The whipping fete

Last weekend was very busy – I left post immediately after my last class on Thursday afternoon and traveled up to the northwest of Benin to see the annual whipping fete, a local celebration in that area where young men whip each other to prove their manhood. The trip was long and exhausting. I got into Cotonou on Thursday evening and traveled again on Friday from 6am until just after 6pm to get into the post of K, a fellow PCV who hosted visiting volunteers who’d come from all over the country to see the fete. (None of them, though, traveled as long or as far as I did.) We saw two separate versions of the fete, a smaller one hosted on Saturday by a village near K’s post, and a larger version on Sunday morning at K’s post itself, Badjoude.

The night before Sunday’s fete, young men psyching themselves up for the next day traveled in groups around the town, singing, dancing, and – basically – trick-or-treating. They danced their way up to the front doors of the houses and then stayed there, singing, until the inhabitants gave them candy and sent them away.

The next morning, we got up before dawn and headed over to Badjoude’s main crossroads and waited for the groups of whipping fete contestants to arrive. Practically the whole town was there with us. The contestants came a bit after dawn in groups according to the area of the town that they lived in. Each regional group was headed by a man carrying a whip, wearing an elaborate feathered headdress, and tooting ceaselessly on a small metal whistle. Each of the men with the headdresses had personalized his gear by decorating the headband just below the rows of upright feathers. I saw one guy who’d pinned a peanut M&M doll to the band. (For good luck?) All the other contestants were carrying whips and shields made of sticks with hand guards, and many were wearing women’s clothing and lingerie. (Don’t ask me why…) Drummers followed the regional groups, and all the contestants chanted chants that someone translated for me as “Today, you will see that everyone here is a true man.”

The groups from each neighborhood met at the crossroads, and the individual matches started up. Champions from each neighborhood met in closely refereed one-on-one whipping matches. Each contestant would get a chance to strike two blows with his whip at the other guy, which the opponent would try to block with the stick-shield in his left hand. The referees broke up the matches and awarded points. By the end of the day, I saw many whippers with bleeding welts on their backs and arms.

Most of the competitors were in their late teens and early twenties, though I did see some matches between boys as young as ten. They didn’t have much skill with the whips, so I don’t think much damage was done, though the audience seemed to get into those matches as much as they did the matches between the young men.

The crowd eventually made its way to a spot next to a small hill that used to be considered sacred. For the final rounds, the king and local dignitaries attended. We (the white people) were given seats of honor near the king and lots of advice on what we should photograph. After the last champions met and the whipping fete was more or less over, we followed the king back to his house, where we sat around with him under a tree for a while and drank chouk, a local beer. Some of the more enthusiastic contestants were there also and decided it would be lots of fun to give some whips to the foreigners and see if we could hit them. I declined, but some of my friends gave it a shot.

I’ll try to post some of the whipping fete photos that I took when I can, although almost none of my many pictures turned out thanks to all the chaos at the fete. Most of my photos have one or two stray elbows or heads poking into the frame.

By the way, the Beninese to a man (and woman) all enthusiastically support Obama. Most think that an American President with strong African ties will do a lot to help the continent. I had a conversation about Obama with my colleagues at school last Wednesday, and I asked them whether they didn’t think that the expectations for him would be too high if he becomes President. My worry is that there would be wild enthusiasm for him at first and then a strong backlash in opinion in Africa if it’s discovered that he won’t, in fact, go out of his way to help people here by – for example – getting rid of the subisidies for American cotton growers that keep Beninese cotton growers extremely poor. The other teachers at my school said that of course, they realized that he couldn’t do everything. “But even if he accomplishes a small portion of what we hope he will,” Theopin said, “that will still be a lot.”