The Mountain and the Oracle: Amedzofe and the Volta highlands
Amedzofe means, in Ewe, something close to "origin of man" — and the town sits high in the Avatime hills, in cool air, above the cloud line on some mornings.
Amedzofe, the highest habitable settlement in Ghana; Mount Gemi; Wli Falls; Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary.
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The Mountain and the Oracle: Amedzofe and the Volta highlands
Amedzofe means, in Ewe, something close to "origin of man" — and the town sits high in the Avatime hills, in cool air, above the cloud line on some mornings.
The Avatime tell of coming from elsewhere and stopping here because the mountain was right; and the mountain has always been treated as a place where the boundary is thin. Groves on the slopes are not entered casually. Certain rocks, certain springs, certain trees have their own days and their own prohibitions. People went up to ask questions and came down with answers.
Nearby at Tafi Atome the mona monkeys are sacred: the tradition holds that they were brought with the founding fetish and are the messengers of the god, and for generations no one killed one. When the village later moved toward Christianity the taboo weakened and the monkeys were hunted; the community deliberately reinstated the protection, and the monkeys came back, and now they come down out of the trees to be fed by visitors. A taboo, revived on purpose, working as conservation policy.
And up the road at Wli, the tallest waterfall in West Africa comes down a cliff face that houses a colony of fruit bats, and the pool at the bottom is not a place where people historically swam without asking.
If you visit Ghana. Amedzofe, the highest habitable settlement in Ghana; Mount Gemi; Wli Falls; Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary.
Amedzofe means, in Ewe, something close to "origin of man" — and the town sits high in the Avatime hills, in cool air, above the cloud line on some mornings.
The Avatime tell of coming from elsewhere and stopping here because the mountain was right; and the mountain has always been treated as a place where the boundary is thin. Groves on the slopes are not entered casually. Certain rocks, certain springs, certain trees have their own days and their own prohibitions. People went up to ask questions and came down with answers.
Nearby at Tafi Atome the mona monkeys are sacred: the tradition holds that they were brought with the founding fetish and are the messengers of the god, and for generations no one killed one. When the village later moved toward Christianity the taboo weakened and the monkeys were hunted; the community deliberately reinstated the protection, and the monkeys came back, and now they come down out of the trees to be fed by visitors. A taboo, revived on purpose, working as conservation policy.
And up the road at Wli, the tallest waterfall in West Africa comes down a cliff face that houses a colony of fruit bats, and the pool at the bottom is not a place where people historically swam without asking.