The Akodessawa Fetish Market is located at Akodessawa, which is a district of Lomé, the capital of Togo in West Africa. The Akodessawa Fetish Market or Marche des Feticheurs is the world’s largest voodoo market
The market features monkey heads, skulls, dead birds, crocodiles, skins and other products of dead animals.
Voodoo has a long tradition in Togo. Centuries ago, slaves from Africa brought Yoruba gods to the Caribbean and South America. There it came to mixing of African gods with the saints of Christianity and the symbols of the Catholic Church. In course of time they changed their meaning. When former slaves and their families migrated to West Africa they developed a voodoo cult in the country of origin of their families.
The fetish is comparable to the Orisha of Yoruba. A fetish can be God, but also human, plant, animal or material. This depends on the ritual and the situation. In the ritual, the fetish is activated and strengthened. Fetishes may have been special people.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Lome’s Akodessawa Fetish Market with its rows and rows of dead animal skulls, hides and skins piled up on tables. Voodoo priests reside in huts where it is believed that they consult with deities. Using different talismans, herbs and animal parts, they concoct remedies for all manner of ailments. Though certainly a tourist destination – a clever idea launched by Beninese businessmen – it still sets the scene for an omnipresent religious and cultural identity. To unravel anything with greater depth takes time, patience and a very good guide.
Togo’s capital city of Lomé is the birthplace of the largest Voodoo market in the world – a kind of super supply store for fetishes, charms and anything else one might need for a ritual. The Akodessewa Fetish Market, or Marche des Feticheurs, is a place where you can find anything from leopard heads and human skulls to Vodou (voodoo) priests who bless and create fetishes or predict the future and make medicines to heal whatever ails you.
Though many people think of Haiti as Voodoo’s biggest stronghold, the religion originated in West Africa. Vodoun is the official religion of neighboring Benin and is still the largest religion in the area, which is obvious given that the outdoor market’s location is in the heart of Togo’s capital. Although the market is owned and run by Beninese.
The Akodessewa Fetish Market is a mecca to local practitioners and they travel there from all over the African continent. Many believers view the Marche des Feticheurs as a kind of hospital or pharmacy – it is the place you go when you either cannot afford traditional treatment or traditional treatment has failed you. Here you can find talismans and charms good for treating everything from the flu or infertility to removing the blackest of curses.
In the practice of Voodoo every single creature is potent and divine, whether alive or dead, and in the Akodessewa Fetish Market you may find them all – monkeys, alligators, goats, leopards, gazelles, and many, many more – in various stages of decay and stacked up in macabre piles for blocks. The outdoor location doesn’t quite suppress the stench but at least the huge market is in the open air. It is a jarring place for tourists who are not used to the idea of animal sacrifice as part of worship or using pieces of the dead as talismans, but for locals who practice the religion, it is a treasure and a necessity.
