West African ethnic groups maintaining their old traditions

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When you do a tour of an area like West Africa, you expect to make a few visits to local villages to check out different ethnic groups, and this tour was no exception. We spent some time in three major villages, which are covered in the blog below, while a couple of other visits to take in specific items of interest will be covered in my penultimate West African blog.

Our first visit was to the Taneka village, in the northern part of Benin near to the city of Djougou. This ethnic group are considered a magical people because they are the custodians of the animist religion of these areas. They specifically took refuge in the caves of these particular mountains about two centuries ago to escape the slave traders arriving from the south and the Islamification pressing from the north in Burkina Faso (the original Upper Volta for you older folks!). They then created their own social rules, which have remained unchanged to this day and preserve their cultural identity. For the Taneka, weapons and alcohol are not allowed. Important are the ceremonies of passage of the young, in which ox sacrifices are made and circumcision performed in adulthood (around the age of 30!) is seen as an initiatory test of courage, in which the circumcised must not complain of pain or they are cast out of the village in disgrace. We also learnt something of the scarification of faces of the young that allowed for individual identification. The spiritual leaders are the healer elders, who wear only a leather loincloth, a headdress, a pipe and are the true depositaries of religion. The traditional Taneka dwellings are mainly circular, made of clay and with a very low conical thatched roof, while the royal houses are rectangular. Every place in the village is functional to the animist religion and traditions of the Taneka. Notable around these villages were a series of Yam molehills, neatly laid out in rows that provide a significant proportion of their eating needs. Our visit that afternoon comprised a walk up the hill in unbelievably steamy hot conditions. On this particular visit, we were surrounded by kids the whole period and two little girls, one even with a baby on her back, insisted holding my hands throughout the visit, a gesture I might have found more appealing had my legs not continually given out with the intense heat and humidity!

The following morning, we crossed the border back into northern Togo and paid a visit to village of the Sombas and the Tambermas. These ethnic groups live in fortified dwellings known as ‘tatas’. These are similar in form to medieval castles, with their conical roofs atop a series of cylindrical rooms, a number of which are combined to form the family residence. The houses are built by hand, layer of clay after layer, adding round mud balls and shaping them as per the plan of the house. We were fortunate with our timing as we actually saw a whole family rebuilding part of a house. The younger men mixed the clay with their feet, mother then collected a series of round mud balls, then handed these over to father to shape them and create the wall. We were invited to view the inside of one of the tatas, which consisted of a series of towers connected by a thick wall with a single entrance chamber, only accessed via a very makeshift ladder, which could be withdrawn to trap an enemy and shower them with arrows. Inside the tatas were separate areas for people, livestock and grain. We also had the opportunity for yet a further precarious climb on one of these ‘ladders’ to inspect one of their grain storage silos, very neatly divided into four compartments to house four different types of grain. As in so many of these villages, there were many more animals evident than people, with a range including pigs, goats, chickens, brush turkeys and dogs wandering at will. We noticed a number of incidences of fetishes of various types outside houses. Once again there were lots of kids ever present but fortunately no hand holding this time around.

Our third major village visit was just a little further south in the Defale Mountains where we met up with the Kabye ethnic group. The Kabye dwellings, called ‘Soukala’, comprised several adobe huts joined by a wall, with each dwelling being the domain of a patriarchal family. In the village, which was located in the mountains, the women were predominantly potters using an ancestral technique without the wheel, while the men were mainly blacksmiths, still working iron with heavy stones instead of hammers and anvil in keeping with their ancestors, despite there being easier ways to do their chores now. First we viewed the work of the blacksmiths, who heat the metal over a fire kept alive through bellows, with a large stone being used to beat the metal flat. This took place within a hut that must have been stiflingly hot inside. Next we saw the pottery ladies at work, again a very manual operation using two rocks as their ‘lazy Susan’ and just using their skills to ensure items were fully rounded. In between time, we saw many women preparing what would appear to be the communal meal, with some raising water manually from a well, others crushing vegetables for cooking, each being in a large container, suggesting they would pool their output to feed the communal families. Once again, an array of animals roamed around but on this occasion very few kids were present.

My next blog will cover a visit to a considerably different type of village.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Ethnic Groups
You've gone deep into these countries and given us a glimpse of the life. Thank you for sharing.

[DaveandIssy]

Benin
Circumcised at 30, and not allowed to scream the house down. No thanks.