It is Sunday morning in the fetish market in Lom?, Togo, and I have struck a bargain with the gods. All around me are stalls displaying a grisly array of animal parts - crocodile heads, monkey skulls, dead parrots, bats and snakes, valued by the local witchdoctors for their magical and medicinal powers.
Calixte Ganyehessou is a Togan voodoo priestess who works in a tent on the edge of the market. Her business card says that she is a member of the “occult sciences of African voodoo forces”.
I sit on a bench in front of an earthen fetish dedicated to Sagbata, the god of protection against smallpox and other diseases. The fetish is stained with candle wax and covered with chicken feathers. As I take in the scene, Calixte places a charm around my neck and offers me a blessing for the long journey ahead.
The amulet consists of a leather pouch studded with cowrie shells and filled with 41 different herbs - 41 being considered a sacred number in voodoo. It turns out that the lucky charm is for sale. How much, I ask, but nothing is as simple as that. First, the gods must be consulted.
Calixte takes my hands in hers and chants my name three times before asking the deity to reveal a price. The gods want 4,000 francs (about £4.55). I offer 3,000 francs and the amulet is mine. Like everyone else in Togo, it seems, the spirits are open to a bit of negotiation.
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If you think the Hollywood version of voodoo is weird, wait till you see the real thing. Voodoo originated in West Africa and was taken to America by slaves. The spiritual home of voodoo is still to be found in southern Togo and Benin. You may not encounter any zombies or see people sticking pins in dolls, but gods, ghosts and sorcerers remain part of everyday life.
Crossing the border to Benin, I came to Ouidah, home of the Hounon or supreme chief of the voodoo religion. The town was a slave-trading post, and a museum in the old Portuguese fort shows the chains in which slaves were bound. The slave trade may have been dominated by Europeans, but the local kings played their part.
At the royal palace in Abomey, the guide recounted tales of Dahomey, a bloodthirsty kingdom that grew wealthy by selling slaves to European merchants in exchange for guns. One of the kings, Gl?l?, had 41 of his wives buried alive in a mass grave beside his tomb. Near here is the Pearl Temple, whose walls were built of mud mixed with palm wine and the blood of 41 slaves (that magic number again). Despite being turned into a museum and World Heritage site, the palace is sacred to voodoo, and animal sacrifices still take place here.
I took a boat across Lake Nakou? to the stilt village of Ganvi?, built by refugees fleeing slavery. Today it has become one of the top tourist attractions in Benin. I spent the night at Chez M, a thatched guesthouse on stilts run by the friendly Madina and her family. It was fascinating standing on the balcony watching the evening activity, as children collected water by boat from the village pump and travelled home from school in punts and pirogues.
Village life in Africa is full of little cameos like this and my trip, organised by adventure tour operator Explore Beyond, gave me an insight into local ways of life. There are not many holidays where you get to visit an orphanage and a rural health clinic, or have audiences with a voodoo oracle and a village chief. Our guide, Paul Agboglo, although a Christian, understood and respected the tribal cultures of the areas that we passed through.
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Before leaving Benin, I spent a day walking through the Somba villages in the Atakora region, their fortress-like mud houses resembling giant sand castles with towers and turrets for firing arrows at slave raiders. The Somba people have their own beliefs, which are separate from voodoo, and Islam is also making inroads here, yet outside the door of each house were phallic-shaped fetishes, representing the spirits of the ancestors.
The fetishes were stained with millet beer and the blood of guinea fowl and chickens. It may not have been voodoo, but it felt like it. From the voodoo heartlands of the south to the dry savannah of the north, magic and the spirit world are the driving forces of daily life in Togo and Benin. It was just as well I still had that lucky charm around my neck.
Need to know
Tony Kelly travelled with Explore (0844 4990901, www.explore. co.uk) on its 19-day Cradle of Voodoo trip, which also includes Burkina Faso. The next available trip departs on March 14, and costs £2,410pp including flights, stays and meals. Explore’s first new six- day Voodoo Villages trip to Togo and Benin leaves on October 21 and costs £1,099pp.
Visas for Togo and Benin are £172 if travelling with Explore, or £259 through Travcour (020-7223 5295, www.travcour.com).
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Reading Benin (Bradt Guides, £14.99)