StapleBurkina Faso
Tô
also Saghbo
Stiff millet or sorghum porridge, the daily food of most of the country, torn off in lumps and dipped in sauce. Eaten with the right hand from a shared bowl.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
Bwa (Bwaba)
Farmers of the Black Volta country whose towering plank masks, painted in black, white and red geometry, are among the most recognisable objects in West African art, and whose villages rose against the French in 1915 in the largest revolt of the colonial period.
Identity
Population: Estimated 400,000 to 700,000 across Burkina Faso and Mali
Location: The Boucle du Mouhoun and Hauts-Bassins regions of Burkina Faso around Dédougou, Boni and Houndé, and adjacent southern Mali
Language: Bwamu (Bomu in Mali)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Gur
Traditional governance: Village councils and earth priests without chiefship; blacksmith lineages with ritual functions; Burkinabè and Malian communal administration.
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.
Bwa of Dédougou and Boni
The Burkinabè heartland, with the plank-mask tradition.
Bwa of the leaf-mask villages
Communities where masks of leaves rather than wood are used, in the older form.
Bomu of Mali
Communities across the border in the Malian Ségou and Mopti regions.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; woven cotton strips; the mask costumes of dyed fibre that conceal the dancer entirely beneath the plank.
Food: Millet and sorghum as porridge and beer, fonio, groundnuts, shea butter, dawadawa, and the millet beer (dolo) at the centre of every gathering.
Ceremonies: Mask performances at initiation, funerals and the agricultural year's turning; leaf-mask rites at planting; earth-shrine observances; funerals over several days.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous; bridewealth in goods and labour; blacksmith lineages marry among themselves.
Initiation rites: Boys' initiation in a bush camp with instruction in the masks' meaning, the songs and the secret language; the masks may not be explained to the uninitiated.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Burkina Faso and Mali, at national rather than community level — 16 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
Burkina Faso
8 dishes
National dishBurkina Faso
Riz Gras
Rice cooked in a rich tomato and meat broth until it absorbs everything, the West African one-pot in its Burkinabè form. The name means fat rice and is not an exaggeration.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Street foodBurkina Faso
Brochettes
Skewers of beef or mutton grilled over charcoal and rolled in a peppery groundnut spice mix, sold from braziers on every street corner in Ouagadougou after dark.
Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating
Street foodBurkina Faso
Gonré
also Bean cake, Gonre
Black-eyed beans ground with onion and chilli, wrapped in leaf and steamed into a firm savoury cake. Burkina Faso's breakfast and market food.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus overnight soaking
Festival & feastBurkina Faso
Poulet Bicyclette
Free-range chicken, so called because it has spent its life running about, marinated and grilled whole over charcoal. Served flattened with onion sauce for guests and celebrations.
Serves 4 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating
Festival & feastBurkina Faso
Zamnè
also Acacia seeds, Zaamné
The small green seeds of a wild acacia, boiled long and cooked with beef and onion. A Burkinabè delicacy that is expensive, laborious and served to people you want to impress.
Serves 6 · 3 hours
Regional specialityBurkina Faso
Babenda
Wild leaves, rice and soumbala cooked together into a dark green one-pot, from the Mossi plateau. Soumbala is fermented néré seed and gives the dish its powerful savoury depth.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Drink & sweetBurkina Faso
Dolo
also Millet beer, Chapalo
Sorghum beer brewed by women and sold in courtyards marked with an upturned calabash on a pole. It is drunk within a day or two, still fermenting, from a shared gourd.
Serves Makes about 5 litres · 4 days
Mali
8 dishes
StapleMali
Tô
also Toh
Millet or sorghum porridge cooked stiff and eaten with a leaf or okra sauce, the daily food across the Sahelian belt. Torn off in pieces and dipped with the right hand.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
National dishMali
Tiguadege Na
also Maafe, Groundnut stew
Meat in a thick groundnut and tomato sauce over rice, Mali's national dish and the ancestor of groundnut stews from Senegal to Cameroon. The oil rising to the top is how you know it is done.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Street foodMali
Fakoye
A sauce of powdered sesame leaves with meat and tomato, served over rice or tô. Sold from lunch pots in Bamako, and unmistakable for its slightly slippery texture.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Festival & feastMali
Capitaine à la Bamakoise
Nile perch from the Niger, stuffed and grilled whole, served with fried plantain and a sharp onion salad. The dish Bamako restaurants put in front of a visitor.
