Bobo

The Bobo people are part of the Mande-speaking people who live in the western part of Burkina Faso of West Africa north of the Republic of Ghana and in Mali. They have lived in the western region of Burkina Faso and Mali for centuries, [Page 129]dating as far back as 800 AD. Their close neighbors are the Senufo, Bamana, Lobi, and Bwa.

The interesting aspects of the Bobo culture concern the art they produce, their clothing, and the unique principles of their religion. They make masks from leaves, fibers, cloth, and wood and costumes from leaves and fibers; both are used for many different rituals in their religion and in festivities.

The Bobo are spiritual in orientation. For the Bobo, God manifests in two aspects in balance. They believe in God the Creator whom they call Wuro. According to the Bobo, Wuro, the Creator, cannot be physically represented because it does not have a form and, for the same reason, cannot be described in words. Wuro is the wise entity responsible for ordering all things in the world into pairs or binaries that must always remain balanced. Human beings have the tendency to upset this balance. However, the balance can be restored through a series of offerings to pacify Wuro.

The second aspect of God is Dwo, who communicates with humans and is revealed during masking ceremonies. Dwo enters a mask, and when that mask is worn, his spirit possesses the spirit of the wearer who is then able to communicate to others in accordance with Dwo's will. Thus, for the Bobo, the God head is a pair, Wuro and Dwo; because these two are always in balance, they cannot be separated. The same entity manifests as Wuro and Dwo, and these two are always in balance. The same God who created all things in balanced pairs possesses humans and communicates with humans as Dwo.

Politically, the Bobo people have a decentralized structure similar to that of the Ga people of southern Ghana. However, unlike the Ga people, the idea of placing political power in the hands of an individual called a chief is foreign to the consensually oriented Bobo people. The various towns and villages are independent, with the decentralized power sharing at the town or village levels based on relationship among individual patrilineages. Thus, each Bobo village is basically autonomous and is organized according to this relationship among individual patrilineages. There is no overarching centralized authority that can dictate to or control the Bobo people under a common political umbrella from above. However, horizontal exchange of views and advice among villages and towns is common. Their consensual democracy may be said to be decentralized.

The Bobo people are very good farmers; their major crops are red sorghum, pearl millet, yams, and maize. They also cultivate cotton as cash crop, which they sell to various textile mills.