A canoe glided slowly across the waters of Lake Togo on Thursday, September 4, carrying the mystical Aklima drum aboard. Guided toward a sacred forest, the instrument was meant to sound the signal for a long awaited moment, the emergence of the 363rd sacred stone of the Guin people.
Each year, residents of Aného, Togo’s second largest city located fifty kilometers east of Lomé, watch eagerly for this stone, whose color shifts from one edition to the next. The detail carries real weight, since it is read as an omen for the twelve months ahead. The Guin, a fishing people originally from present day Ghana, established the tradition in 1663 upon settling in the region, and it has marked the start of their new year ever since.
This year the stone came out white, and several hundred worshippers gathered on the square of Glidji-Kpodji, most of them vodun priests and priestesses, were able to witness the favorable sign it carries. According to Wlomo Nomo Combietey VIII Nii Labité, guardian of the sacred forest, each shade holds its own meaning. White points to peace and prosperity, sky blue signals an abundance of food crops, while red warns of famine, war and accidents. A multicolored stone, meanwhile, would rather point to disease or a major epidemic.
Dressed in white wraps and adorned with strings of beads, devotees sang and danced for hours, some falling into trance. It was amid this fervor that a group of initiates emerged from the sacred forest bearing the oval shaped stone, held by a vodun priest surrounded by a crowd chanting « Hélu-lo, hélu-lo, » meaning « woe to evil spirits » in the Mina language. Speaking from a small platform, the messenger priest declared that this white hue heralded a year of purity, peace and prosperity.
« The divinities have listened to our prayers, » said an elated Pierrette Ahouéfa, a priestess adorned with multicolored beads. Jeanne Sika, another vodun priestess, noted that preparatory rituals had begun as early as June across all the shrines and the sacred forest, with every step followed to the letter.