Our Culture
Introduction / History
You may have already met a fellow Djola and didn’t even know it. They were among the peoples taken captive and sold into slavery. They are called one of the indigenous people of the world. They were farmers and when the slae trade began they were among the first to be captured. The women were taken as wives and doestic servants to the Mande, the Jesuits, Portugese and other African colonist.The Djolas were prized for their ability to grow rice and later cotton as well, one of the staple crops in the southern United States. Before the British and the American colonists were engaged in this trade, the Spanish and Portuguese were taking Djola people captive to work their mines in South America and cotton sugar plantations in Cape Verde.
In the 1880s Djolas were engaged in palm wine tapping, and by 1900 they were more likely to be found growing peanuts as a cash crop. They also grew sweet potatoes, watermelon, and rice, while others raised cattle and other livestock. There was a great market for their products during WWII.
Where Are they Located?
Most Djola peoples live in Senegal, but many also live in the countries surrounding Senegal including Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, and Guinea. In Guinea Bissau they were living in the land called Bolor along the cacheu river by the arrival of the Portuguese. They moved there from Gambia due to wars Mande Songhai territorial occupation and population growths.
The people who speak the Bayote Jola dialect live in villages which border Senegal and The Gambia. This is the most divergent of the Djola dialects. The population living in Guinea Bissau has been assimulated by the Mande and Djola/Fulup they live in Suzana in a Arame village where as for hundreds of years they have live with the Fulup. So they are now called Djola Fulup as a whole, however they do know the differences among them. They still reside relatively in the same area they were living sense the 1400’s and earlier.
What Are Their Lives Like?
Like the other Djola peoples, the Djola-Bayote Fulup are most likely to be farmers who earn their living by raising crops and livestock.
What Are Their Beliefs?
There is some Islamic influence among the Djola peoples, but on a practical level, they are mostly animistic. They use charms and sacred objects to communicate with the spirit world, in hopes that the spirits will protect their families, villages and crops. They also believe these spirits will protect them from converting to Islam or Christianity.
Funerals are very important to the Djola-Bayote Fulup people. They believe that the deceased will join their ancestors. It is very important to perform the correct funeral rites, so that the soul will enter the presence of the creator, Ata Amit, and the ancestors. They believe in living a moral life, because if you live a bad life, your soul will become an exile spirit that roams with no resting place.
Music
Ekonting
An Ekonting
The ekonting is a three-string gourd instrument, the folk lute of the Jola people. It has an internal pass through body dowel stick with a round gourd body and its sound box is made of a hemispherical calabash, with a nailed goatskin. Before the invention of nails, palm tree thorns or wood pegs were used as nails. The three strings, which are attached to a long neck, today are nylon fishing line. Before, they were made of palm tree roots (Jola language: kuhall kata kubekel). The neck is a bamboo stick (Mandinka language: bangoe) that passes through the calabash to the other side. A hole is made in the sound box to allow the sound to escape. The bridge of the ekonting is not fixed to its skin as many lutes are. It is free, and can be moved back and forth on the skin of the sound box and it is always held in position by the pressure of the strings when it is in playing position.
Galire
The galire is a one-string instrument of the Jola of Thionck-Essyl, with its strings stretched across a single 1 meter curve made of fine mangrove wood. At first sight, it looks like a hunter's bow. It's played with one hand holding a flexible fine string (made of palm leaves) beating on the arc's string, while the other hand holds one end of the arc and adjusts the tune with the thumb. The other end of the arc rests in the mouth of the player, who sings. The vibration from the player's song on the string of the arc and the beating with the fine flexible string leads to the pleasant and characteristic sound of the galire.
The exile of young people to cities has led to the stark decline in usage of this traditional instrument among the Jola people of Casamance and the Gambia.
Other musical instruments
Below is a list of few Jola instruments. Note: The Jola language of Thionck Essyl is used to name them. Their names may differ somewhat in other villages' languages.
Bakiti: like two maracas without the handle attached with one cord
Ediando: used by the women during initiation dances
Efemme: a calebasse reversed in a container full of water. Used by woman to improvise for or replace a drum when it's raining.
Elere
Emombi: used only during initiation - sacred and rarely seen - once each 20 to 30 years
Ewang: used during male initiation
Fouindoum: drum used during initiation
The origin of the Jolas
According to Senegambian oral history, the Jola ethnic group is among the ethnic groups who have been longest resident in the Senegambian region. The Jolas for centuries continued to hold their ancestral African beliefs about the sacredness of the earth and the divine energy found in certain rocks and trees. They express their religion and beliefs in song and dance as well as in shrines, which is called "Bakin". The Jolas developed a high concept of one god, which they called Ata Amit A Luuke (Meaning God the supreme being).
