(Bortianor Island) Fisherfolk turn landing site into permanent abode

Story and picture: Alice Aryeetey
A large number of people have abandoned their homes to live on a land between the sea and a river near Tsokomey, an area at Bortianor, in the Ga west municipality in the Greater Accra Region. 
Anytime the sea and river overflow due to heavy rainfall, the people living on this island, popularly known as "Faa naa" lose their  property but they are not dispirited enough to go back to their hometowns. 
 After the recent heavy rainfall, the river overflowed its banks and destroyed the structures, (huts and mud houses) that serve as homes for the people.
 Some natives of Tsokomey said efforts made to evacuate the people had been unsuccessful .
The Solo Wulomo of Bortianor, Numo Commey V, a custodian of the land, said the land was given to some fishermen from Anloga in the Volta region so many years ago to use as a place of collating their catch and to have some rest after fishing before going back to their hometown.
The women that lived there at first, also smoked the fish  to preserve them before it gets to the hinterland. They, therefore, built a few huts which they used as their sleeping place along the shores of the sea.
Currently, the place has become a big town, where people from Ada, Keta, and other towns in the Volta Region are living with their wives and children.
Some of the people, who have houses at Bortianor and Accra, have also left the comfort of their homes to this hazardous community where there is no potable water, electricity, hospital or school.
The children in this community always have to cross the river to the nearby town to school. Due to the non-existence of a hospital on this land,  pregnant women deliver on canoes while they are been transported to the clinic in the nearby town and others also die on their way to the hospital. 
Interestingly, women are forbidden from bearing children on the island, and it is also a taboo for one to die on the land.
When a woman is close to her delivery time or month, she has to move to another town to give birth before coming back to Faa naa.
Similarly, When a person dies, the family or household from which the person comes from is fined a sum of money and asked to provide a goat, bottles of schnapps, and pipes to perform some ritual to appease the gods of the sea.
Some of the people of the island who spoke to  the Daily Graphic said that they had been living there for so many years and raised their families there, and therefore did not have anywhere to go if they were asked to leave.

Pix 1. A Hut of a resident collapsed by the flood
pix 2. The huts that have been built in between the river and the sea.