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Bondo Society

Bondo, sometimes used interchangeably with Sande, is a society exclusively for females in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and the borders of the Ivory Coast. Most women belonging to the ethnic groups of Temne, Mende, Vai, Kissi, Lele, Susu, Gola, Bassa, Kpelle, Bom, Belle, Gbandi, Loma, Dei, Kim, Kono, and others are initiated into a Bonde/Sande society. Bondo/Sande is an organization as well as a body of knowledge. A woman is initiated into the society and belongs to a chapter in her specific region. The expression “Where there are women, there is Bondo/Sande” denotes the devotion of women to the society. Initiation into Bondo/Sande is voluntary in contemporary times and may be necessary to become a successful female politician; but in earlier periods in West Africa, it would have been unthinkable for a woman not to be initiated into a Bondo/Sande society. This entry looks at the social context of initiation, the process, and its links to African religion.

Social Context

There are numerous responses of people to the environment in Africa, and everywhere one finds commonality in approaches to the divine, the society, and the ancestors. It is this commonality or African cultural unity that allows the great cultural multiplex to be examined from the standpoint of one general civilization. Examination of the basic tenets of African female societies reveals a common theme of metaphysically transforming young girls into beautiful, refined women.

Initiation into Bondo/Sande is psychologically and spiritually transformative. Females die into Sande/Bondo. This means that they give up the behaviors of children and assume roles and responsibilities of adult women in the community. The belief is that children are born in the physical realm and remain children until they complete the initiation ritual; therefore, girls ritually die as children and are reborn as adults. At the appropriate time in the initiation process, initiates are taken to the river and washed as a newborn baby, symbolic of new birth.

The girls are also given new names, symbolic of an individual's transformation into a higher being. As higher beings, young women are created to be finer, better people. The overarching ontological theme of initiation rites is metamorphic. One of the symbols on the mask used in the initiation ceremony is a butterfly, which symbolizes emergence from a lower being to an evolved higher being.

The Process

The transformation process begins in a section of the forest consecrated as the sacred forest. The campus is surrounded by a fence to ensure privacy. According to some scholars, the society is Sàndè, whereas the buildings and campus are the bàndà proper. New initiates enter and remain in the sacred forest for a period that can range from a few months to 1 year. The location is always near a river.

Water, trees, stones, the sacred forest, and other elements of nature are interconnected with the ritual of initiation. Water, for example, is regarded as the origin of life. The river is regarded as the place of crossing from the village to the forest and vice versa. Crossing the river relates to all sorts of crossings; in death, for example, the deceased is said to cross the river to the otherworld, or in the resurrection of the masked spirit of a-Nowo, who is fetched from beyond the water. A zigzag line, the hieroglyph for water all over Africa, is written on the forehead of the Nöwo mask.

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