Adventures with Kingsley Holgate - The Largest Voodoo Festival in Africa

They'd come in their thousands from all over West Africa and the Diaspora - Benin, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Cote D'Ivoire. There were even devotees from Brazil, Louisiana USA, Haiti and Cuba and a few curious adventurers like us who'd come from far and wide to capture the moment. It's fitting that this Voodoo Festival - now in its 27th year - is happening on a stretch of beach sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gate of No Return.

I look around: it's a noisy kaleidoscope of fetishes, Voodoo priests and their followers in flamboyant robes, hawkers selling everything from bananas to water, beads, charms and fresh coconuts and groups of rhythmic drummers - each trying to out-drum the others. There are oracles with their talismans and swirling, twirling dancers protected from harm by wearing fibre skirts made from the Alatsi tree, initiates smeared in greasy orange-red palm nut oil, and devotees who have daubed their faces and bodies with a white paste made of palm oil, maize flour and herbs, many of whom are seemingly possessed - eyes rolled back, mouths open - some racing around the large clearing and having to be restrained by burly supporters, whilst others simply fall twitching and shaking to the ground in a state of oblivion and are revived by powerful potions rubbed into the small of their backs. The drink of choice it seems is gin; most of it is sodabi - the home-brewed stuff, which in the stifling heat adds to the frenetic, pulsating mood.

In the middle of the sandy clearing, speeches from government bigwigs are followed by a huge man dancing in circles to a growing roar from the crowd, as he carries on his shoulders two large, heavy round clay pots of fetishes, tightly tied in blood-red cloth. We're told by a believer that if the dancer allows them to touch the ground, he'll drop dead. The atmosphere quickens, you can cut it with a knife. Police and soldiers in camouflage uniforms can hardly contain the crowd as everyone pushes and shoves; it's chaos - some even crawling through the sea of legs to get closer- as the Voodoo King and chosen priests make their way to a raised plinth covered in fetishes. This is what most of the devotees have come for - the sacrifice of a goat to bless his Majesty. Several times, I try to get closer but am pushed back by brawny soldiers; maybe in my wide-brimmed khaki bush hat and beard, with sweat dripping off the end of my nose from temperatures rising into the upper 40's, I look a bit like an out-of-work mercenary.

Emanuel Sandou dressed in his bright blue tunic and trousers complete with Islamic fez and sunglasses, tells us that there's been conflict between the Voodoo King and his half-brother, who was favoured by many and who had gone to Haiti where he had learned many Voodoo secrets. There was even talk of having two Voodoo Festivals. Recognising this, the President of Benin called for peace between the brothers and their followers; they are both here today.

The ritual sacrifice is over and the crowds gather around a man who climbs to the top of a 50foot pole and with arms outstretched, sways and dances to the drumming. I walk up to the sacrifice: a black and white goat lies on the slab, blood still dripping from its neck and from the many fetishes that surround it. The Voodoo King in an orange-red top hat and sunglasses, still surrounded by his bodyguards, is back under the shade of an awning, next to his very elegant lady who, in a cowrie-shell headdress, is chatting away on a smartphone.

We feel exhausted and somewhat overwhelmed as we turn the Land Rover Disco west, back towards Accra in Ghana. It's been a long and sometimes difficult journey to get here. But what we've learned is that Voodoo is a true Living Tradition - a derivative of the world's oldest known religions that have been around in Africa since the beginning of human civilisation. And to think it was from here - at the Gate of No Return - that several million slaves were taken to the Americas, Caribbean and Brazil, carrying with them this ancient belief system that survives and mutates to this day.

Our Slaves, Castles, Voodoo and Gate of No Return journey is overit's 'Mission Accomplished'.