The romance was as intense as it was brief. She was a medical researcher — intelligent, beautiful and kind — who left Senegal, where we both lived, to work in a Paris hospital.
Nursing a broken heart and a longstanding interest in pre-colonial religions, I headed to the birthplace of voodoo for answers, eventually gliding across the dark waters of Ganvie, a lake village in Benin known as the Venice of Africa. A voodoo priest called Adjayifindé established a community in Ganvie in the 18th century to help locals escape raids by European slave traders.
Legend has it that he transported people from the mainland on the backs of an enormous crocodile and a giant eagle.
The floating village of Ganvie was founded by a voodoo priest to help locals escape raids by European slave traders
YANICK FOLLY/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
There is no eagle to assist the journey to