In the granite hills of southeastern Senegal, the Bassari, Fula and Bedik peoples maintain a way of life that survived the great Sahelian empires, Islamic jihad states and French colonial rule largely intact. Inscribed by UNESCO in 2012, Bassari Country is valued above all for this unbroken cultural continuity.
At a glance
Bassari Country lies in the Kédougou Region of southeastern Senegal, in the granite highlands of the Fouta Djallon range, and extends into northern Guinea-Bissau. It takes its name from the Bassari, the original inhabitants of these hills, who share the landscape with the pastoral, Muslim Fula and with the smaller Bedik people. The Bassari have no chiefs or kings; authority rests with lineage elders and an age-grade system. The Fula arrived later, bringing Islam and settled village life. The Bedik village of Iwol, at roughly 600 metres, is the highest permanently inhabited point in Senegal.
Key facts
- Location: Kédougou Region, southeastern Senegal, extending into northern Guinea-Bissau
- Peoples: Bassari, Fula and Bedik
- UNESCO status: inscribed World Heritage Site, 2012 (Bassari, Fula and Bedik Cultural Landscapes)
- Signature event: the ekorr, the Bassari male initiation ceremony, held at irregular intervals
- Villages of note: Ethiolo, Dindéfelo, Salemata, and Iwol among the Bedik
History
The Bassari’s history is marked by sustained independence. While the Mali, Songhai and Jolof empires expanded across the wider Senegambia region, the Bassari held their granite highlands. From the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Fula Islamic reformers established theocratic states across the Sahel, including the Futa Jallon Imamate and the Toucouleur Empire of El Hadj Umar Tall, and repeatedly sought to convert and incorporate the Bassari. They resisted, keeping their animist beliefs centred on nature spirits, ancestors and age-grade ceremony.
French colonial administration reached Kédougou at the start of the twentieth century and tried more than once to suppress the initiation ceremonies, which it regarded as incompatible with colonial order. The Bassari kept the ceremonies alive by conducting them in secret.
What you see
Bassari villages are built to a circular plan, with clusters of round mud-and-stone houses roofed in thatch arranged around a central open-air dance ground, a layout that mirrors the social structure of the community. Each family group has its own cluster of dwellings and a raised granary that keeps grain clear of rodents.
On the steep granite hillsides, stone-edged terraces are still worked by hand with simple iron tools, growing millet, sorghum, groundnuts, sweet potato and fonio, a fine-grained cereal native to West Africa. Iron-smelting survives too: specialised Bassari lineages smelt local ore with charcoal and bellows to produce tools and ritual objects that are traded across the region.
The sacred grove behind each village, where ekorr initiation takes place, is forbidden to outsiders while ceremonies are under way. What visitors may see is the public conclusion of the initiation, a celebration in which newly initiated men dance in ekorr masks: carved wooden faces marked with spiral and striped patterns, worn with body costumes of natural fibre, leaves, feathers and shells. Some of the masks kept by the lineages are said to be centuries old.
Practical information
- Access: there is no direct flight to Kédougou; travellers reach it from Dakar by overnight bus, shared bush taxi (sept-place) or hired car, and should check current timetables and operators locally rather than relying on fixed schedules
- Accommodation: Kédougou has a handful of simple guesthouses, or campements, several of them family-run and able to arrange guides for the Bassari villages
- Guides: visiting the villages without a local guide, usually a Bassari man familiar with the customs, is not advisable
- Conduct: villages may close to visitors when sacred activities are under way, and photography of any ceremony requires the explicit permission of village elders
Getting there
Kédougou, the regional capital, is the gateway to Bassari Country and lies some 680 kilometres from Dakar. From there, the villages of Ethiolo, Dindéfelo and Salemata are reached by road with a local guide, who will also know whether a village is open to visitors at the time.
Nearby
- Niokolo-Koba National Park — about 100 km north; Senegal’s largest national park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981, home to lions, leopards, African wild dogs, western chimpanzees and the Derby’s eland, the world’s largest antelope and a critically endangered species
- Dindéfelo Waterfall — about 30 km southeast of Kédougou; a roughly 100-metre waterfall reached on foot through Bassari villages, terraced farmland and sacred grove country, with a swimming hole at its base
Sources
- Wikipedia, Bassari people; Pays Bassari; Kédougou
- UNESCO, Bassari Country: Bassari, Fula and Bedik Cultural Landscapes, WHS reference 1369
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