The largest voodoo market
As the largest voodoo market in the world, Akodessewa Fetish Market in Lomé, Togo is a haven for practitioners.
The market is a fetish heaven – a talismans that are used in voodoo healing. Things like crocodile heads, chimpanzee hands, cobras and bones. Lots of bones.
These things (or parts of things) are sold as ingredients to be ground up, mixed with herbs and cooked over a fire. The resulting black powder is rubbed into a cut on the patient’s chest, hopefully curing him of whatever brought him there in the first place.
This makes the market, in effect, one giant pharmacy, and while there’s nothing bad about that, it may be difficult to keep your cool amidst tables piled with the desiccating, grinning heads of cheetahs and hyenas or unidentifiable, vaguely humanoid skulls laid out like melons at the local grocer’s.
