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01/13/2006:

"Voodoo celebrated at festival in the Republic of Benin"

Thousands gathered Tuesday on a beach to celebrate Benin's once-banned Voodoo, slaughtering animals and welcoming revelers from Brazil and the United States whose slave ancestors took the religion to the Americas centuries ago.

At a ceremony in Ouidah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the commercial capital, Cotonou, Voodoo high priestess Nagbo Hounon Gbeffa sacrificed a goat, a rooster and a chicken as divine offerings.

"I'm very moved," said Faith McDouglas, a 37-year-old nurse from Omaha, Nebraska. "I've understood many things regarding my origins, because I'm a descendant of slaves."

Voodoo originated in West Africa and holds that all life is driven by spiritual forces of natural phenomena like water, fire, earth and air that should be honored through rituals that include animal sacrifices. There are no zombies or pin-skewered dolls here, but followers believe they can communicate with divinities and spirits by putting themselves into a trance.

Countless Africans were shipped into slavery from the West African coast, taking with them Voodoo, whose cults still survive in the Caribbean, Latin American and the American South.

The annual celebration "is an occasion for us in Ouidah to remember the hundreds of thousands of blacks deported to the Americas as slaves," said Albert Dossou, a member of the Daagbo Hounon family, which traces its lineage to a 15th-century Voodoo chief.
naijanet.com