In the 21st century many ancestral beliefs are struggling to survive in a hostile, fast-changing world. In southeast Ivory Coast, some Akan communities still make contact with the spirits through Komians or animistic priests who go into a trance and are possessed by the spirits of the Forest and the Waters. Jean Marie Addiaffi (1941-1999), a writer and intellectual from Ivory Coast, fought to conserve the Akans’ oral literature, myths... see more