Keta

Keta grew as a town of the Anlo, the Ewe group whose tradition brings them west from Notsé, in present-day Togo, to settle the lagoon country around Anloga in the seventeenth century. The sand bar gave access to both the ocean and a great brackish lagoon, and Keta became the Anlo state's trading beach, dealing with European ships that anchored offshore. The Danes built Fort Prinzenstein there in 1784, after the Sagbadre War against the Anlo; it served the Atlantic slave trade in its first decades, passed to Britain with the rest of the Danish Gold Coast in 1850, and was later used as a prison.

Through the nineteenth century Keta was one of the busiest trading towns of the eastern coast, with European and Ghanaian merchant houses, Bremen mission schools and churches, and a customs post that sat close to the German Togoland border a few kilometres east — a position that made smuggling as much a part of local business as legitimate trade. Fish, salt, copra and farm produce moved out; cloth and manufactures came in.

The sea then took the town. Erosion of the sand bar, worsened over the twentieth century, swallowed streets, schools, churches and much of the fort, and thousands of people moved away to Accra and elsewhere: the Bremen trading factory and coconut plantation that stood close to the high-water mark in 1907 had been swept away by 1924. Colonial attempts to hold the shore failed, and in 1999 work began on the sea defence and land reclamation scheme, halting the worst of the retreat and rebuilding part of the shoreline, but Keta today is a much smaller place than the port it once was.

Keta belongs to the Anlo traditional state, whose paramount chief, the Awoamefia, is enstooled at Anloga, the ritual capital a short way west along the bar. The Anlo year turns on Hogbetsotso, held at Anloga on the first Saturday of November, which commemorates the escape from Notsé and the migration to this coast: the chiefs sit in a durbar under umbrellas, there is a ritual cleansing of the state, and drumming and dancing run for days.

Ewe drumming and dance are taken seriously here. Agbadza, danced with the back bent and the arms beating, and the coastal styles performed at funerals and festivals, are learned from childhood, and many of Ghana's best-known drummers and choreographers have come from this stretch of coast. Funerals are the great social occasion, held weeks after a death with matching cloth, all-night wakes and hundreds of guests returning from Accra, Lomé and abroad.

Christianity, established early through the Bremen mission and Catholic schools, sits alongside a strong traditional religious life in which the lagoon, the sea and the shrines of particular deities all have their custodians and prohibitions. Anlo communities are known nationally for their emphasis on schooling, and Keta's old secondary schools have sent generations of pupils into the professions, which is one reason so many Anlo families are divided between the coast and the cities.

About 23,000 people live in Keta town itself, with the wider municipality along the sand bar holding many more, and the population has long been shaped by departure: erosion and the loss of the port pushed families to Accra and Tema, and remittances and returning retirees remain part of the local economy. Fishing is the visible work — canoes launched through the surf on the ocean side, nets hauled up the beach, and traps and small craft on the lagoon.

Salt is the other lagoon industry, won by evaporation in pans along the shallow margins, and shallot growing on the sand bar around Anloga is long established, worked in small irrigated beds watered by hand from shallow wells. Trade, teaching, health work and cross-border business at Aflao make up much of the rest, and the sea defence itself has reshaped where people build.

The day begins before dawn with the boats and ends early. Mornings belong to the market, the gardens and the school run; afternoons are hot, breezy and slow; evenings are for grilled fish, drinking spots and church meetings. Erosion, the state of the lagoon fishery, floods when the lagoon rises and the reliability of water and power are the constant local concerns.

Keta eats from the lagoon and the sea. Akple, the smooth maize-flour dough of the Ewe, is eaten by hand with fetri detsi, an okra soup drawn out until it strings, or with palm-nut soup, almost always with fish: fresh tilapia and shrimp from the lagoon, mackerel, tuna and sardinella from the ocean, or the smoked and salted fish that is a trade of its own here. Abɔbitadi, a herring stew heavy with tomatoes and pepper, is a household standard.

Coastal specialities show up more here than inland: yakayake, steamed cassava grains eaten with fish stew; abolo, a lightly sweet steamed maize bread sold in wrapped bundles; and banku and kenkey with grilled tilapia and shito, the black pepper-and-fish sauce. Shallots from the sand-bar gardens go into nearly everything, with tomatoes, garden eggs and palm oil.

Coconut is everywhere on the bar, drunk fresh and grated into food, and palm wine is tapped nearby and distilled into akpeteshie, the local gin used in libations at festivals and funerals as well as sold in bars. Sobolo, the red hibiscus drink, sachet water and bottled beer round out the rest.