Augustine Sherman

Trokosi Augustine Sherman

If a girl runs away or dies; she must be replaced by another girl from within the same family. Some girls in ritual servitude are the third or fourth female in their family suffering for the same crime, sometimes for something as minor as the loss of a trivial property. In spite of being outlawed in 1998, which carries a minimum three-year prison sentence, Trokosi is still practiced today in the Volta region in Ghana. Beside the Ewes that carry out the ritual, Togo and Benin also indulge the vile practice, where it is called voodoosi or vudusi. In Ghana, the setting of this account, victims are commonly known as fetish slaves, because, the gods of African Traditional Religion are popularly referred to as fetishes and the priests who serve them as fetish priests.