the gaitkeeper is menka, a young man a few years beyond his initiation into manhood.tands with his head wrapped and his body draped in white before the entrance of his village's earth shrine in ghana. he guards a place of worship where community members offer animal sacrifices for increased fertility, bury their dead and venerate their ancestors, all practices with many veriation youth west africa. while men from a neighboring village capture menka, battering him on the held and shoulders and enveloping him in a net. he is drag to the western shores of africa. after being imprisoned for two days, he shoved into the dim hold of a ship, filled with africans of diverse culture and religious beliefs. they're bodies are pressed together. shackled, head to toe. once free in africa, seasoned in jamaica, now enslaved in alabama, they gatekeeper is forced to adopt, later embraces, new religion, blending african spiritualout with the pros tess tenantism of the slave holders. so her we see a shrine in mali, and it's treated as sacred in relationship to spirit and dead ancestors.