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BBtv WORLD: Roots of Voudun and Slavery's Legacy in Ouidah (Africa)

Today's Boing Boing tv is an installment of our ongoing BBtv WORLD series, in which we bring you first-person glimpses of life around the globe. From the 17th to 19th centuries, millions of African people were sold? into slavery, transported on ships ?to the Americas. With them came spiritual traditions ?including Voudun, which we now ?know as ?voodoo.?? Its roots are in the Dahomey kingdom ?on the West Coast of Africa, now the country of Benin. ?In today?s episode, I ?travel to Benin?s port city of Ouidah,? one of the most important slave trade ports, ?and a center of the Vodoun religion. We visit the Temple of Pythons and learn about Voudun religious practices, and witness some of the most important sites in the history of the slave trade. We walk along a beach that was the single most highly-trafficked embarkation point for West African slaves headed over the Atlantic to the Americas. One million people were forced on to ships here, many transported to Haiti and Brazil, where Voudun transmuted into voodoo and Candomblé. Outsiders called this region the Slave Coast. Ouidah's residents today call the former boarding platform on this otherwise idyllic beach the Gate of No Return. -- XJ Link to Boing Boing tv post , with info on how to subscribe to our daily video podcast. and direct MP4 link here. (Photos: Xeni Jardin, CC license)...

BBtv WORLD: Elephant-blogging in Benin with Xeni (Africa)

Today's Boing Boing tv is an installment of our ongoing BBtv WORLD series, in which we bring you first-person glimpses of life around the globe. Today: an ambient exploration of the creatures rustling around in a West African wildlife preserve at dawn. I traveled to Benin not long ago, and I shot this video on a small handheld digital camcorder. This episode of our daily show is a little experiment in trying to convey what this place feels like, first-person, without too many words. Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with downloadable video and instructions on how to subscribe to the daily BBtv video podcast. The Pendjari Biosphere lies in Benin's remote rural northwest, along the border of Burkina Faso. Despite poaching and environmental damage, it's still home to a diverse number of species -- elephants, lions, monkeys, cheetah, and around 300 species of birds. We traveled here during the dry season, when animal spotting is easiest. Here is what we saw at dawn (the time of day when critters all come out to the watering holes and rivers). Poaching is still a big problem in this area, and organized trophy hunting for foreign tourists is still legal and in demand here (mostly visitors from France; Benin is a former French colony and French is the official language). Lion hunts are a lucrative trade in this extremely poor region, where most people are subsistence farmers. But eco-tourism and less-invasive safari experiences are becoming more important to the local economy here, and offer a more sustainable future. Note: don't miss the epic baboon ball-grab at 0:35, and the mama elephant ripping tree branches off and getting ready to kill us around 1:50. We were too close to her kids, and we were having a hard time leaving quickly. Do not taunt happy-fun elephant. Related BBtv WORLD episode: BBtv World: Green tech and internet at the Songhai Center in Benin (Africa)...