Before Insecure star Jay Ellis would secure a leading role opposite Issa Rae in the hit HBO dramedy, he featured in a Ghanaian film about a traditional Ewe custom known as trokosi.
Trokosi has been the way of the Ewe people for centuries but in the face of modernization, or rather honestly, westernization, director Leila Djansi, urges abandonment of something African.
Other times, a young girl may be committed as a trokosi to a shrine as a symbol of the family’s gratitude to the deity of the shrine.
For as long as the priest of the deity would allow, women serving under trokosi would be housed at the shrine.
Governments in the three West African countries where trokosi is still practised have tried different means of rescuing the young women, from negotiations with local religious leaders to the threat of force carried by the state.
