Reportage

Togo: a new white stone to celebrate the Guin New Year

The priests returned from the forest with a new white stone for the Guin New Year, celebrated in September 2022. © Peter Sassou Dogbé/RFI

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

The Guin community celebrates the New Year this Sunday, September 25.

These people, who occupy the marine-lagoon site in the south-east of Togo, met at the end of the week to celebrate the entry into their 359th lunar year.

A unique calendar accompanied by an almost religious event: the capture of the sacred stone.

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With our special correspondent in Glidji,

All morning, Thursday, September 22, followers have continued to converge on Gbatchome, the place of reunion.

They arrived from Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin and Nigeria to purify themselves and receive the blessing of the new year, the lunar year.

All dressed in white, religious leaders in the lead, then followers, men and women competed in elegance, the body girded with a white loincloth, the bare torso, the arms and legs covered with drawings of their convents in kaolin.

The dance sequences are linked, in a majestic approach, the trances follow each other to songs of joy and youyou.

The highlight of the ceremonies takes place in the afternoon, when the priests go into the forest to return with the famous sacred stone.

Its color is premonitory: a red stone announces disasters.

This year again, the priests are welcomed in moments of jubilation, to the sound of dinghies;

this year again, the stone is white, a color that heralds good news.

The new year is announced in Guin country.

In all the houses, we will serve this Sunday the yakè yakè, a couscous made from corn with meat or fresh fish.

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• Togo

• Religion