Looking for Love at the Fetish Market

Rhonda has arrived and we've returned to Ghana. It feels strange to be here without all my JHR cohorts.

On Day 2 of our travels, we made our way and the Fetish market, supposedly the biggest in West Africa, where you can consult with witchdoctors and voodoo chiefs and buy virtually any potion and concoction or ingredient recommended during your consultation.

Felix met us as we emerged from the cab and took us around and explained in English some of the common uses for some of the decidedly uncommon medicinal ingredients. Bats for all natural Viagra. Owls to combat bad spirits. Horses for protection. Dogs for rabies vaccines, rats for anti-parasitic, and chameleons for love. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of dead animals, most looking slightly shrunken but otherwise intact. Most were ground into powders that were either taken orally or cut into the skin to mix with the blood. Felix assured us that they only practiced benevolent voodoo – since they believe any malicious spells, potions, curses or requests will come back on them. The voodoo dolls with the nails, blades or bits of hair were purely for tourists.

As part of our visit, Felix took us to see the witchdoctor at stand 14, although Felix himself claimed to be a witchdoctor, a designation passed from father to son after about 15 years of apprenticeship and study. The witchdoctor blessed us by saying our names three times while swinging some sort of clapper-type thing at the female fetish, who had long hair and rather pendulous breasts. Then Felix explained voodoo has six main totems: the traveling talisman to assure safe voyage, which is essentially a small piece of wood with a hole, a plug and some string to connect them once the talisman is blessed, a traveler simply whispers their destination to the talisman three times and seals the hole, then makes a request like “avoid accidents” or “safe arrival.”

The next charm was for love and looked simply like a bunch of matchsticks bundled together. The idea is to drop three drops of perfume on the talisman, then whisper your name seven times while twirling the talisman in your hands followed by seven recitations of your intended’s name. Carry the talisman in your pocket when next meeting your beau and it will help open his eyes to love. (No mention of what to do when you decide you were mistaken and want to close his eyes.)

The next talisman was described as a gris gris, a necklace/amulet adorned with two cowrie shells and stuffed with 41 herbs, 41 being a lucky number in the voodoo religion. The gris gris is used simply for good luck, the wearer need do nothing but wear it once it’s been blessed.

Felix then handed us each an ebony tree seed, a big pod of a seed, that once blessed can improve memory and help with sleep simply by slipping it under a pillow.

Little clay blobs with two indents for eyes making the suggestion of a face were placed in our hands and introduced as house gods. They’re used for protection. And finally, a simple stick of ebony, that is sharpened, blessed and used to stir a drink will give a man “buffalo power,” as Felix put it, doing a little pantomime of a man pushing with his crotch.

We were asked which totems we liked, to hold them in our hands and the witchdoctor would bless them. Rhonda chose only the gris gris, while I held onto the house god, the travel talisman and the little block that would bring love. The fetish priest waved the items before the fetishes, chanting our names and mumbling a few words. Then in he held some cowrie shells in his hand, shook them like dice and rolled them onto the floor to reveal the cost of these talismans. Mine was nearly 40,000 CFAs, about $100. I can’t remember the price quoted to Rhonda. We both blanched. There wasn’t a hope in hell we could afford it, and it felt both silly and unlucky to turn the charms back over to the priest, as though we were tempting the fates, refusing love or luck or good travels. We bargained for a bit but the price was still too high. I handed back the house god, figuring it was foolish to have such a talisman when my home isn’t my own to protect.

But then I was faced with a serious dilemma: love or travel? Suddenly it was serious. I’m 28, never been in love, no remarkable relationships to speak of, no ex-boyfriends, no tragic break-ups, no messy entanglements or suitors on the horizon. But I’m also a hardcore traveler, having spent the last five months criss-crossing Ghana, Liberia, Portugal, Spain and Morocco. I was two days into 13 weeks of backpacking through West Africa, a trip that would take in 10 countries, most of them solo, from the Sahara to the Gulf of Gambia.

Decisions, decisions.