Inside the world's biggest voodoo pharmacy - PHOTO

The largest voodoo pharmacy in the world, the market offers a cornucopia of bizarre cures such as 'strengthening' elephant femur bones and rails festooned with boa constrictor skins which are thought to cure burns by locals.'Monkey heads are a favourite among students come finals time,' explains Constantine James, the photographer who captured these incredible images. 'They’re the voodoo study stimulant.'And monkeys aren't the only animal to end up in the market. Sharing the shelves with primates are shrunken heads that once belonged to dogs, donkeys, hyenas and even leopards.Other beasts turned into voodoo medicine and hawked by vendors include elephants, hippos, antelopes, whales and living eagles, although for the birds at least, an appearance at the market isn't the end of the road.'The living hawks are not sacrificed,' reveals James. 'Someone who is possessed by an evil spirit will buy the hawk, have a voodoo priest transfer the black spirit to the unknowing hawk, and then let the hawk go free.He also has a recipe for a voodoo love potion. 'If you grind up a dried chameleon into a powder, mix it with Chanel No. 5 and spray it on yourself, you will magically attract the one you secretly admire,' he reveals.But making a living from providing voodoo cures isn't without its risks. 'Moments after we arrived at the market, the police showed up and arrested a man for being in possession of illegal animal products,' remembers James.'We were wondering what he possibly could have had considering the strange products people weren't getting arrested for.'Despite the risk of falling foul of anti-trafficking laws, vendors have been selling fetishes at the Lomé market for at least 40 years, although locals claim that sales have been going on for more than a century.Voodoo too has long been a popular part of life in Togo, which although more commonly associated with Haiti, originated in West Africa and is the official state religion in neighbouring Benin.The cures associated with the religion are much in demand at the market according to James, with shoppers willing to pay as much as £200 for a dried out hyena head or £80 for a bracelet made from elephant tail bones.'Elephant femur and whale vertebrae are used to strengthen bones or for skeletal issues,' he explains. 'You can buy a hyena head for under £200, while £80 will get you an elephant tail to make into a bracelet to protect against black magic. 'Boa constrictor skin helps heal burns while vultures are used to combat dark sorcery.' He adds: 'You don’t even want to know how much a hippo skull costs!'(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az