Toma (Loma)
The forest people of the Guinea-Liberia border — makers of the great horned landai mask of the Poro society, inventors of an indigenous syllabary in the 1930s, and farmers of one of the last patches of Upper Guinean rainforest.
Toma (Loma) people
Estación Loma Verde.jpg · Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: Several hundred thousand across Guinea's forest region and Liberia's Lofa county
Location: Macenta and N'Zérékoré in Guinea, Lofa and Bong counties in Liberia
Language: Loma (Toma, Löma)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Mande → Southwestern Mande
Traditional governance: Village and lineage elders with the Poro society holding decisive authority over law, initiation and the forest; two national administrations today.
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.
Guinean Toma
Communities of Macenta and the surrounding forest.
Liberian Loma
Lofa county communities, sharing the same institutions.
Related Southwestern Mande
Kpelle, Mende and Bandi neighbours with shared society structures.
Gallery
2 images
Culture
Clothing: Country cloth and printed cotton; Poro regalia including the great landai mask's fibre body; ceremonial gowns for elders.
Food: Upland and swamp rice, cassava, plantain, palm oil and forest produce; palm wine; the forest supplies medicine, meat and building material.
Ceremonies: Poro initiation over months in bush schools; the landai mask's appearance, understood as a forest power that swallows initiates and returns them as adults; funerals with masked performance.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth in rice, cloth and livestock; Poro completion required for men; clan exogamy.
Initiation rites: Poro bush school with seclusion, scarification, instruction in law, craft and the society's secrets, and a ritual death and rebirth staged through the landai.
Stories & Oral Literature
The Mask That SwallowsReligious tradition
The landai is a large horned mask with a crocodile jaw, understood as a forest spirit that swallows boys entering Poro and gives birth to them as men. The initiation scars are its teeth marks. The performance is not a metaphor for the community that stages it; the boys who go in are held to be dead until they come out.
A Script from a DreamLanguage history
In the 1930s Wido Zobo of Guinea devised a syllabary for Loma, reportedly after a dream, and it was taught in his circle and used for correspondence and record-keeping. It stands with Vai, N'Ko, Bassa and Mende among West Africa's indigenous scripts, a cluster of independent inventions in one region within a century.
Proverbs
“The forest gives and the forest keeps.”
Provision and danger together.
“What enters the bush school does not come out the same.”
Initiation as transformation.
“One tree does not make a forest.”
Collective necessity, shared across the region.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A high creator with forest powers beneath; the Poro society mediates between the village and those powers, and its authority is religious rather than merely social.
Beliefs: Poro and Sande societies; forest spirits embodied in masks; ancestor veneration; Christianity and Islam present, the societies continuing alongside.
Ancestors: Ancestors are the society's authority as much as the lineage's; the dead of Poro remain members.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The creator
Distant high god
Landai
Forest power of the Poro society, embodied in the horned mask
Ancestors
Consulted through elders and society officers
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of round houses with conical thatch behind fences; Poro grounds in the forest and strictly restricted; rice barns.
Building techniques: Wattle and daub with thatch; palm and raffia construction; mask carving and fibre costume as specialised crafts.
Village layout: Village around an open court, sacred grove and society ground apart in the forest, farms beyond.
Artifacts
Landai mask
Performance
Large horned Poro mask with crocodile jaw, central to initiation.
Loma syllabary documents
Language heritage
Texts in the script devised in the 1930s.
Poro regalia
Ritual
Restricted objects of the men's society.
Ziama-Massif forest
Heritage site
Guinean biosphere reserve of Upper Guinean rainforest in Toma country.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Southwestern Mande communities settle the forest region; Poro institutions consolidate.
1880s–1890s
Samori Touré's campaigns and then French conquest reach the forest.
1930s
The Loma syllabary is devised and taught.
1958–1984
Sékou Touré's government campaigns against masking societies as obscurantist; practice continues covertly.
1990s–2000s
Liberian and Sierra Leonean wars spill into the region; refugee movements reshape communities.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: LomaEncyclopaedia Britannica
- UNESCO: Ziama Biosphere ReserveUNESCO
Premium & scholarly sources