vogue at the carnival in Rio. Here it is, the revenant from the shells and tangled from the belly opening! It 's the most precious jewel that the administration of the capital have decided to offer to its citizens, but access is strictly forbidden in his belly at least until the arrival of the official bokombo. The inauguration will take place 'only on August 1, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Independence. Had put up a sign at least! Here the parties and events emerge suddenly from a side street, just as the crumbling relics of the colonial period or the incredible
polychrome Mosque on major brands. Advertise warnings but not worth 'the effort in Benin: a white man just passing through, a Yovo, and doing whatever it can' easily be interrupted by burst out laughing at Eddie Murphy. Not that many around if you count the contrary: the sisters that I must have seen only one house and More on a subsidiary Catholic, as they continued to compare the holy pictures with my face, struggling hard in Yoruba dialect. In the city 'will' was the presence of an American girl came to work for two years at the Songhai center, 'cause all you have to know French tourists, Germans, Yankees, but the descriptions seem more Hollywood actors that travelers adrift. In any case, the coarse laughter have been transformed into a moment screams ancestors, machete flew to heaven and goats frolicking have got scared and woe to those who
tip the camera on a fetish! Contrary to what happens in Haiti, each element of voodoo kits always rhymes with taboo: touch, touch it, peep, can 'cost a severed hand or the rattle of a woman strangled by convulsions. Now
are therefore required to view even more than I was upon arrival, so much so that locals have coined a derogatory nickname that veiled suspicion: a sound somewhere between poo and jojo '. No surprise, then, if the representation of last night dances and folk songs in the old palace of the king of Porto Novo has only started four hours late: it is the only audience, accompanied by the usual American syncopated smile, did not feel sure until the arrival of the terrible warning of Abomey. Tough people: say ta ta and you find yourself in the middle. When the show then began, She must also angered the spirit of the revenant: black-out lightning. Around, only darkness punched by tam tam obsessive and liquefied by the stench of contortionists with infrared eyes.
Luckily the atmosphere was more serene fashion show at the nearby museum, Da Silva, with continuing demands of local designers, however, have 'infused throughout a grotesque twist: if you want to prove to white masters to be absent now able to taste and elegance, strange Victorian butler uniforms and hats Elizabeth II unlikely to have crowded along the former runway of the slave trade, staging a curious re-make of Allan Quatermain. Luckily, over the crush of Porto Novo, the delicious niche Aguégué village, where the feet are still free from the grip of the shoes, the piles smell of palm oil and ritual scarring carve faces without shame. A taste of Benin more 'wild and authentic, away from light canoes urban complexes. What awaits me every night, revealing only the eyes of Braga ...
Salut!
Cobra Verde
Brigantino pirate Avrankou n.3 (27/07/2010)
Cucumbers bring luck. No denying it. Appeared alongside hamburger ordered in Cotonou, the first real food reached after days of boissons foaming and formidable bottles of milk chocolate, the trip immediately took a different turn. Almost Mother Russia had sought to convey an unmistakable sign. I look, I see a fat man who rubs you the phone and think, there was the Italian looking for easy sex. Alas! After an exchange of greetings between forced diners, proves to be a father of San Severo, Foggia, in the process of returning to Italy after nearly 14 years of interrupted service ministry in the Diocese of Natitingou, in the far north of Benin. Perhaps heartened by the proximity of a fellow countryman, Don Francesco De Vita begins devouring pommes frites and spit invaluable information never take a break: recalls his infatuation for Africa recondita, the hard work of proselytizing among tribes
shockingly bare and pagan, the first conversion after a given medical care and given a carrot, pushing further with moist eyes.
"Forget Cotonou - Judgement finally crushing an olive - This is the only copy of a abbruttita European periphery. If you seek the soul of Benin, situated between the villages at the foot of Atakora.
