Sexuality and prostitution among the Akan of the Gold Coast, c. 1650-1950

Notwithstanding these definite changes in the nature of urban prostitution in the colonial Gold Coast, there were also interesting continuities from the pre-colonial era in the spatial location of prostitutes, the use of ritual and the perceived need for spiritual protection, and the desire of prostitutes for official affiliation or recognition. From the descriptions of public women in the precolonial Gold Coast, it appears that they often lived on the outskirts of villages and towns. They occupied distinct, separate spaces from the local inhabitants of a community. Prostitutes in the colonial Gold Coast, likewise, lived on the boundaries of towns. Elderly informants have confirmed this for Sekondi.(71) Areas like Nkontompo were on the outskirts of town, but prostitutes who married workers in Sekondi-Takoradi were incorporated spatially and socially, resolving their liminality. Krobo prostitutes in Obnasi lived at Tutuka, away from the town centre.(72) Although prostitutes in Kumasi, the capital of Asante, now live in the town centre of Adum, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Adum used to be on the border of Kumasi proper.(73)

Religious ritual remained important in the lives of prostitutes, especially when they sought social reintegration into their old communities. Acquah was informed of this by prostitutes operating in Accra:

If they visited their relatives in the rural areas, however, they might be

expected to `purify' themselves before they were able to be accepted back

fully into the village life. One stated that she had to provide a sheep and

rum for the performance of some rites each time she visited her village

before she was allowed by the chief and the fetish priest to participate in

public functions and celebrations. This reveals that prostitution constitutes

an infraction of custom and is still severely frowned upon in the rural

areas, even though in the large towns it is generally accepted as one of

the ways women have of earning a living.(74)

The purification of prostitutes before they were reincorporated into their old communities was particularly designed to neutralize the malevolent spiritual forces that might follow them into the village as a result of their numerous sexual contacts with strangers. Some prostitutes sought spiritual protection from rural shrines before they departed for the city to practice their profession. Margaret Field encountered this during her field-work at the shrine of Mframaso in Brong Ahafo in 1956-7:

One modest-mannered but quietly business-like woman who said she was

a prostitute in Kumasi and asked for success in her work. As she was not

married, approval was readily given to her enterprise. When I sought to

know the general climate of opinion concerning this, I was told

matter-of-factly, `It is her work. When a man has to stay in a town like

Kumasi one of the things he may need is a woman. Also travellers need

somewhere to stay the night'.(75)

The irony is that male sexual needs, as opposed to female sexual needs, have always been recognized in Akan society. Public women and prostitutes met this acknowledged need.