Trokosi

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Trokosi is a traditional practice of sexual slavery in some parts of Ghana, Togo, and Benin. In this practice, young girls, usually under the age of 10 and often as young as five, are given to village fetish shrine priests as sexual/domestic slaves or "wives of the gods" in compensation for offenses allegedly committed, or debts incurred, by a member of the girl's family, or for favors sought from the shrine. ^[1] In Togo and Benin the slaves are called Voodoosi (French spelling "voudounsi"). The Anlo people of Ghana call the practice fiashidi.^[2]

The practice continues in Ghana despite a 1998 law mandating a three year prison sentence on conviction.^[3] No one has yet been prosecuted under the law. Women's groups, human rights groups and Christian NGO's continue to strive to end the practice, and have won the liberation of over 2000 trokosi slaves by negotiating agreements with individual shrine communities to end the practice in those places.

The word trokosi comes from the Ewe words "tro", meaning deity or fetish, and "kosi", meaning female slave.^[4] However, the term is commonly used in English in Ghana, as a loanword.

Categories of Tro Adherents:

1. Those who join the Tro on their own volition (extremely rare) and those who were born into the Tro and initiated as children (Trovivo);

2. Those thought to have been born through the intervention of the Tro (Dorflevivo);

3. Those divinely called to serve as priest and priestesses of the shrine (Tronua);

4. Those who join through promise made by a family who supposedly benefited from the Tro; and finally

5. Those Trokosi who are sent by families, often against the will of the girl involved, out of fear that if they do not do so, further calamities may afflict them through the anger of the shrine deities. This last group consists of those vestal virgins who are sent into servitude at the shrines of the Troxovi due to crimes allegedly committed by their senior or elder family members, almost always males like fathers, grandfathers, and uncles. The trokosi is sort of a "living sacrifice," who by her suffering is thought to save the family from trouble. This latter group by far comprises the greatest number of trokosi.

Practices in traditional shrines vary, but trokosi are usually denied education, suffer a life of hardship, and are a lonely lot, stigmatized by society.

[edit] References

↑ The Trokosi System, Mark Wisdom, FESLIM, 2001, p. 4
↑ Wisdom, p 3.
↑ The Criminal Code of Ghana, Act. 1998 Act. 554.
↑ Wisdom, p 3.
Report on Trokosi Institution, Researched and Written by Dr. Elom Dovlo, University of Ghana, Legon, 1995.
"Trokosi--Should This Practice Be Allowed to Continue?", Progressive Utilization, Vol. 2. No. 1, PO Box C267 Cantonments Communication Centre, Accra, Ghana, 1995.