Ewe and Fon - Settlements

Ewe and Fon live mostly in villages and towns, although there are some more isolated farming compounds. Rectangular mud brick houses and concrete brick dwellings with gabled or corrugated-iron roofs are predominant except along the ocean, where there are numerous palm-frond huts with straw- or palm-thatch gabled roofs. Small huts or buildings are often clustered in a single compound with an open court, all surrounded by a mud wall. In ocean-front fishing villages, fragile palm-frond fences give some privacy to clusters of small huts. People living in the same compound are usually members of the same patrilineage ( to-fome ), although kinship is extremely open to outside recruitment; fictive kin may even predominate in certain cases. Large villages may have central marketplaces. Today there are a number of cities and large towns in which Ewe and Fon constitute the largest portion of the population. Ewe are a majority in Tema and Aflao (Ghana) and in Lome, Kpalime, and Tsévié (Togo). Adja dominate in Tado, and Mina-Guin in the Glidji-Aneho area (Togo). Abomey, Aliada, Ouidah, Grand Popo, Cotonou, and other towns in Benin are largely populated by Fon and related groups.