Mercy Senahe, an Ewe, grew up in the Volta region of Ghana, West Africa. When Mercy was about eight years old, the fetish priest told her family they were cursed after a gold earring was lost because he believed that Mercy’s grandmother had stolen it. To pay for this “theft,” and avoid the fatal consequences of the curse, the family planned to give Mercy, the youngest virgin daughter in the family, to the village shrine in Avakpe.
”My age-mate came to tell me that I would be sent to some place and I would never come back,” Mercy relates today. “Some days later they told me that I should bathe because I was going to some place. I remembered what my age-mate had told me, so I went to the bush to hide. I stayed there until the night. When I came out, my grandfather beat me roughly.
That same night they took me to cross the river to the shrine.”
After she arrived in the next village, she fell asleep on the ground. When she woke up, her family was gone. Women from the village shrine came and placed bracelets on her wrists and ankles. They showed her how she must worship each of the idols in the shrine. Mercy had become one of the “trokosi,” a slave to the gods.
Her new name in the shrine was “Gold.” She was named after the item her grandmother had been accused of stealing. She was the sacrifice meant to be appeasement for that crime, and she bore its name.
But Mercy did not understand this at the time. In fact, she had no idea why she was in the shrine at all. But she quickly learned to be terrified in her new environment.
In the Avakpe shrine, Mercy was raped repeatedly by the priest, a ritualized form of sexual assault meant to symbolize the “marriage” between the trokosi and the shrine gods.
At about age twelve, Mercy gave birth to her first child, fathered by the priest. She would have four children by him. The priest had already fathered dozens of children borne by the other trokosi in the shrine.
Mercy had to farm to support herself and her children. She was forced to work all day before she was allowed to eat. She could not go to school. Her children were not allowed to go to school either, but were instead forced to work with her on the farm to feed themselves.
Mercy tried to escape, but her family sent her back to the shrine. She was completely trapped.
It was not until she was in her early twenties that Mercy was set free. At that time, the International Needs Ghana (ING) team, a Christian ministry, came to negotiate for Mercy’s release.
Intervention: International Needs Ghana, freeing the trokosi
Typically, ING involves all the stakeholders in the redemption process: the priest, the women, their children, their families of origin, the Ewe village communities, the ING negotiators, and a Ghanaian government representative. Once the priest agrees to set the women free, he performs a ritual inside the shrine to appease the idols. Then, a second ceremony is performed, in which it is declared to the women, their families, and their Ewe communities that they are free: no longer slaves, no longer trokosi. The government official bears witness to this and signs a document to this effect.
Once women are set free, they often return to their families of origin and the villages where they formerly lived. ING workers talk with their families to facilitate this re-integration process. ING also offers education and work-skills training to the women through their Vocational Training Center (VTC) in Adidome so that they can economically support themselves and their children.
At the VTC, women can learn mat-weaving, soap-making, bread-baking, hair-dressing, cloth-dyeing (“batik”), and dress-making, among other things. Their older children attend ING schools in the Adidome. Their younger children are cared for in an on-site nursery. They themselves have the opportunity to learn reading, writing, and small business skills as well as health-care.
Women are provided with one-on-one and group counseling to help them overcome their intense fears and traumatic experiences. Many of them have been told that if they ever speak of what went on in the shrine, they or one of their family members would die. They become free of these fears gradually.
ING staff share the knowledge and love of Jesus with these freed women, and many of them become passionate Christians.
Redemption: Mercy Senahe, trokosi advocate
Today, Mercy is one of these Christian women. When ING negotiated for her release, her family would not accept her back because they were afraid of being cursed. She went through the educational and work-skills training at the IN VTC, learning about baking and sewing, and she now works with ING and speaks publicly about her experiences.
I hope that many people in the world will hear her story and pray for the thousands of West African girls in Ghana, Togo, and Benin who, like Mercy before International Needs intervened, still need to be set free from the shrines, the trokosi system, and the terrors they have experienced.
“The tears in your eyes do not blind you,” African proverb from Togo, West Africa
For further information:
Ghanaian woman speaks out against tribal customs allowing slavery
