This Week: Trokosi Slavery, James Cameron’s Masterpiece: AVATAR, Walk With Abraham, Newest Billionaires are Cavemen, and more…


Slavery in West Africa. Trokosi is one of the widest spread forms of women slavery that exists today. According to Trokosi custom, if someone commits a crime, traditional leaders order that a young girl from that family be sent to the shrine as a form of atonement. The chief priest and his entourage genitally mutilate and sexually abuse the girl.

According to various estimates, there are a little over 5,000 Trokosi slaves within Ghana alone, and as many as 29,000 to 35,000 among the four countries in which the practice continues. The custom of Trokosi is part of a traditional fetish belief system, according to which gods or spirits reside in various ritual objects and shrine priests. Within Ghana, Trokosi slavery endures primarily among the Ewe ethnic group.

Trokosi slavery originated in Togo and Benin as a war ritual in the 1600s. Before entering combat, warriors would visit religious shrines where they offered women to the war gods in exchange for victory and a safe homecoming. Today, many Ghanaians revere priests of Trokosi shrines, because they believe these priests communicate directly with the war gods and are particularly influential in the spirit world, even capable of determining life and death. Some girls in ritual servitude are the third or fourth girl in their family suffering for the same crime, sometimes for something as trite as the loss of trivial property.

Pictured is a Sofati Shrine, one of the oldest in Klikor Traditional Area of Ghana. Among the YEWEH (thunder-god) shrines in the locality, is the largest and the most well organized. The Sofati Shrine was founded by a great Klikor mystic some two hundred years ago. It houses the thunder-god, YEWEH (SO), a communal god of the Ewes.

The inner shrine contains five cone-shaped temples housing the sacred relics of the god. There are other buildings for inmates under initiation and the resident priestess.

Two mystic languages known as YE WEHGBE and DAGBE (thunder-god and snake-god languages respectively) are spoken by inmates of the Shrine during initiation and other ritual sessions.

Did you know there are thunder-god and snake-god languages?

The Sofati Shrine is open to visitors who may call in for prayers, for information and for acquaintance with the functions of the Shrine. Visitors may be allowed to speak to novices under initiation (KPOKPOWO) through interpreters. The costume is strictly customary—no headgears and hats except for traditional priests and priestesses. Saturday is the most convenient day for prayers, but prayers are offered daily.

I sense a new tourism destination! Let’s plan a visit to the thunder-god YEWEH!

I started researching Trokosi after hearing about a film called “Punctured Hope.” It is based on the true life story of a West African Trokosi slave, Belinda Siamey, who plays the leading role in the film. She was genitally mutilated and sexually abused for years when, as a virgin girl, she was enslaved to become a victim of the Trokosi custom practice. Against all odds, the protagonist of the story escapes the shrine. The story takes place in today’s Ghana. “Punctured Hope” is directed by Bruno Pischiutta.

Newest Billionaires Are Cavemen. Zsolt and Geza Peladi, two penniless brothers who had been living in a cave outside Budapest, are to inherit a $7 billion fortune from their long-lost grandmother, United Press International reports.

UPI quotes Geza as saying, “We knew our mother came from a wealthy family, but she was a difficult person and severed ties with them, and then later abandoned us.”

The brothers were contacted by charity workers. Since their German grandmother had left no next-of-kin for her fortune, the vast amount of money was passed down to her next surviving relatives—the Peladi brothers and another sister who lives in America.

The brothers are hoping that the money will improve their life—and their love life.

“If this all works out it will certainly make up for the life we have had until now—all we really had was each other—no women would look at us living in a cave,” said Geza. “But with money, maybe we can find a partner and finally have a normal life.” (Pictured: The Geico Caveman and Peladi’s abode) www.cavemanscrib.com

Walk With Abraham. You missed it the first time, right? The Al Ayoun Trail, at a little more than seven miles in length, is just one short section of a route called the Abraham Path, which stretches 1,200km (745 miles) from south-east Turkey to Israel. Devised by an American-based NGO called the Abraham Path Initiative, the trail is a “symbolic honoring” of Abraham’s (or, for Muslims, Ibrahim’s) epic journey to Canaan 4,000 years ago.

Just a few places that Abraham visited are cited by the scriptures with certainty; the dots in between have been joined in accordance with local traditions. The Al Ayoun stretch has been highlighted recently by the Jordanians, who are keen to promote tourism.