And 'I was just pleased incredible liveliness' Art of the city, shot in the stomach by the sculptures of the visionary Fondacion ZINSOU: a gem hidden in a maquis exhibition of sizzling shrimp and a stand of benches fuchsia, where Africa rebel screams scandal for traffic black Nigerian oil, or complaint in the mountains of waste materials in 2052 that will fill even the rib cages of cyclists in gas masks.
useless, smoke screen to gullible Westerners. The redemption of the country is far from being in the hands of a handful of street artists, whether they respond to the name or de Tchif Lilanga legendary. Who is left behind in South faccenderie and consumerism, communities will only obsessed with knives infected circumcision, believe that the precautions against AIDS is just the latest Smart found the white against the black fertility enviable. Tribes lazy to work in a cooperative, always ready to smear in a week collected three months, despite the looming threat of a sky no more tears for her children. No water for the north of subsistence living, devastating typhoons in the south, which celebrates the beach. So 'that's life.
The sustainable agriculture center of Songhai? Good idea, sure, but without any power left once the reassuring walls of the futurist. No funding support from the government, no network of contacts, only wives hungry in a hurry to reproduce with a neighbor.
The love of Jesus Christ? A handy trick to treat children with malaria stripped to the bone, when the rites of the ancestors are not able to feed through during the massacres of kids at night. Away from prying eyes, in the shadow of a cross that is required to post skulls to attack, only to wonder in the morning showing off the faces of innocent children.
"What sense does it persist in conversions, then?".
Don Francis rejects any word from the hint of coercion. He calls. Exposes amiably. I pray that the light of consciousness becomes space with only his own strength. How happened that day long gone when an old tribe of his village project 'drops of water on the ground prior to sweep the red sand between the nostrils of the innocent children. A revolution of the bon ton close to the glorious October, given that water is always gold. Even if it contains eggs or mosquitoes is choked by algae green.
Behind the victory of Don Francesco's something else, but '. This October will return to Benin to try a new adventure. Another village, another tribe, more wild and recalcitrant. Of his old comrades is ready to be a reason. "Regress, it is almost certain. Everything is as good as before. The weight of tradition is an insurmountable boulder. Me will be saved if at least one, I'll have 'done my duty."
not count the numbers underneath. Both are insensitive to the Gentiles before the children dying, not ready to shell out even in a free medical care, the harder the court missionary of God he must first eradicate the Great Fetish, which lies between the souls of Kotiakou insidious. One, two, or three you are baptized 'joy, but not happiness. He wants a mass conversion. An entire ethnic group kneel before the crucifix. That 's your personal challenge. His triumph. His tireless fight against the spectra of Africa.
Until that day will not have any peace.
If he knew, however, where I finished today. Where I rode a motorcycle launched into the tangled forest on the border with Nigeria. If he could see his mother in tears that he had dipped the child in a sacred pool of standing water. The girl who was pouring buckets on the belly, dreaming of a beneficiary who is slow in coming. The old man who plunged nearly to the head to suffocate in search of the view that once did not spare a single bat. Had he heard of the grinning fat cook the rice market of Adjara, intent on shredding and tearing lizard tail feathers of macaque.
Maybe he understood why the locals have left to fall into disrepair the richest site of colonial production of palm oil. Why is content with living in homes where no one on hand from more than fifty years. Why do women sing lullabies during the washing, sweating under the weight of the batteries on their heads, while a rusting tractor in the fields. They believe, just like him. They believe in a truth that no beam can 'choke.
They have faith. Simply.
A bien tot!
Cobra Verde
Brigantino pirate n.4 - Ouidah (07/29/2010)
In Benin there are no highways to hell. They cost too much. Only dirt paths along which the sand takes on the color of blood. I'm not even too long. Four kilometers are sufficient. This was in fact the square of the distance that separated from the Door of No Return Ouidah, the latest blurry image of a bloody coast, no one would ever see again. For generations and generations. For centuries. Under the sun hot, but time has' stopped yesterday.
vomited from pristine walls of Fort Joao Batista, whose name the Portuguese did not make it any justice of the continuous succession of European slave traders, the market of human flesh attended only one-eyed statue. He watched with horror the very sandy track where no voodoo god, no fetish with three heads, or a leg, would be able to lift heavy chains on their feet. Hands. Neck.
Sometimes the spirits fade away behind palm trees rustling in the bottom of the marshes from haunting croaking, invoked in the shadows to reach at least forgetfulness, to die in a body on which any person, beyond 'voracious waves, will be' authorized to rage.
