Ouidah..

Last weekend a group of us went to Ouidah, the voodoo center of Benin and the second most popular tourist site in the country. Ouidah is the place where slaves from Benin and eastern Togo were shipped to the USA, Brazil and Haiti, from 1800 to 1900.

This is a memorial that was built and known as 'The Point of No Return,' in honor of those departed slaves. The ocean is just on the other side.
The main road to the beach is a 4km stretch and is known as the the route that the slaves traveled on to the board the slave ships. We passed through 3 villages were the 3rd village, where the memorial is, was the actual holding point for slaves. We also went into town to visit the museum, that is part of an old Portuguese fort built in 1721. The museum was focused on the slave trade and showed artifacts from the voodoo culture. All very interesting and sad.

Just a ways down the beach was another memorial that was built to honor the first missionaries that arrived to the area.

Kelly and I

The is the bumpy dirt road that goes from Cotonou to Togo. We saw many different things along the way... to the right is the skinniest cows I have every seen and below is a picture of men and even women (with babies on their backs) bringing in the fishing net... it looked liked heavy hard work.