Benin is the home of voudou. Voudou is the belief in the power of animist spirits, used by a practitioner to achieve certain results: success, happiness, health. When slaves were taken from west Africa to the Americas, voudou was also transported, which is how it finds itself in Haiti, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. But Benin is its original home.

When I saw the state of the roads in Benin, which wouldn’t be so bad if used for their original purpose- the transport of a thin flow of traffic, rather than the transportation of goods by decrepit trucks to all the landlocked countries of the Sahel- we decided to see the fetisheur who deals in contra-accidents. Chugging a trois through the vast green landscape on a motorbike, Marc, our serious-looking guide, took us to a voudou priest who was particularly strong in this department. There were no displays of voudou tourist nonsense that we had feared we might be dealt, just a small room in a concrete compound in the forest full of old wooden statues covered in wax, cigarette ash and old cow blood. Here the fetish for making women pregnant, Marc pointed out, and here the fetish for erectile problems. Consult this fetish, he explained, mix up an ointment of shea butter and then massage the penis, indicating proudly to his crotch. “Within 43 days,” he assured us, “the man will fall upon an erection.”

Our expensive contra-accident talismans in hand, the three of us set off once again through the bush to another voudou priest’s house. This is the Love Doctor, Marc explained, and he is available to give consultations on any matters of the heart that we might want to discuss. I was initially, and latterly, sceptical. We were taken into a compound where from over the mud wall, the eerie humming of children- or fetishes- rose to meet us. Through a gate, guided by a series of toothless crones, eight children dressed in hessian wraps, their black bodies smeared in some kind of vegetable oil, were guided towards us. They did not once look at us, the bewildered and suspicious tourists, but kept their bodies doubled over, clutching their arms around themselves, until they were kneeling on the ground infront of us.

Would we like them to dance for us?, asked a mean-looking man in a fake Puma shell suit, clutching three mobile phones in one hand. No, I asserted, it’s not necessary. The oily children were led away, and the Love Doctor took us back to his consultation room.

On the porch of a mud and concrete hut, strange objects, strings, shells, and free 2007 wall calendars hanging on every hook and wall space, we were asked to sit down and compose our questions. I would like to say here that our visit was purely for research purposes, journalists on the prowl, but by this time I was convinced that our man was for real, that there was nothing so cynical as voudou for tourists in this village. The way he had gently taken my hand in greeting, but held it for longer than was necessary as he also greeted P as if he was already trying to read me, made me feel completely at ease in his presence. The fact that he was wearing a faded Dutch wax pyjama suit, adorned with the 80s-style motif of lips and lipstick, only warmed me to him further. That he didn’t ask us for money was more concrete proof that he was in fact applying a legitimate trade. I asked him my question, muttered onto two seeds pressed close to my lips, and he got down to work.

Pulling out from an old bag some dirty-looking rope tied with shells and some kind of seeds or nuts, he gathered this in his cupped hands and rubbed chalk into the mix. He spat into his hands for good measure, and started whispering. He laid the ropes and shells on the ground, threw the seeds onto them, and took note of the way everything had fallen. He did this a number of times, muttering, whispering, adding chalk, until he seemed to have finished. “Yes,” he proclaimed, looking satisfied. “You have already met your husband, and you will stay with him morning and night until the end of your life.”

“But,” he warned, talking through our translator. “You must find work or live no more than a few kilometres from a body of water, the sea, or a river. And it is very important that you learn how to forgive. You are someone who gets annoyed or angry very quickly, and your husband is too. You must be the one to forgive quickly.”

Assuring me that everything was already taken care of in the marriage department, he said that just to make sure, he could make a sea sacrifice for me at a later date, if I liked. This would involve a baby goat, some peanut oil and a bunch of bananas. He marked down my divination patterns so that when I phoned him with the order, he could get to work taking the goat and the bananas down to the sea.