The Opening of the Lagoon

The Opening of the Lagoon

The Benya lagoon at Elmina is closed for a season and no one fishes it. Not by regulation. By the god.

Bakatue means "the opening of the lagoon," and it is the day the ban comes off, and it has been kept since at least the 1840s and by tradition a great deal longer.

The Edinahene and the chief priest go to the water. There is libation, and the state drums, and the asafo companies come out in their colours and their posuban is opened. A net is cast — ceremonially, the first cast of the year — and if it comes up full, the season will be good, and everyone present would like it to come up full.

The fish taken in that first cast go to the shrine.

Then the fleet goes out, and the lagoon and the sea are open again, and there is a durbar of chiefs under umbrellas, and a regatta of canoes, and the town does not sleep.

What is being enforced is a closed season. It was working as fisheries management for a century and a half before anyone in Ghana used the phrase.

If you visit Ghana. Elmina, the first Tuesday of July.