Now this place looks like an adventure — of the oddity kind. The Akodessewa Fetish Market in Lomé, Togo, nicknamed “Africa’s Voodoo Supermarket”, is the location where a Voodoo practitioner can find anything and everything for his or her rituals.
Voodoo (known locally as Vodun) originated in West Africa and countries like Togo, Nigeria, and Ghana still actively practice the religion. The religion and its rituals have spread across the world, where the second most practiced non-Africa cluster is in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Akodessewa Fetish Market is lined with wooden tables filled with statues, herbs, and animal parts, and has an air of putridness from decaying flesh. It is not uncommon to find dog heads, monkey paws, jaguar skulls, or elephant feet among the various merchant stalls. All of these talismans are the basis of healing and protection, infused with the blessings of the divine.
Tourists are welcome to roam through the market and are even permitted to visit healers. If you should choose to visit with the healer for a treatment, you must first to describe your problem in detail. The healer will then speak with the Gods for a ritual to remedy your ailment. Once the prescription is determined, selected animal parts will be ground up with herbs and heated over the fire, producing a black powder. Then the healer will make three cuts in your chest and rub the black powder into your wound. And with that, your ailment is cured!
If you want to forgo the cuts to the chest, it is acceptable to just rub the powder on unbroken skin. However, I doubt that will be very effective.
No doubt about it, the Akodessewa Fetish Market in Lomé, Togo is the best place to stock up on all of your Voodoo ritual and healing needs.
Amanda Headlee 
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