Trokosi and Social Reform: Ending Ritual Servitude in Ghana

Ritual servitude, known as trokosi in Ghana, is a practice among the Ewe people in the Volta Region where traditional religious shrines take human beings—usually young virgin girls—in payment for services or in religious atonement for alleged misdeeds of a family member. The word trokosi comes from the Ewe-Gbe words "tro" (deity or fetish) and "kosi" (female slave). "Ko" denotes poverty and "si" denotes female. In Togo and Benin, the practice is called voodoosi or vudusi.

The practice dates to at least the late 18th century in Ghana. According to Sandra Greene, when the Amlade clan Sui became very powerful, it began to demand female slaves from those who sought its services. The practice called "replacement" also began in Ghana at that time—if a shrine slave died or ran away, the family was required to replace her with another girl. At the beginning of the 19th century, Nyigbla became the chief Anlo deity, and its shrines also began to demand slaves for its services. At that time, the slaves were often married to members of powerful priestly families.

There are two major reasons for the practice of ritual servitude. Most common is the concept of atonement—a girl is given to the shrine or to the gods as a kind of "living sacrifice" to atone for the real or alleged crimes of a family member or ancestor, as discerned by the priest of the shrine. During a process of divination, the priest calls on the gods of the shrine to reveal this information. Girls given to atone for such crimes are in a sense considered a kind of savior, for as long as she remains in the shrine or under its control, the anger of the god is believed to be averted from the rest of the family.

The second most frequent reason is that the girl is given for the continuous repayment of the gods for services believed to have been obtained or favors believed to have been rendered from the shrine. Thus a girl may be given into ritual servitude when someone believes a child has been conceived or a person has been healed, for example, through the intervention of the shrine.

Sources: Wikipedia, Emmanuel Kwaku Akeampong (Harvard), Sandra Greene (1996), Anita Ababio