Baga

The Baga-speaking people live in Guinea. They include the Baga, Landuma, and Nalu. As people of the southern swampy lands of the low coast, between the sea and Conakry, the Baga are an [Page 87]important agricultural people. They are rice growers who have occupied the coastal area for many centuries. In fact, the low coast, named for the fact that one cannot tell from the air where the water ends and the land begins, is a region of palm groves, salt ponds, and rice fields.

Although the Baga culture has been in flux for many years because of the inroads being made on their land by Fula and Susu cultures, as well as by Christian and Moslem missionaries, there are still elders who retain an attachment ...