Squeezed between a similarly long and narrow Togo and a massive Nigeria, Benin is basically an unknown country for most of the Virtual Nomads. It is hidden in Western Africa and not frequently heard about. It’s famous for Angélique Kidjó, who left the country decades ago and Djimon Hounsou, an award-winning actor. It is also known for its mythical female warriors, the all-woman army created by King Agadja in the eighteenth century – the Agojie. 

Sticky chicken balls and peanut sauce

The Benin night is celebrated by nine seasoned Virtual Nomads and two newbies who are visiting all the way from Cairns. Hosted by AK and DK, the kitchen is filled with exotic spices, flavours and a lot of peanut butter. 

The main dish is chicken meatballs with red sauce . They are laborious but promise a great culinary experience for the meat eaters. Because of the work involved, we give them to the most experienced cook of the party – JK. He gets assistance from the visitors from Cairns who willingly get their hands in the ‘sticky balls’ which prompts good natured laughs and jokes throughout the preparation process. 

Unfortunately, one of the five dishes, the Bean fritters that carry the groovy name of Akkra Funfun, do not turn out to be easy to prepare. Made of white beans in a dough and then deep-fried, the dough turns out too soft for frying and the result is not quite as pretty as it could be. But they still offer a nice side dish for the other items on the menu. The taste itself is quite neutral, which in fact works well as the rest of the cuisine is full of peanut flavours and exotic spices.

Accompanying the main dish we also prepare a vegetarian jollof, which is basically rice with beans, eggplant, carrots, onions and a lot of spices. This one requires a lot of chopping from the rest of the Virtual Nomad team, which is mostly carried out by DK.  A colourful rice dish, it offers a good balance to the peanut-heavy cuisine. 

The very surprising star of the Benin night is the Peanut Soup that ends up being more a sauce than a soup, but is incredibly tasty nevertheless. Filled with peanuts (we are very lucky not to have any nut allergies among the Virtual Nomads) it takes a while and a lot of peanut butter to prepare, but the result is very rich in flavour. It’s exotic and full of the velvety taste of peanut.

Overall, the Benin night is a great success with sublime food, great conversation and the powerful voice of Angélique Kidjó throughout the night. 

Women warriors

The famous Kingdom of Dahomey was located in present day Benin, and existed from approximately 1600 until 1904.  The Fon people of the Dahomey were involved in the slave trade with Europeans, often selling their enemy captives. Their main enemy was the powerful Oyo Empire (1300 -1896) that the Fon/Dahomey defeated in 1823. The Fon were famous for their elite female warriors, the Agojie – an all-female army. The Agojie were created due to a ‘shortage’ of male warriors and recruited mostly from foreign captives and daughters/women considered unsuitable for domestic life. They were required to live a life of servitude without family, and underwent intensive training. According to some sources, their sexual drive was controlled by partial genital mutilation. They were brave and very physical warriors. When Dahomey came under French rule in 1894 and their services were no longer needed, many of them had difficulty settling into ‘normal life’.

In the period 1892-94 the French officially colonised Dahomey and the present boundaries were established in 1909.  In 1960, Dahomey gained its independence. Political unrest and several military coups followed and in 1972, Mathieu Kérékou overthrew the government and established Marxist military rule that lasted for 17 years. He also changed the name of the country to the People’s Republic of Benin in 1975. Bad boy Mathieu managed to ruin the economy, education and pretty much the society as a whole. In order to finance what remained, he accepted nuclear waste from France and Russia. Finally multiparty democracy was established 1989 and Benin was the first country on the African continent to transition from dictatorship to democracy relatively peacefully. Funnily enough, Mathieu Kérékou became the elected president in 1996 and 2001. The current president, Patrice Talon, was involved in assassination attempts on a former president, Thomas Boni Yayi. President Talon has not been good for democracy and human rights, and Benin’s international reputation has suffered greatly. 

Benin’s capital is Porto Novo but the government sits in Cotonou, which is the economic capital and the most populous city in Benin. The main ethnic groups are Fon, Adjara, Yoruba, Bariba and Fulani. 

The Beninese flag has three colours that match with the colours of the Pan-African movement: red, yellow and green. The flag was in use from independence until 1975, and then again from 1990 when multi-party democracy returned to Benin. Under colonial rule, Benin was not allowed to have its own flag and during the Kérékou regime the flag was green with one star. The colours symbolise the blood and courage of the ancestors (red), the savannahs and palm groves (yellow), and the hope of a new democracy (green). 

Book(s): the power of Angélique 

Whoever has seen Angélique Kidjó on stage knows that she’s a queen. Her voice is sublime and, as a performer, she has incredible, powerful energy that can fill a stadium. She is one of the biggest stars to come from Benin and published her autobiography in 2013. 

The foreword comes from such notable people as Desmond Tutu and Alicia Keyes. The story of Angélique is narrated in the first person, from her childhood in Cotonou and her first steps as a singer, all the way to her conquering the world stage. She lived in a supportive, liberal household of several brothers and sisters with people coming and going all the time. Her mother was a progressive feminist (and performer), which was very rare at the time. Angélique’s childhood and growing up in Cotonou did not only bring music to her life, but also brought her awakening to social change and empowerment. She escapes the regime in Benin and the second part of the book is about her musical journey in Paris and the world. It takes her from very humble and tough beginnings to becoming a star – a journey accompanied by her husband, Jean. The story includes encounters with many stars and other people, trips back to a changed Benin and becoming a mother. Later in the book she describes her activism, especially focused on girls’ access to education in Africa and fighting against female genital mutilation. 

