Aného

Aného was founded around the end of the 17th century by Guin, or Gen, migrants from the Gold Coast, who settled on the sand spit between the sea and the lagoon with related groups at Glidji inland. European traders knew the place as Petit Popo, and it became one of the main outlets of the stretch of shore Europeans called the Slave Coast: captives from the interior were held here and shipped across the Atlantic, and Afro-Brazilian families, many of them returnees from Brazil, built merchant houses and left surnames and a style of architecture still visible in the old quarter.

When Germany declared a protectorate over Togoland in 1884, after the treaty signed at Togoville across the lagoon, Aného became the seat of the new colonial government, serving as the capital of German Togoland from 1885 to 1887; the administration then moved to the nearby town of Zebe, and in 1897 to Lomé. The first railway in the protectorate, the 44 km coast line from Lomé, reached the town in July 1905, but Aného's open roadstead was closed to merchant shipping on the same day, and its trade went west for good. The town served again as the seat of the French occupation administration from 1914 to 1920.

Under French administration and after independence in 1960, Aného declined steadily into a fishing and market town. The sea has taken back part of it: coastal erosion, sharpened by works along the shore, has destroyed buildings and sections of road, and some colonial structures have been lost or abandoned. The town remains the historical and ceremonial heart of the Guin, and its old houses are the clearest surviving record of Togo's coastal trading past.

Aného is the centre of Guin identity, and its calendar turns on Epe Ekpe, the Guin new year held at Glidji each September. After a period of ritual silence and preparation, priests enter the sacred grove and bring out a stone; its colour is read as the fortune of the coming year, and the announcement is followed by days of drumming, processions and reunions that draw people home from Lomé, Ghana, Benin and further afield. It is among the best-known ceremonies in West Africa, and it belongs to the town rather than to visitors.

Vodun is practised openly here alongside Catholicism, which the missions established early. Shrines stand at compound gates and on the lagoon shore, convents train initiates, and libations of sodabi accompany most formal occasions. Traditional chieftaincy carries weight in disputes, land matters and ceremony.

The town's other inheritance is Afro-Brazilian. Families returning from Brazil in the 19th century brought names, Catholic devotions, building styles and cooking that mixed into the local culture, and their houses give the old quarter its particular look. Fishing shapes daily manners too: the long beach seine is hauled by teams working together and singing, the catch is divided by custom, and the crews are not to be photographed without asking.

About 25,000 people lived in Aného at a 2005 estimate, with more in the surrounding villages and at Glidji, which together with the town form a single settled area. It is a small place by Togolese standards, much diminished from its colonial importance, and it feels quieter than any town of its size on the road to Lomé.

Fishing is the base of the economy — pirogues on the sea, nets on the lagoon and Lake Togo, and the smoking and trading of the catch, work largely done by women. Trade across the Beninese border just east of the town, market gardening, coconut and palm, transport and the phosphate works along the coast provide the rest. Many families depend on money sent from Lomé or from abroad, and young people leave for the capital.

The day begins on the water and at the market before dawn, slows in the heat of the afternoon, and ends with grilled fish and beer at the roadside. The erosion of the shoreline is the town's largest anxiety, along with the state of the old buildings, irregular electricity and the cost of living. Around the September ceremony the population swells and the town is briefly as busy as it once was.

Fish is the whole basis of eating here. The pirogues land sea fish, and the lagoon and Lake Togo supply tilapia, crab and shrimp; much of it is grilled or fried, and a great deal is smoked over wood fires by women who then trade it inland. Smoked fish flavours most of the sauces, and crab in a palm-nut sauce is a coastal speciality.

The staples are those of the Togolese south: pâte, the stiff maize dough known in Ewe as akoumé, and fufu pounded from yam or cassava, eaten with sauces of adémè made from jute leaves, gboma, a spinach-like green, okra, groundnut or palm nut. Ayimolou, rice cooked with beans, is the standard breakfast, and akpan, a soft ball of fermented maize wrapped in leaf, is sold cool from basins. Ablo, a steamed maize cake, is eaten with fried fish.

Drinks are local and simple: palm wine from the coconut and oil palms of the coast, sodabi distilled from it and used in libations at shrines and funerals, bissap made from hibiscus, ginger juice and bottled lager. Coconut, sold from the heap at the roadside, and pineapple from the coastal plain are the everyday fruit.