What it means to be a great Bokor

“One day you will be a great Bokor because you care about family”- the late Bokor Dafliso Agbovi

Togbe Dafliso and his son, Atsu, in front of his Mami Wata shrine

I was a second-year college student at Middlebury College in Vermont at the time. We were filming our first ReVolution film, “Like A Knife: The Real Vodu” which at that point had no clear direction. I managed to convince some professional photographers and videographers from America to come to Ghana and film since we could not do it ourselves at the time. During the trip, the team filmed an Afa ritual (Vorsah) one of my elders Togbe Dafliso, a legendary Togolese Afa priest, did for me. This is when he uttered these words to me. Togbe Dalfliso was one of the best diviners I ever met in my life and one that my father deeply trusted.

Togbe Dafliso doing an Afa ritual for Sena Voncujovi.

I was only 19 years old. I had just been recently initiated into Afa, and it seemed impossible for me even to learn the complex divination system of Ewe Afa. Firstly, I was not living in Ghana because I left home at 16 to further my education abroad in Costa Rica and America. This meant that I had, at most, two months a year to study with my elders. Secondly, I am not fluent in the Ewe language so most of Afa’s wisdom had to be translated to me in English by my father so…