Along the path is Tel Mar Elyas, or Saint Elijah’s Hill (pictured). This is possibly the birthplace of Elijah, and the foundations of a 7th-century church dedicated to him still have fragments of the original mosaic flooring. It’s a site of baraka, or blessing, and Muslims and Christians still visit to tie small pieces of cloth to an oak tree for cures, or rain, or good luck.

Movie This Week. The highly anticipated Avatar.

An astonishing, breathtaking masterpiece. Cameron did it! Worth every penny spent, it will easily surpass Titanic’s box office. I think Cameron created a few new colors.

AVATAR will inspire us to actively find new worlds—not just scan the skies for radio signals. AVATAR will be seen as the cultural turning point toward the real push to finding ETs. AVATAR will change people’s consciousness of what another world might be like. It’s that important.

The 3-D is awesome. If you have seen the trailer—you haven’t seen a glimpse of what is to come. Cameron has created new colors. Everything looks real.

Be enthralled. AVATAR will be seen over and over again.

The year is 2154 and we have made incredible advancements in space travel. A huge corporation has found a planet called Pandora that has an environment dangerous to humans but has a mineral that is worth 20 million a gram. A colony of Pandorans lives above the biggest cache of the mineral. The Pandorans are blue, enormous people with a spiritual link to their living planet. It’s a hive of people with bows and arrows.

Using DNA from a Na’vi combined with DNA from a select individual, the science arm of the corporation has successfully been able to merge a human mind into a “robot”: A life-like Na’vi called an “avatar.”

The program, created and run by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) has been successful but it is very expensive. When one of the trainees in the program dies before the transference is complete. He is replaced by his twin brother Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic soldier who, if he fulfills his secret mission to infiltrate the Na’vi and expose their weaknesses, will be given new legs.

By day, a Na’vi; by night, a human. Sully never sleeps. The Na’vi know all about these “avatars” who have come to their planet. They call them “aliens.”

They are also aware that there are humans in machines patrolling their planet and doing mining work in the area. They have absolutely no interest or curiosity in the superior technology or civilization of the humans. The humans have not offered them iPhones or cable TV in exchange. History shows that a superior civilization always crushes a weaker one.*

Sully, as a faux-Na’vi, is accepted by the clan and is assigned Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) to teach him their ways. She is also the tribe’s leader’s daughter. Her mother is the priestess of the tribe. She’s royalty! And Neytiri is already betrothed to the next tribal leader and will also become the tribe’s priestess.

Putting up with this lame-brain “Hearts and Minds” re-settlement approach to the Na’vi is Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephan Lang—all juiced up and spurting testosterone), who gives Sully an ultimatum: Get the Na’vi to relocate in 6 months or we will do a “Shock and Awe” on their Holy of Holies mountain. He’s itching to blow up that mountain.

But six months flying on his very own bird, jumping off mountains, and living in a world of colors and enormous beauty, Sully wants to stay. Instead of joining the other warriors and doing the manly things like hunting and ritualistic warrior games, Sully falls in love with Neytiri and learns the way of the Na’vi.

Can Sully get the Na’vi to move? How can he stay with Neytiri if the machine people go home and the Avatar Program ends? He needs his hi-tech coffin that is breathing life into his comatose human body. Right now, he’s a hybrid Na’vi. And, even if he were to stay and be “married” to Neytiri, can he mate?

Well, that’s my question.

Seeing the sophistication of the military arm of the corporation, it is impossible for the Na’vi to mount a defense.

The brilliance of AVATAR is the beauty of the details. It is visually stunning. There is no difference in the visuals—it is seamless. The truth is that every cent is up on the screen (the crew probably had to brown bag it from home). The 3-D is constant and at times, subtle.

Cameron puts us on Na’vi. AVATAR is magic.

*Regarding Christopher Columbus’s 1492 “voyage of discovery,” in 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of seventeen ships, and appointed himself as “viceroy and governor of America,” a position he held until 1500. He promptly instituted policies of slavery and systematic extermination against the native Taino population. Columbus’s programs reduced Taino numbers from eight million at the outset of his regime to about three million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the governor’s departure. His policies, however, remained, with the result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely 22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were recorded. In summary, Columbus’s voyages launched a bloodbath.

The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521 was led by Hernando Cortés. Virtually all of Aztec culture was destroyed in the conquest. When the Spanish invaded Mexico and Peru, they wielded weaponry far superior to anything the Aztecs and Incas could have imagined. The 600 Spaniards who landed in 1519 carried firearms and small cannons, and rode horses, all of which terrified the Aztec natives. Cortés managed to subdue five million Aztecs with his tiny army. He also brought them the gift of the pox.