Serves 4 · 1 hour
Regional specialityMali
Widjila
Millet couscous with camel or mutton and curdled milk, from the Tuareg and Songhai north. The sour milk poured over at the end is what distinguishes it.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Regional specialityMali
Tigadèguèna Poulet
also Chicken groundnut sauce
Chicken in groundnut sauce with sweet potato and cabbage, the Bamako version of the Sahel's great sauce, served over rice.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Drink & sweetMali
Dabileni
Hibiscus juice, called dabileni in Bambara, sold from coolers and street-corner freezers across Bamako. The same drink as bissap and sobolo, with a Malian preference for very sweet.
Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling
Drink & sweetMali
Dèguè
also Thiakry, Millet yoghurt
Steamed millet grain in sweetened soured milk with vanilla and nutmeg, drunk cold from a plastic sachet at every Malian roadside.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes, plus chilling
Stories & Oral Literature
The Plank MasksArt history
Bwa plank masks rise two or three metres above the dancer's head, flat boards painted in black, white and red concentric circles, chevrons, hooks and the zigzag that represents the path of the ancestors — a path that is difficult and must be followed. Each element carries a meaning taught at initiation. The masks are danced with the whole body concealed in fibre, and the performance requires strength and balance of a high order. They are among the most reproduced African art objects and among the least explained.
The Volta-Bani WarColonial history
In 1915 and 1916, villages across the Black Volta and Bani region — Bwa, Marka, Samo, Bobo and others — rose against French recruitment for the First World War, forced labour and taxation, in a coordinated revolt involving perhaps a million people. It was the largest anti-colonial rising in French West Africa. The French suppressed it over eighteen months with columns and artillery, destroying villages and killing an estimated 30,000 people. It is barely known outside the region and was long absent from French historiography.
Leaves Before WoodRitual tradition
Not all Bwa villages use plank masks: some use masks made of leaves, rebuilt fresh for each performance, associated with Do, the divine force of the wild and of renewal. The distinction is not decorative. Villages that took up wooden masks are said to have adopted them from Nuna and Winiama neighbours within recorded memory, and communities that kept the leaf masks regard theirs as the older and more proper form. The two traditions coexist in adjacent villages.
Proverbs
“The zigzag on the mask is the road; nobody said it was straight.”
On the ancestors' path.
“Leaves are new every year and the god is the same.”
On the leaf-mask tradition.
“They took our sons for a war we had not heard of.”
A saying from 1915.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Difini (Dobweni) as the creator, remote; Do, his son, as the divine force of the wild, of renewal and of the leaf masks; the earth addressed through earth priests.
Beliefs: Do's cult with the leaf masks; the wooden mask tradition with its initiated meanings; earth-shrine rites; blacksmith ritual functions; Catholic and Islamic presence, both substantial.
Ancestors: The masks represent and embody ancestral and bush powers; their meanings are transmitted only at initiation, which is why the objects in museums are largely mute.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Difini
The remote creator
Do
The force of the wild and of renewal, embodied in the leaf masks
The earth
Addressed through earth priests for fertility and boundaries
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Compact villages of flat-roofed mud houses in the Voltaic style, packed close with terraces used as living space, among millet fields.
Building techniques: Mud walling with flat earth roofs on wooden beams; ladders to roof terraces; mask carving from single planks; fibre costume making; iron working by the smith lineages.
Village layout: Houses packed into a dense block with roof terraces used as thoroughfares, granaries within, and the dance ground and the earth shrine outside the built area.
Artifacts
Plank masks
Masquerade
Towering flat masks painted in black, white and red geometry, each element carrying a taught meaning.
Leaf masks
Masquerade
Masks rebuilt from fresh leaves for each performance, associated with Do.
Flat-roofed mud houses
Architecture
Voltaic-style dwellings with roof terraces used as living and working space.
Volta-Bani war sites
Memorial
Villages destroyed in the 1915–1916 revolt and its suppression.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Gur-speaking communities settle the Black Volta country under earth-priest authority without chiefs.
1800s
Wooden plank masks are adopted in some villages from Nuna and Winiama neighbours; leaf masks continue elsewhere.
1897–1904
French conquest of the Volta region; taxation and forced labour are imposed.
1915–1916
The Volta-Bani war, the largest anti-colonial revolt in French West Africa, is suppressed with an estimated 30,000 deaths.
1960–present
Independence; the mask festivals at Dédougou become national and international events; Sahelian insecurity reaches the region from the 2010s.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: BwamuSIL International