A Journey to Gods and Comrades

Recording Voodoo Stories of the Fon (1975–1977, 2014, 2015)

Author: Marjolijn Aalders Grool. Photographs by: Henri Aalders, Marjolijn Aalders Grool.

Series: TIAS Topics in Interdisciplinary African Studies Volume 45

A fascinating eyewitness account of the recent history of a West African country:

Marjolijn Aalders Grool travelled to the West African Dahomey in March 1975. Thirty months later she left the same country that was then called the “People’s Republic of Benin”. During her stay, she recorded a corpus of 37 mythological Voodoo stories. The scholarly results have been published by us in 2013 and 2014 (see the links below).

In her third book, she describes the fieldwork and the welcoming reception in the villages, as well as the political machinations and the ruthless oppression of the Voodoo religion by the Marxist-Leninist regime. But she also writes about the social isolation of the few foreigners who eventually lived there, and how they dealt with it.

In 2014 and 2015 she travelled again to Benin, this time to give back the cultural heritage, the Voodoo stories that had been entrusted to her, to the country and its people. What had changed? How did voodoo religion survive the witch hunt? And is the sophisticated art of performing voodoo stories still alive?

Under these links you will find publications by Marjolijn Aalders Grool and descriptions of further languages and cultures of Benin in our programme:

Accompanying material:

• Verbal Art of the Fon (Benin) (ISBN 978-3-89645-288-7)
• Vodun Stories of the Fon (Benin) (ISBN 978-3-89645-734-9)

Cross-reference:

• Arbeit, Sklaverei und Erinnerung (ISBN 978-3-89645-349-5)
• Dictionnaire Fon–Français (ISBN 978-3-89645-463-8)
• Dictionnaire Français–Fon (ISBN 978-3-89645-471-3)
• Être enseignant au Bénin (ISBN 978-3-89645-835-3)
• Faire la magistrature au Bénin (ISBN 978-3-89645-847-6)
• Grammaire kabiyè – une analyse systématique (ISBN 978-3-89645-034-0)
• Gur Languages and Nominal Classification Diversity (ISBN 978-3-89645-613-7)
• Im Gewand von Herrschaft (ISBN 978-3-89645-211-5)
• L’Islam béninois à la croisée des chemins (ISBN 978-3-89645-817-9)
• Le Gulmancema (ISBN 978-3-927620-17-9)
• Le Maxi du Centre-Bénin et du Centre-Togo (ISBN 978-3-89645-031-9)
• Les noms de naissance (ISBN 978-3-89645-605-2)
• Lexique Dendi (Songhay) (ISBN 978-3-927620-45-2)
• Perspektiven afrikanistischer Forschung / Perspectives de recherches africanistes (ISBN 978-3-927620-82-7)
• The NGOisation of Education (ISBN 978-3-89645-831-5)
• Zugehörigkeiten (ISBN 978-3-89645-843-8)

© 2024 by Rüdiger Köppe Verlag – www.koeppe.de

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