Tafi Atome: The Monkeys That Followed a Village Home
Ghana-Net.com · Volta Region · Near Logba, off the Hohoe road
Tafi Atome
A patch of forest that survived because a village decided, two centuries ago, that the
monkeys in it had followed them from their old home.
The taboo has outperformed most of Ghana's gazetted reserves — and the tourism it
now supports has brought electricity, a school and a clinic to the village that keeps it.
What it is
A remnant patch of tropical forest around the village of Tafi Atome, in the Volta Region, and
the mona monkeys living in it — around two hundred of them, wild, habituated,
and in no cage.
The forest itself is the interesting part. It is a fragment that survived fire, clearance and
farming while the forest around it did not, and the reason it survived is that killing the
monkeys in it was forbidden. In the language of conservation, this is a
sacred grove — a traditional protected area, now backed by statutory
recognition in cooperation with the community.
The species
Cercopithecus mona — the mona monkey, and what you will actually see. Some
official listings also record patas monkeys at the site. Ask your guide what is currently
present rather than expecting a checklist.
How close they come
Very. They are habituated to people, they come down to low branches, and they will come
within arm's reach. This is not a distant-viewing site — it is the opposite, and that
raises a question we deal with below.
How long it takes
An hour to an hour and a half for the sanctuary tour, arranged at the visitor centre.
Longer if you add the village walk, which is worth doing.
How hard it is
It isn't. Flat, short, shaded, and manageable for any age or fitness level. After Afadja
and the Wli upper falls, this is the easy day in the Volta.
The monkeys who followed
Most sacred-animal traditions in Ghana turn on a rescue — an ancestor saved by a crocodile,
a hunter carried to safety. Tafi Atome's is different, and better.
In the early nineteenth century, a group migrated from Assin, in central
Ghana, and settled here in the hills between Lake Volta and the Togo border. In Assin they
had lived alongside mona monkeys and valued them — clever, noisy, aggressive animals that
raised the alarm when rival clans approached. A useful neighbour in an unsettled century.
Soon after arriving, the settlers found monkeys in the forest here that looked like the ones
they had left behind.
They concluded that their old protectors had followed them.
That was enough. The monkeys were understood as messengers from the gods, sent to watch over
the community in its new home, and the prohibition on killing them was absolute. The village
priest served as intermediary between the community, the grove and the animals, and led a
ceremony each February to honour the monkeys and renew the taboo.
Two hundred years of it
That protection has held, in some form, for around two centuries — through colonisation,
independence, Christian missions and the near-total clearance of surrounding forest for
farmland. The grove is what is left.
Why it matters beyond the story
Because this is a functioning conservation instrument that no government designed and no
budget funds. The same logic protects the crocodiles at
Paga, the monkeys at
Boabeng-Fiema and the hippos at Wechiau. In several documented cases in Ghana, community
prohibition has protected wildlife more effectively than statutory designation — because
the people enforcing it live there.
What the tourism actually bought
Community ecotourism gets described in brochures in language so vague it means nothing. Here
the outcomes are specific, and they are the reason this site is worth writing about at
length.
The project was established with the guidance of a Peace Corps volunteer working with the
community, in partnership with Ghanaian conservation organisations. Published dates give
1993 for the founding and 1996 for the broader push into
forest protection and visitor tours — the two are probably stages of the same effort rather
than competing claims.
Since then:
The monkey population has risen to around 200 — up, not down, in a country where primate populations have gone the other way almost everywhere else.
The forest has been preserved, along with its bird and butterfly species.
Tourism revenue brought electricity to the village.
It funded improvements to the school.
And it funded a community clinic.
Electricity, a school and a clinic, paid for by people coming to look at monkeys that a
village decided to protect two hundred years before anyone thought of charging for the
privilege.
This is the argument for community-managed tourism in its clearest form anywhere in Ghana.
When we tell you elsewhere on this site to pay properly and not haggle at community sites,
Tafi Atome is what we are pointing at. The money goes somewhere and you can see where.
The feeding question
Now the part the brochures leave out, and we would rather you heard it here than felt uneasy
about it afterwards.
The monkeys at Tafi Atome are habituated to the point of feeding from visitors'
hands, and feeding sessions are part of the standard tour. It is the thing most
people remember and most photographs show.
The case against
Hand-feeding wild primates has known costs: dietary dependence on food that is not their
natural forage, altered ranging and foraging behaviour, increased boldness and
occasionally aggression toward people, and a real risk of disease transmission in both
directions — humans and monkeys share a great many pathogens. Conservation practice has
moved firmly against it over the last few decades.
The case for
The close encounter is what brings visitors, and the visitors are what funds the
protection. Nobody is travelling to a Volta village to observe monkeys through
binoculars at fifty metres. Remove the feeding and you may well remove the revenue that
bought the clinic — and the population has risen, not fallen, under the current
arrangement.
Both of those are true and we are not going to resolve them for you. What we would suggest:
You can watch without feeding. Say so at the visitor centre. Nobody minds, and you will still see the monkeys close.
