Situated a hundred or so yards from the sea in southeastern Ghana, the Keta Library is a two story faded pink building framed by coconut trees and tall grasses. Residing in the coastal town of Keta, the building sits on a narrow stretch of land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Keta Lagoon where the shoreline has been eroding for decades. With the erosion documented in colonial maps of high water marks dating to 1907 and in stories passed down over generations, in many ways, the outsized record of the town is the way the sea has destroyed it.

Originally a colonial courthouse, the building was transformed into a library in 1960—part of the proliferation of libraries and cultural institutions during Ghana’s early independence years. Today, amidst challenges with staffing and the absence of Eʋe books in the collection (alongside the outsized presence of British ones), the Library as a central social and educational space of the town has diminished, limited these days to use as a study area by students at the nearby nursing college. The majority of decades old encyclopedias, textbooks, and novels currently arrive from international NGOs such as Books for Africa and the general lack of interest in them is signaled by the absence of readers.

On visits to Keta in 2021 and 2024, in my conversations with Dela Amedume, the librarian, and Eʋe historians, poets, artists, and community members, they called attention to both the material erasures affected by erosion as well as the intangible loss of knowledge of Keta’s history and ecologies in the consciousness of young people, many of whom leave. They also asserted the urgency of revitalizing Eʋe cultural knowledge systems that value balanced environmental relations in the context of intensifying climate change in Keta.

Compelled by the way traces of cultural knowledge systems are inscribed across forms, I am working on a collaborative redesign of the Keta Library into a site that sustains the region’s cultural heritage. Informed by archival research and oral histories, I am curating materials related to Eʋe history and culture for its interior (e.g. historical maps, letters, texts, photographs, and other ephemera) and designing an exterior courtyard garden that features culturally significant indigenous plants in the region.