We walked a bit along the beach near our hotel in the morning, to get a sense of the nearby fishing village: boats painted with religious phrases, shacks among the palms, repair of nets, and children looking on.
A bit further down the beach was this monument, the Memorial of the Great Jubilee of 2000, intended to commemorate the “first messengers of good news to Dahomey”, which seems to have been intended as a counterpoint to the Door of No Return. (Ouidah was a major slave port.) For a discussion of the complexities of this symbolism, see this article.
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