The coastal people of Sierra Leone's islands and estuaries — carvers of the ivory saltcellars that European nobles collected in the 1500s, hosts of the first Portuguese traders, and inhabitants of a shoreline now being taken by the sea.
Sherbro (Bullom) people
Sierra leone, mende o sherbro, maschera-elmo, xix-xx sec, da distretto di moyamba.JPG · Wikimedia Commons
Population: Around 200,000, with the language endangered
Location: Sherbro Island, Bonthe, the Turner's Peninsula and the estuaries of southern Sierra Leone
Language: Sherbro (Bullom So), endangered with most speakers shifting to Mende or Krio
Language family: Niger-Congo → Mel
Traditional governance: Chiefdoms with paramount chiefs, historically including several ruled by women; the Poro and Bondo societies; Sierra Leonean chieftaincy administration today.
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Sherbro Island and Bonthe
The island communities and the colonial-era port town.
Mainland Sherbro
Estuary and peninsula communities, many now Mende-speaking.
Krim and Bom
Closely related and even more endangered neighbouring groups.
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Clothing: Country cloth and imported fabric; society regalia; the region's long trading contact brought European cloth early.
Food: Rice, fish and oysters from the estuaries, palm oil, cassava; the mangrove fishery is central.
Ceremonies: Poro and Bondo initiations; masked appearances including the Sowei helmet mask; funerals; the sacred societies' control of the fishing and farming calendar.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth negotiated between lineages; Sherbro chiefdoms have a long record of women holding paramountcy, which shapes marriage and property expectations.
Initiation rites: Poro and Bondo bush schools with seclusion and instruction; Bondo completion has historically been near-universal for women in the region.
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Sierra Leone, 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.
Fermented cassava fufu with a leaf sauce, the everyday meal across Sierra Leone. The fufu is sourer than the Ghanaian version and comes wrapped rather than pounded to order.
Serves 6 · 1 hour, plus 3 days fermenting
also Beans stew, Bean sauce
Black-eyed beans stewed with palm oil, onion and smoked fish, eaten with rice or bread for breakfast across Sierra Leone.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus soaking
Finely pounded cassava leaves cooked slowly with palm oil, meat and fish into a thick dark green stew over rice. Sierra Leone's national dish by common consent.
Serves 8 · 2 hours
Black-eyed pea fritters sold in bread with pepper sauce at Freetown's morning stalls, eaten on the way to work with a cup of sweet tea.
Serves Makes 20 · 40 minutes, plus 4 hours soaking
Rice cooked in a tomato and pepper base with beef and chicken, made for weddings and Christmas. Sierra Leoneans add a spoon of palm oil that neither Ghana nor Nigeria would allow.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Chicken or beef in a groundnut sauce made with roasted peanuts ground fresh, thickened and eaten over rice. Every household claims a slightly different balance of tomato to nut.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
also Fish pepper soup
A thin, ferociously peppery broth of fish or goat with country spices, drunk as much as eaten and prescribed for colds, hangovers and childbirth.
Serves 4 · 45 minutes
also Palm wine
Palm sap tapped at dawn and drunk the same day, sweet in the morning and increasingly sharp and alcoholic as the hours pass. Drunk in poyo bars from a shared calabash.
Serves Varies · Tapped daily; drunk within hours
The Ivory SaltcellarsArt history
In the early 1500s Sherbro carvers produced elaborate ivory saltcellars, spoons and hunting horns to Portuguese order, combining local motifs with European heraldry and figures. They are among the earliest documented works of African art made for export, they sit in the great European collections, and they were carved on this coast by people whose language is now endangered.
The Island Is GoingContemporary account
Sherbro Island's coastline is eroding fast, with villages including Nyangai losing most of their land within a decade and residents relocating. Sea-level rise, sand mining and mangrove clearance all contribute. The community that met the first European ships on this coast is now among the first in West Africa to be displaced by the sea.
“The tide takes what the mangrove does not hold.”
Now painfully literal.
“A woman chief judges standing up.”
Said of the region's female paramountcies.
“Salt is the first trade and the last.”
The estuary economy's foundation.
Creation: A high creator with water and land powers beneath; the estuary and its islands have their own spirit geography.
Beliefs: Poro and Bondo societies; water spirits of the estuaries; ancestor veneration; Islam and Christianity both established, held alongside society membership.
Ancestors: Ancestors consulted through elders; the graves of chiefly lineages anchor claims that erosion is now literally washing away.
The creator
Distant high god
Water spirits
Powers of estuary, island and sea
Sowei
Spirit of the women's society, embodied in the helmet mask
Traditional settlements: Villages on sand spits and island shores; Bonthe's nineteenth-century colonial buildings; fishing camps in the mangroves.
Building techniques: Wattle and daub with thatch; timber and iron in the colonial port; boat building for the estuary fishery.
Village layout: Village facing the water with boats drawn up, drying racks, farms and palms behind.
Afro-Portuguese ivories
Art
Sixteenth-century carved saltcellars and horns made for European patrons.
Sowei helmet mask
Performance
Mask of the women's society, danced by women.
Nomoli stone figures
Art
Carved soapstone figures found in the region, of contested date and origin.
Bonthe's colonial port buildings
Heritage site
Remains of the nineteenth-century trading town.
1460s
Portuguese ships reach the coast; trade with Sherbro communities begins.
1500s
Afro-Portuguese ivory carving flourishes for European patrons.
1800s
Bonthe develops as a colonial trading port; British protectorate extends over the region.
1991–2002
Civil war; the region's economy collapses.
2010s–present
Severe coastal erosion displaces island villages; the Sherbro language becomes endangered.
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