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
Samo
Farmers of north-western Burkina Faso who fought the Mossi and the French alike, whose village autonomy was near-absolute, and who joined the 1915 revolt that the Volta-Bani country mounted against conscription.
Identity
Population: Estimated 250,000 to 400,000
Location: The Nayala, Sourou and Kossi provinces of north-western Burkina Faso around Toma, Tougan and Gossina
Language: Samo (San), with northern and southern varieties
Language family: Niger-Congo → Mande → Eastern Mande
Traditional governance: Village councils and earth priests without chiefship; blacksmith lineages with ritual functions; Burkinabè 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.
Northern Samo (San Maya)
Communities around Tougan and the Sourou.
Southern Samo (San Matya)
Communities around Toma and Gossina.
Samo of the Mossi border
Eastern communities long in contact and conflict with Mossi kingdoms.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; strip-woven cotton; the hunters' dress of amulets, mirrors and dyed cloth at ceremonies.
Food: Millet and sorghum as tô and as beer, fonio, groundnuts, shea butter, dawadawa, and the dolo brewed and sold by women.
Ceremonies: Funerals with drumming, dance and gun-firing over several days; earth-shrine rites; harvest observances; hunters' association gatherings.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous; bridewealth in goods and labour; blacksmith and other specialist lineages marry among themselves.
Initiation rites: Boys' initiation with instruction; entry into the hunters' association, which crosses village and ethnic lines and has its own oaths, songs and obligations.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Burkina Faso, at national rather than community level — 8 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.
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
Stories & Oral Literature
Villages That Answered to NobodyPolitical tradition
Samo villages had no chiefs and recognised no authority above the village council and the earth priest, and they held that position against the Mossi kingdoms to their east for centuries — the Mossi cavalry could raid but could not administer. The French found the same problem: there was nobody to make a treaty with and nobody whose orders would be obeyed. The Samo's reputation among their neighbours and among colonial officials was accordingly one of intractability, which the community has never regarded as an insult.
1915Colonial history
Samo villages were among those that rose in the Volta-Bani war of 1915 and 1916 against French recruitment for the war in Europe, forced labour and taxation. The revolt drew in Bwa, Marka, Bobo, Samo and others across the Black Volta and Bani basins — perhaps a million people — and required eighteen months of columns and artillery to suppress, at an estimated 30,000 deaths. The Samo country was among the areas the French treated most harshly afterwards.
The Hunters' AssociationsSocial institution
The donso hunters' associations of the Mande world extend into Samo country: initiated brotherhoods with their own oaths, songs, bardic tradition, dress and code, crossing village and ethnic boundaries, and historically providing both game and armed capacity. In Burkina Faso and Mali the associations have been drawn into security roles since the 1990s — as village defence, and in Burkina Faso's case into the state-backed volunteer forces of the current conflict, with all the consequences that implies.
Proverbs
“The village has a council and the council has no roof.”
On authority that meets in the open and answers to those present.
“The hunter's oath is heavier than the chief's order.”
On the donso associations.
“They asked for our sons and got our arrows.”
A saying from 1915.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A remote creator; the earth as the central power, addressed through earth priests; bush spirits (jinn and others) of great consequence to hunters; ancestral spirits.
Beliefs: Earth-shrine rites; hunters' ritual with its own deity and observances; ancestral offerings; Islam and Christianity both present, with the older practice strong in the villages.
Ancestors: Ancestors are addressed at lineage shrines; funerals are the community's largest performances and the occasion on which hunters' associations display.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The creator
The remote high god
The earth
Addressed through the earth priest for fertility, boundaries and oaths
Bush and hunting powers
Addressed by the hunters' associations before and after the hunt
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Compact villages of flat-roofed mud houses packed close, with granaries and roof terraces, among millet fields on the plain.
Building techniques: Mud walling with flat earth roofs on wooden beams; tall mud granaries with fitted lids; iron working by the smith lineages; strip weaving and indigo dyeing.
Village layout: Houses packed into a dense block with roof terraces used as thoroughfares, granaries within, and the earth shrine and dance ground outside the built area.
Artifacts
Donso hunters' regalia
Regalia
Amulet-covered tunics, mirrors and horns of the initiated hunters' associations.
Mud granaries
Craft
Tall smooth stores with fitted lids, in the Voltaic tradition.
Earth shrine sites
Ritual structure
Uncleared sites at which the earth priest addresses the land.
Volta-Bani war sites
Memorial
Villages destroyed in the 1915–1916 revolt and its suppression.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1700
Eastern Mande-speaking communities settle north-western Burkina Faso without chiefship.
1700s–1800s
Mossi kingdoms raid the Samo country repeatedly without establishing administration.
1896–1904
French conquest of the Volta region; taxation and forced labour are imposed.
1915–1916
The Volta-Bani war; Samo villages participate and are punished heavily in its suppression.
2015–present
Sahelian insecurity reaches north-western Burkina Faso; hunters' associations are drawn into state-backed volunteer defence forces.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: San (Samo)SIL International