The history of Benin and the history of Abomey aren't all that different,
Benin's original name, Dahomey ("In the belly of Dan") being the name of the
kingdom whose royal palace was in Abomey. So early one Saturday morning we
drove up to see it.
Abomey's reputation is larger than life. Says Stewart Butler, "With walls
made of blood and thrones of human heads, the royal city of Abomey is ... after
Timbuktu and Zanzibar ... the most celebrated of old African towns. [The name]
was once whispered in fearful awe by the citizens of the surrounding kingdoms
as well as in the civilised drawing rooms of 19th century Europe. Its kings,
descended from the son of a princess who slept with a panther, were protected
by the only genuine Amazon army the world has ever known, and they lived a life
of extreme brutality." Travelers head to Abomey for a glimpse of the throne
set on human skulls, or the palace walls painted red with blood, and inside the
palace we found a variety of exhibits of old thrones, the hammock king
Gbehanzin was carried around in, and some French lithographs of the kingdom
around the time they were sacking it (1892, and the Dahomeys nearly won the
battle). We passed from courtyard to courtyard under the blazing African sun
while a guide explained the exhibits to us in rather inordinate enthusiasm.
The guide focused more on what attracts a Beninese audience than a skeptical
Westerner like me, who found the legends hard to swallow: given a scepter
depicting a dog riding on a horse under an umbrella, the guide explained how
the king had ridden into enemy territory undetected because of a charm that had
turned him into a dog (Apparently the umbrella didn't blow his cover: I wonder
if my Afri-mutts could take the equestrian challenge as well?)
What impressed me most was what went unsaid, and most of what I learned about
Abomey I learned from Butler's book. Left unsaid was the following: the former
royal palace of Abomey, home of one of Western Africa's most powerful and
feared tribes, was nothing more than a handful of crumbling courtyards. The
king burnt what he could to ensure the French couldn't take it, and what made
the palace and the kingdom awesome -- the brutality and death, the disregard
for human life, the capacity for inflicting massive destruction -- were long
gone. What has replaced it is more mundane but no less brutal. The image that
will most stay with me from the adventure is of the dead motorcyclist, crushed
on the road to Dassa under an 18-wheeler that left the rider's ruined body and
the remnants of his motorcycle horrifically mutilated. A handful of sad
onlookers had gathered at roadside to mourn the friend they lost to a society
unwilling to enforce or obey basic traffic rules.
