It was only when a two-foot spear was thrust in my face that I truly understood I was at a voodoo initiation ceremony. The hugely muscled man holding the pointed edge at my eye had come hurtling through the torrential rain and mud towards me, screaming furious words. He was possessed by the hunter vodun, Kunde, and he didn’t want me taking photographs.

Instinctively, I cowered like a submissive dog (an appropriate gesture, for Kunde likes to eat dog, and gruesome puppy sacrifices are frequently made in his name) as a Ghanaian woman hissed: “You have to go to the shrine and make an offering.”

For several seconds I was frozen to the spot, half expecting to be dragged off and sacrificed myself, until a scary- looking woman with bleached black skin (whom I later dis- covered to be a carer for the possessed) wrapped her arms around the crazed man and led him gently away into the swirl of the dancefloor and the roar of the drums.

Shivering with fear and cold, I tried to take the whole scene in. People’s faces were twisted by the shadows of the night and the amphetamine effects of kola nut; they stood and sat in a circle under quick-dripping canopies unable to fend off the monsoon rain. They chewed on the bitter-tasting nut and sang the appropriate responses to the complex rhythms being driven out by the wild-eyed, sweating drummers.

My brother was the initiatee — his head had been shaved and his body cut with a razor blade as he stood half-naked among the troupe, thumping a bow-shaped stick against a large Blekete drum that hung from his shoulder. His eyes were fixed with maniacal concentration.

A goat, tethered to an iron railing, attempted to sleep, blissfully unaware that at dawn its throat would be slit.

Suddenly, just as two women got up and started to flap their arms and pump their chests forward like strutting chickens, as part of a traditional ritual dance, there was another scream and the sight of a body flying into the air. This time it was a woman who had become possessed by the god Ablewa.

As she landed on her feet, she was bent double by a seemingly external force and spun in circles with increasing speed. Her arms were spread and arched behind her back, her fingers clawing at the air as if she were trying to slow herself down. People rushed towards her.

Three men, clapping in time with the music, sang into her ears. One man lit a small pile of gunpowder at her spinning feet. There was a brief flash, then a plume of smoke engulfed her.

The carer arrived with a plastic kettle full of water just as the woman came to a sudden halt and clasped her hands together, the physical incarnation of the god desperate to wash upon arrival into the human world. Water was quickly poured over her hands, then her head, and finally in a large circle in the mud around her, before she was slowly led away to the shrine where she would be dressed and properly prepared.

Edward — my brother’s drum teacher, guide and friend, responsible for arranging this initiation — approached me.

“The gods are ready for you now. Come.” He took me by the wrist and led me towards the shrine. I glanced across towards my brother, but he didn’t see me.

As we approached the shrine, I was told to take off my shoes. We passed through a red-, black- and white-striped flag that covered a doorway into a small room lit only by a dim bulb. There was the funk of sweat in the air.

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