Become zombie dream rebel fon and EWI, folded the arms, but his heart always somewhere else. In perennial diaspora.
Somebody must have heard the prayer of the millions of condemned secret that this strip of land has been swallowed up all'indigestione: crying yesterday. Shouted the men and women from the color of pitch. They tore their hair. Beat your fists on chests as taut as drums. Babel shouted words that only he knows. Shameless tears of the pilgrimage impossible.
behind a makeshift bar, rum and herbs to forget. I, for the only guilty white color of my skin, I was abducted by the god Legba and his three totem. Forced to spit alcohol to revive the carved wood. To read the hatred in the shells of the pain of fathers and mothers. To me smoking along with gunpowder, burned in a pit over which reigns the silence.
Viva John Brown, Mr. Follow Follow
Brigantino pirate # 5 - Lac Ahem (08/02/2010)
The signs were obvious. Three cowries dropped with the groove up, one down. Thus 'it was revealed the way in Ouidah, so' was confirmed at the fetish market of Lomé, after a quick foray beyond the borders of Togo. Before I gift of some amulets, a traditional doctor in fact wanted to see again the response of the sand, so it did not doubt that the African journey runs smoothly. Finally came the traveler's bag: inside, a totem of the god Legba, crested disheveled and pierced with toothpicks merciless, accompanied by a stick pierced on one side, the so-called spirits of the phone. The small opening is just to whisper their prayers and guard them jealously, once sealed with a cap sharp stick. In the case of inconvenience potro 'then count on a couple of voodoo dolls, men and women: never trust too much or the one, it'
other.
powerful weapons of the soul, indispensable to anyone who takes part in a ceremony in which the dead return: when the fields dry up, it is time to dispense with prophecies and take away the most naive of the unfortunate. To no avail the slaughtering of goats, chickens and goats with which the locals told they have attempted to the fury of the revenant, almost no barrier obsessive drumming away by the followers of the priestess of pythons, soon devoured within the temple where interweave the sacred reptiles. Muttering words of the world, struggling in the glittering robes and the fatal touch, they are still to come, running to shots to surprise the predestined. Sticks flew, the chains are broken, the dust has stained the sky red in the furious fight with the inhabitants of ahem, someone has fallen. 'Tis gone. Or as they say here: he left, leaving only footprints
a presence that will return a different guise. Why does not exist in Benin history: this is only the theater of life, where the truth takes the form of belief, to find meaning in the eternal repetition. As if the'll be laughing, that of Satan ... Nietzsche
A chicken paw,
Mr. Follow Follow
Schiavo postman n.6 - Natitingou (08/08/2010)
Wicked! When I supposed to have made inroads into her elusive royal palace, the king's troops Behazin have implemented a treacherous plan screening. At sunrise the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey in fact, seemed deserted, with only two lions carved on the pillars at the entrance, some grisly images of dismembered captives in triumphal wood doors for the rest of the smoldering remains of an ancient mansion destroyed by the king on the run. To no avail the guns sold to the savages by the emissaries of the Kaiser: A small temple with Teutonic crosses is everything 'is left standing in their misguided attempt to block our Grand Armee.
Much more unexpected is fair and appeared instead to the strength of civilians, who have kept to document the taking of the building, disappearing for hours on our photographic equipment. A layman is no approach allowed the terrible king's throne, resting on four skulls svenuturati enemies can not take the stunning bas-reliefs that tell of the bloody deeds of this dynasty, which does not feel any shame in representing bodies massacred shots legs severed heads detached with merciless blows, Impala oppostisi soldiers sailing to the chains of slave traders. Nor can I silence the surprise attacks of the Amazon Re Benahzin, camouflaged among the leaves Shea, yet always ready to dart with arrows dipped in poison of vipers of Guinea. Unable
to defend the palace, we forced the mad priest of F to reveal the escape route of the King: because of the geomantic art, who claims to have inherited the old Egypt of the Pharaohs, the nuts are connected to the strings of the response taken three times well defined forms: "north, north!" - Swiveled ranted to orbit, while a plucked chicken rancid smell filled the thrills of our nostrils.
said than done: hoisting the flag, our troops were quickly called into gear, convinced that the nomadic Fulani could provide help in the capture, overcome by their own vanity ': sometimes it is enough to win some free silver braids of their women, or simple gold bracelets to fold their hand.