If you do feed, use only what the guides provide. Not your snacks, not bread, not anything from your bag.
Wash your hands afterwards and do not feed if you are unwell. The disease risk runs both ways and you are the larger reservoir.
Do not grab, chase or corner them for a photograph, and keep children close. These are wild animals with teeth, however charming.
Pay the full fee either way. Declining the feeding is not a reason to pay less — the point is to support the arrangement, not to extract a discount from it.
When the monkeys are actually there
This is the single most useful practical thing on this page and almost nobody publishes it.
For most of the year the monkeys are around at any time of day. But
from November through January they leave the village forest to forage further
afield, and are reliably present only in two windows: roughly
6:00 to 8:00 in the morning and 3:30 to 6:00 in the
afternoon.
Turn up at eleven in December and you may see nothing at all. That is not bad luck; it is the
season, and it catches out a great many visitors who have driven three hours to get there.
Best time of day, year-round
Early morning and late afternoon regardless of season — the monkeys are most active and
most visible, and they range through the village itself at those hours rather than
staying in the trees.
Staying the night solves it
There is a small guesthouse beside the visitor centre. Staying over gives you both the
evening and the dawn, which is the difference between seeing monkeys and watching them.
The wider season
December to March is cooler and drier and easier for travel generally — but overlaps
with the November-to-January foraging window, so plan your hours accordingly. The rains
make the forest greener and the roads worse.
February, if you can
The annual ceremony honouring the monkeys has traditionally fallen in February. Ask
ahead if you want to time a visit for it — this is a village observance rather than a
scheduled attraction.
Tafi Abuipe, and the kente nobody mentions
Fourteen kilometres by road from Tafi Atome, or seven on foot or by bicycle along the trail,
sits Tafi Abuipe — one of Ghana's principal kente weaving centres.
Which raises a point worth making, because almost every article about kente ever written gets
it wrong.
Kente is routinely presented as an Ashanti cloth, woven at Bonwire. That is one tradition.
Ewe kente is a separate weaving tradition with its own patterns,
construction and meanings, woven at Tafi Abuipe, at Kpetoe in the Agotime area and elsewhere
in the Volta — and it is not a regional variation of the Ashanti cloth. Two traditions, not
one with a branch office.
Walk or ride the seven kilometres if you have the time and the weather. Watch the looms, buy
at the source, and see the difference for yourself.
Practicalities
Everything runs through the visitor centre. Go there first. Tours are arranged there, guides assigned there, and there is a small shop selling village crafts.
Cash only, and fees are set locally and change. We do not publish figures — ask on arrival. Expect separate rates for Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians.
Tip the guide directly, separately from the fee.
The guesthouse is rustic and adequate — a handful of rooms beside the visitor centre, with flush toilets, showers and sheets. Bring your own towel; they are not provided.
Evening programmes of drumming, dancing and storytelling around a fire can be arranged, usually about an hour each. Ask when you arrive rather than on the night.
The village tour is worth adding — food preparation, daily work, and the chance to ask about the grove from people who maintain it.
Secure your belongings. Habituated monkeys are opportunists. Bags open, sunglasses on heads and phones in loose hands are all fair game as far as they are concerned.
Insect repellent — it is forest, and it is often damp.
Getting there
Roughly 230 km north-east of Accra, on the Accra–Hohoe road. The turning is about ten
kilometres west of Logba.
From Ho
North on the Hohoe road, then the branch west. An easy half-day from Ho, and the
simplest of the region's outings to fit into a day that already has something else in it.
See Ho and the Volta
Region.
From Hohoe
South down the same road. If you are basing at Hohoe for
Wli and
Afadja, Tafi Atome slots in as the
gentle day between two hard ones.
By public transport
Trotros run the Accra–Hohoe road; get off at the junction and arrange a taxi or motorbike
for the last stretch. Confirm your return before you commit — see our
public transport page.
Combining it
Tafi Atome, Tafi Abuipe for the kente, and
Amedzofe make a comfortable day in the
Avatime hills without a single hard climb between them.
Connected reading
Ho & the Volta Region — the regional base and how to build a route through the hills.
Practical details last verified .
The migration from Assin and the recognition of the local mona monkeys as the community's
former protectors is recorded oral tradition, held for approximately two hundred years. The
community ecotourism project is variously dated to 1993 and to 1996 in published sources,
established with the guidance of a Peace Corps volunteer in partnership with Ghanaian
conservation organisations. The monkey population is given as approximately 200 and the
species as Cercopithecus mona; some official listings also record patas monkeys at
the site. Reported outcomes of the project — electricity, school improvements and a community
clinic — are from Ghana Tourism Authority material. Foraging behaviour from November through
January, and the resulting viewing windows of roughly 6:00–8:00 am and 3:30–6:00 pm, are from
the same source. Distances to Tafi Abuipe of 14 km by road and 7 km by trail are as published.
Fees, guide arrangements, guesthouse facilities and evening programmes change — confirm at
the visitor centre.