AKODESSEWA MARKET (FETISH MARKET)

The Togolese market in the Akodessewa neighborhood is a large market not far from the port of Lomé, where there are tire sellers and open-air garages to meet the needs of the large trucks that load and unload at the port. Also like a traditional market, there is a sector of butchers, second-hand goods, pottery and a few stalls selling calabashes and other small crafts. After a few turns, we arrive at the famous market of fetishes, in a rectangular enclosure, which we sweep with a single glance!

The prices are exorbitant but if the visitor wants to see statuettes made of fetishes, fly swatters, skulls of ox, cat, squirrel, snake, birds and dried turtles piled up and destined for traditional medicine... it is worth a small detour. In short, this is the place to get a feel for one aspect of voodoo. The vendors and traditional doctors are almost all from neighboring Benin, which shares this animistic practice with Togo. According to them, all the carcasses on display are those of animals that died naturally, a version of events that seems politically correct!

Customers come to buy what a healer or witch doctor has asked them to buy to cure an ailment, to achieve their goals in love or business, or to repair an offense. The "head market", so called because of the animal skulls, functions like a pharmacy.