Aku of the Gambia
Descendants of liberated Africans resettled from Freetown at Bathurst in the 1820s, who built the colony's churches and mosques, supplied its lawyers and clerks for a century, and split into a Christian Aku and an Aku Marabout Muslim community that share a name and little else.
Identity
Population: A few thousand, historically influential far beyond their numbers
Location: Banjul, particularly the old Half Die and Portuguese Town quarters, and the Kombo settlements
Language: Aku, a Krio variety, alongside English; Yoruba retained liturgically in some families
Language family: English-lexifier creole (Krio/Aku); Niger-Congo → Yoruba (ancestral)
Traditional governance: Church and mosque committees, and, historically, the professional associations of a community that dominated the colonial civil service and bar.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups — clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes — each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Christian Aku
Anglican, Methodist and Catholic families descended from the Freetown liberated Africans.
Aku Marabout
The Muslim branch, descended largely from Yoruba Muslims among the recaptives, with their own mosques in Banjul.
Professional lineages
Families that supplied the colony's lawyers, doctors, clerks and clergy across four generations.
Culture
Clothing: Victorian-derived formal dress in the older Christian tradition; the Aku Marabout adopted West African Muslim dress; both retain distinctive wedding and funeral clothing.
Food: Krio dishes carried from Freetown — akara, foofoo, plasas — alongside Gambian benachin and domoda; the awujoh feast for the dead is the community's signature meal.
Ceremonies: Awujoh, a feast for the ancestors held at intervals after a death, practised by Christian and Muslim Aku alike; church and mosque calendars; elaborate funerals.
Marriage customs: Church or Islamic marriage; community endogamy was strong for a century and has weakened; marriage across the Christian-Muslim line within the Aku happens and is remarked on.
Initiation rites: Formal schooling, pursued intensely: the community's mission education produced a professional class out of proportion to its size.
Stories & Oral Literature
From the Slave Ships to BathurstHistorical account
The Royal Navy's anti-slavery squadron landed people taken from intercepted ships at Freetown. Many were Yoruba, and Aku comes from a Yoruba greeting. When Bathurst was founded in 1816, families were resettled there from Freetown. They arrived literate, Christian in many cases, and with no local kin, and they built institutions because institutions were what they had instead.
One Name, Two CommunitiesSocial account
Among the recaptives were Yoruba Muslims, and their descendants became the Aku Marabout, keeping the Krio language and much of the social style while praying in a different building. The Gambia thus has a Christian Aku and a Muslim Aku who share ancestry, surnames, a language and the awujoh feast, and are counted as distinct communities by everyone including themselves.
Proverbs
“Wan han nor de tay bandul.”
“One hand cannot tie a bundle.”
A Krio proverb on cooperation.
“We came off the ships with nothing but the alphabet.”
Education as the recaptive inheritance.
“Same name, different Friday.”
The Christian and Muslim Aku, as they joke about themselves.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Christian and Islamic cosmologies respectively; beneath both, Yoruba ancestral practice surviving most visibly in the awujoh feast.
Beliefs: Anglicanism, Methodism and Catholicism among the Christian Aku; Sunni Islam among the Aku Marabout; the awujoh ancestral feast practised by both, which clergy of both faiths have periodically objected to.
Ancestors: Genealogies run back to a named recaptive ancestor and often to a ship and a year; the Yoruba origin is claimed with precision where it can be.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The Christian God
Worshipped in the Anglican, Methodist and Catholic churches of Banjul
Allah
Worshipped by the Aku Marabout in their own mosques
The ancestors
Fed at the awujoh, a Yoruba-derived practice kept by Christian and Muslim families alike
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Banjul's old quarters of two-storey timber and corrugated-iron houses with deep verandahs and shuttered windows, a Krio building style carried from Freetown.
Building techniques: Timber frame with iron sheeting, raised on piers; deep verandahs and jalousie shutters for ventilation; the style is recognisably the same as Freetown's board houses.
Village layout: Streets of verandahed houses around the churches and mosques of Half Die and Portuguese Town, in a capital built on a low sandy island.
Artifacts
Krio board houses of Banjul
Architecture
Timber and iron verandahed houses in the Freetown style.
St Mary's Anglican Cathedral, Banjul
Heritage site
Built from 1901, the community's principal Christian institution.
Awujoh feast
Ritual
Yoruba-derived meal for the ancestors, kept by Christian and Muslim Aku.
Colonial civil service records
Archive
Documents of a community that staffed the administration and the bar.
Historical Timeline
1808–1860s
The Royal Navy lands liberated Africans at Freetown; many are Yoruba, known as Aku.
1816–1830s
Bathurst is founded; Aku families are resettled there from Sierra Leone.
1850s–1950s
The community supplies much of the colony's professional and clerical class.
1965
Gambian independence; the Aku remain influential in law, medicine and the civil service.
Present
A small community with a disproportionate institutional legacy; the board houses of Banjul survive unevenly.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: The Gambia — peopleEncyclopaedia Britannica
- National Centre for Arts and Culture, The GambiaGovernment of The Gambia
Premium & scholarly sources