Bolivia La Paz Witch Market

The minute when you step into La Paz, the capitol of Bolivia you will realize that this is a city of contrasts.

The downtown high-rise office buildings, the Bolivian women wear their traditional skirts and top hats, the new or modern cars speeding past donkey drawn carts.

La Paz is a mix of modern capitalism, Spanish colonialism and the ancient Inca traditions. Somehow all these elements are mix perfectly in this hectic city, providing a unique experience for visitors.

LOMÉ

VOODOO MARKET

Togo’s capital city of Lomé is the birthplace of the largest Voodoo market in the world.

Deep in

the heart of

The

Akodessewa Fetish Market, or Marche des Feticheurs, is a place where you can find anything from leopard heads and human skulls to Voodoo priests who bless and create fetishes or predict the future and make medicines to heal whatever ails you.

West Africa,

Vodoun (or more

familiarly Voodoo)

is not only

alive and well,

but it is thriving.

Though

many people think of Haiti as Voodoo’s biggest stronghold the religion originated in West Africa. Vodoun is the official religion of neighboring Benin and is still the largest religion in the area, which is obvious given that the outdoor market’s location is in the heart of Togo’s capital. The Akodessewa Fetish Market is a mecca to local practitioners and they travel there from all over the African continent. Many believers view the Marche des Feticheurs as a kind of hospital or pharmacy it’s the place you go when you either cannot afford traditional treatment nor traditional treatment has failed you. Here you can find talismans and charms good for treating everything from the flu or infertility to removing the blackest of curses.

In the practice of Voodoo every single creature is potent and divine, whether alive or dead, and in the Akodessewa Fetish Market you may find them all – monkeys, alligators, goats, leopards, gazelles, and many, many more – in various stages of decay and stacked up in macabre piles for blocks. The outdoor location doesn’t quite suppress the stench but at least the huge market is in the open air. It is a jarring place for tourists who are not used to the idea of animal sacrifice as part of worship or using pieces of the dead as talismans, but for locals who practice the religion, it is a treasure and a necessity.

Paris has many unusual shops, but one of the most unusual has to be Deyrolle,

a 170 year old establishment on rue du Bac, not far from the Musee d’Orsay on the Left Bank.