the search continues...

Yovo means 'whitey' in the main southern Beninoise language, Fon. Little kids just love yelling 'yovo-yovo-yovo!!' every time they see one - occasionally in a jeering way, but usually they're just being silly, or want you to come over and shake their hand. We are in a fairly touristy town, Abomey, but you could still spend a few hours in town without seeing any other yovos.

It's hard to describe what people here are like without sounding cliched and patronising, but I have to say it: the women are really incredible. Yesterday a heavily pregnant woman walked past our hotel on her way to a ceremony nearby, carrying a big tray loaded with pineapple (they have little cylindrical hats to help balance stuff on their heads). Anyway she saw me eyeing the pineapples so we negotiated a price for one and she put the tray on the ground and cut up the pineapple for me. When she'd finished I helped her lift up the tray to put it back on her head and I couldn't believe how heavy the bloody thing was - it must've been at least 20 kilos and she was only a tiny little thing, and looked like she could've given birth the next day. Everywhere you see women selling stuff, carrying stuff, washing clothes, socialising or whatever, with little babies strapped to their backs like it was nothing. Sometimes little girls only 8 or so have a little sibling on their back too.

Yesterday morning we saw the biggest voudou ceremony so far, a resurruction. It was interesting, but slightly ruined for me by endless negotiation over the 'camera fee', and we didn't get to take photos of the good stuff anyway. But it was quite freaky seeing half a dozen men carrying aloft another dude all wrapped up in white clothes like a mummy. Then some women massaged him with palm oil for quite a while, and fortunately he did come back to life after that (apparently they sometimes don't) - he'd been 'dead' for seven days, although it's hard to know what really goes on, or why. I think it's a kind of initiation - quite different to the Haitian thing where they deliberately turn people into zombies.