“Often on my trips as an ambassador, mothers will come up to me and ask for help. They can’t afford to provide for their children. This is heartrending because you know the next day you’ll be gone, off to a different place with a different agenda, and, as crucial as it is, your advocacy work won’t have an immediate effect on their lives. I’ve always felt torn between the need to speak on a subject that would increase society’s awareness of the problem that the women and their daughters’ face, and wanting to help them directly. The more I traveled the more I felt this frustration. How could I be an advocate and, at the same time, make a difference in the lives of the girls I meet?” 

Angélique’s autobiography achieves a wonderful combination of being interesting, compelling and inspiring, all at the same time. The book carries a similar energy to her concerts and music. The most powerful section of the book is the last part – Angélique’s travels to Africa, meeting with raped women in refugee camps, and reprimanding the government in a concert in Zimbabwe. When she meets African women they tell her “When you’re back in your countries and you talk about us, don’t present us as victims but as strong women, as complete women, like you, fighting for our future. We don’t want to be perceived as victims forever.” 

Why Monkeys Live in Trees and Other Stories from Benin is a collection of folktales and, as is generally the case with folktales, they usually have a moral message or a lesson to learn, and display the values of humility, love and courage. The tales come from different ethnic groups around Benin and the collection is based on oral traditions. We get to know why monkeys indeed live in trees, why bees make honey, why snakes crawl on their belly and other stories of folk tales of the nature and spiritual world. It is an enjoyable yet light read. 

Benin in film

Africa Paradis (2006) by Sylvestre Amoussou is a satirical take on immigration in a world in which the roles are reversed. The United States of Africa is a strong economic union while Europe is impoverished. Two illegal European immigrants try to gain access to Africa by any means they can, which leads to personal tensions and separate life paths. It is enjoyable and the premise is great but the quality suffers from terrible acting that cannot bring depth to the story. This is unfortunate as the clear purpose of social commentary and being thought-provoking is buried under the amateur execution. The actors, especially the two white leads, just do not take the job seriously enough and therefore the message is lost. The director, Sylvestre Amoussou, is a Beninese actor who decided to make his own movies as a result of his frustration with the roles offered for black actors in France. His latest movie L’orage africain: un continent sous influence (African Storm, 2017) received the Étalon de Yennenga, a prestigious African film award. 

Two Woman King is not a Beninese film but based on the legend of the Kingdom of Dahomey and its elite female warriors, the Agojie. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, the story has received the Hollywood treatment, which means skipping historical facts and investing in sentimentality. The acting is top notch throughout. Viola Davis is phenomenal as is Thuso Mbedu in the role of young Nawi – a character based on a real person, the last remaining Agojie warrior who died at the age of over 100. The cinematography is beautiful, which makes up partly for the fact that the plot is full of ridiculous holes and unnecessary 21^st century sentimentalism. The Dahomey are painted in a very favourable light whereas they were active participants in the slave trade and happily volunteered their enemies as commodities of commerce. 

Indochina, Traces of a Mother, 2011 (Indochine, sur les traces d’une mère) is a documentary film about a less known chapter in African history. During the First Indochina war (1946-54), over 60,000 African soldiers served in the war and, as a result of their presence, several children were born to African fathers and Vietnamese mothers. Many of the young soldiers were enlisted by the colonial power rather than themselves. One says: “Local officials forcefully enlisted young men.” 

At the end of the war, the colonial army ordered all black children to be taken to Africa, sometimes against their mothers will. In rare cases the mothers travelled to Africa with the father. 

The story is told through different people. One is 58-year old Christophe, abandoned by his father and put in an orphanage. He remembers his mother well and also the morning when, without warning, he was put on a ship never to see his mother again. One Vietnamese woman tells how she travelled to Africa with her husband and then was abandoned by him. One African soldier with three kids tells how he was allowed to take the kids, but not their mother, with him back to Africa. And then there are several scarred, traumatized children, now (or when the documentary was made) in their late 50s telling of their longing for the mothers they were not allowed to have. When in Vietnam in search of his mother, Christophe says: ”Nearly all the children that lived through this tragedy are left with something in them that others cannot read.”

The documentary is heartbreaking and highly effective. It is not only a story of motherless children but also young men sent to war to fight “someone else’s war”, as they say many times in the documentary.  The director, Idrissou Mora-Kpaï, is a Beninese film maker who now lives in the US. His documentaries are centred identity and belonging. 

We really wanted to see, as the last film from Benin, a documentary by Djimon Hounsou – (another Beninese superstar) – In Search of Voodoo: Roots to heaven (2020). It is about the origins of the spiritual practice of Vodun/Voodoo, which Djimon says has been misinterpreted and villainized by Hollywood. 

The documentary won the Best Documentary award at the Haiti International Film Festival. Vodun means ‘spirit’ in Fon, Gun and Ewe languages. As a spiritual/religious practice, it spread to the new world and took different forms in Haiti, Brazil, New Orleans and other places. In Benin, Vodun is often practiced side by side with Christianity. For example, Angélique Kidjó describes the coexistence of rituals from both in her childhood. As the documentary is not available, there is a superb interview with Djimon Hounsou about it that can be found here.  He says: “voodoo is the channel between humanity and the forces of nature.” 

Queen Angelique

There are a lot of amazing artists and music in Benin but no singer shines brighter than Angélique Kidjó. She is an award-winning singer of multiple musical styles, and sings in many languages. Her music is rich and full of energy. One of her first hits is Batonga

One of her biggest hits is the Mother Earth song Agolo. In her autobiography she says that Agolo means ‘please’ in her native Fon. Some other pearls are We We, the gorgeous Idje Idje, the energetic Adouma and a lullaby to her daughter Naima. 

Our visitor A from Cairns encourages me to mention that, some years ago Angélique Kidjó retweeted my tweet after I had attended her concert. A proud moment. 

This said, JK and I will go to see Angelique again in March 2024. 

(photo Vilcek Foundation))

Next stop: Bhutan