Unfortunately, the priest has set a trap: there we found only virgin forests, footprints of elephant skulls and abandoned. Locked in a dead end, lashed by the rain that has even blocked the ford of the River Niger, we had to repair one of the hospitable community 'Taneka, near Natitingou. Good souls, who live in round huts of clay and cut by pitchers seem to have at heart only the brandy sorghum. Their King has welcomed us even in the family, inviting us to rest between her breasts caught of her young daughters and under the authority of the ancestors of the stick. Finally a bit 'of breath, after days of tense and filled with pitfalls.
now points to the border of Upper Volta, where other tribes living in peaceful curious mud fortifications. Somba the call.
However, the king has no escape. Dahomey is surrounded and Paris is going to madare reinforcements. Play the Marseillaise!
West Africa is our ...
Allons!
General Dodds
priority Camel No. 7 - Ouagadougou (08/14/2010)
there is no market more valuable than white. A real bargain for people who can accaparrarselo before. To him we can 'ask for it all: Flag of you a beer, replace the muffler with holes of a motorcycle, give you money because pidgin "Le Blanc" means only ATMs with legs. If
Abomey to the arrogance of the claim seemed justified ancestral hatred for it, so that the kids on the street bellow "Yovo, Silver!" almost threatened the money or your life, in Burkina Faso as their nation's way of forcing other stunts.
Here the silver cadeau declines in fact: you can 'only be in terms of the gift, a bit of kindness' lacquer, but it is a field with most of the catastrophic famine that humiliates classifications of the WTO.
not walk without being bothered with every step, no use denying that there are no green oasis in or flee away through their headphones. Someone will still have them ', staring with longing eyes and come up with friendships so deep thinking, to justify any confidence.
why in the land of the incorruptible must be formed at the school of Gorom Gorom. Up there ', where the Sahara touches the Sahel, the arid' tough men of the earth grows as baobabs. Tireless. Inexhaustible. Able to handle without alteration, from sunrise to sunset. The largest market in West Africa every Thursday weans' generations of Tuareg, Songhai, Peul and Bella that does not ever have to ask. What 'you want is achieved only by giving their best.
not need any ruse or impudence or less humiliation. A
Gorom oxen fact minotaurs seem uncontrollable, women weave blankets able to oppose even the harmattan dust, while those who did not under some sort could easily find himself in chains at the bottom of a caravan that sells meat from the slaughterhouse.
The slow disappearance of large regional markets in favor of those endless windows that intoxicate every city street 'of Africa, is perhaps the worst calamity for the redemption of black. Craft Emergency genius, is now turning into a lazy getter, able to place only because the labor of others has put together.
China and India seem light years away from Ouagadougou and Cotonou, yet they are ubiquitous. More torrential cloud Atakora. Investing news and smears of the coastline of a continent which, even yesterday, could make a Ferrari Renault5 Captain Sankara representation. Forward, slow but unstoppable, with the same determination with which the sands are drinking water wells north of the rough and the wind sputtering mud mosques.
A Bani there are only skeletons of Islam, appearances of a golden age that still govern standing through the cow dung.
no mouth to the sea, unable to move beyond the empty grandeur of the French school, Burkina Faso is far from the dream of his late captain. Screams a despair that no one can 'more INTED, has a thirst for new horizons that image through distorted spectra.
South huts await rouged with guinea hen feathers. In Bobo Dioulasso is confident in the greatness of Allah, inscrutable as the suffering of Ramadan too long to digest. Someone calls for a new San Sankara, whose tomb but fades' between outbreaks of sewage and garbage cars.
Sometimes one wonders why a trigger is not enough to call it quits. Take
empty. Made in China. It 's the only toy in the world today gives this man beast, deprived even of the right to grow.
A 140 years after the abolition of slavery, the black has lost only one "g", but thanks to Darwin has found aunt Lucy.
in the sky with diamonds,
Alberto Da Silva