It is sad to note that many people do not still know how long the Jola culture existed in the Senegambian region. Though the origin of the Jolas is still unknown, it is now confirmed by both oral and written history that they are the people who have been longest resident in the Gambia and among the indigenous people of the Senegambian region. The Jolas have developed a culture of acceptance of other cultures but not acceptance to change their own culture; they are one of few ethnic groups that have managed to keep its culture intact.
The Jola Cassa
The Jolas are called Bachuki by the Manjago ethnic group, another ethnic group that also was among the first settlers. Bachuki in Manjago means first. To the Manjago it means the Jolas were the first settlers they know in the region. Of all the sub groups of the Jola people today, it is the Jola Cassas that still maintain 99 percent of all the old Jola traditional ways of doing things, still reject Islam and Christianity, and only a few of them go to church.
Most of the Jola Cassa who go to church to day do so because if they don’t, their children would find it hard to secure a place in the Christian schools. African governments have no funds to build schools all over their countries. Most of the schools in remote places of Africa are built by the catholic mission. There is no place in the Casamance where you will find Jola holy places of worship (Bakin) more than where the Jola Cassa lives. In fact, the most famous Jola holy shrines are in Samatit (called Kalemaku), and in Hasuka and in Mlomp (called Husana) and the people who run them are all Jola Cassas.
The Jola Community
The Jolas are found in great numbers on the Atlantic coast between the southern banks of the Gambia River, the Casamance region of Senegal (Southern Senegal), and the northern part of Guinea-Bissau. Unlike most of the ethnic groups of the Senegambian region, the Jola ethnic group is not hierarchal. That is it has no class system in its social institutions, like griots, slaves, nobles, leather workers, etc.
Their communities way of settlement are based on the extended family settlement, that are normally large enough to be given independence and names of their own. Names like Jola Karon, Jola Mlomp, Jola Elinnkin, Jola Caginol, Jola Huluf, Jola Jamat, Jola Bayot, Jola Kabrouse, and Jola Foni etc (See article Patience Sonko-Godwin)
Economics and Craftsmanship
Although Jolas have a lot of traditional economic activities like fishing, farming groundnuts, taping palm wine, processing palm oil, just to name a few, their most intensive economic activity is rice cultivation. They had this knowledge long before the first European (the Portuguese) came to their region. This work activity (rice cultivation) is tied up closely to their religion and their social organisations. They have a good knowledge of animal husbandry and do raise a lot of different animals like cows, pigs, goats, chickens, sheep and ducks.
In the area of craftsmanship, the Jolas have a great variety of craft knowledge like weaving baskets, pottery, and house building. Jolas are also palm oil manufacturers and great palm wine tapers in the Senegambian region. The Jolas are able herbal medicine practitioners. Their high adaptation to the nature and environment made them to be able to create musical centred civilisation, natural medicine centred civilisation, and most important of all rice cultivation centred civilisation which they do effectively by using a locally made farming tool called the Kajandu.
The religious intervention
Unlike most of the rest of the ethnic groups of the Senegambia, the Jolas were highly resistante to change or to influence of other cultures or religions. The Jolas are among the sizable population in Senegambia virtually untouched by Islam and Christianity. Many of them still hold to the tradition of worship. Even though some Jolas accepted Islam in the end (Soninke-Marabout war), they still honour their traditional way of using palm wine when performing their important rituals.
The Jolas have a concept of one God that they associated with the natural phenomena like sky and rain. They call this one god Amit (God) or Ata Amit (the Almighty God). (See article J. David Sapir) However, like any other religion, the Jolas have charms or sacred forests and sacred lands which they honour and worship as supernatural spirits that can protect their families, their villages, their rice fields, and even protect them from conversion to Islam and Christianity. These supernatural spirits are called Bakin (Mandinka Jalang).
Unfortunately people who don't understand how Jolas pray and relate to their God think that the Jolas have no God but spirits, because they offer sacrifices to the Bakin. But the Jola knows the difference between his/her God (Ata Amit) and the Bakin.
Jolas believed strongly in living a good humanistic life in this world. They believe that if one lives a bad life in this world when the person dies the soul of the dead person is punished to become an exile spirit and with no bed to lie on (In Jola Cassa this exile spirit is called A Holowa). This exile spirit becomes a roaming spirit with no respect from the other spirits.
All Jolas, before the influence of Islam and Christianity in their ways of beliefs, placed great respect in the proper observation of funeral ceremony, and still today some do, for they are of the belief that it enables the dead person’s soul to go to its final destination, (his or her ancestors). It was and still is strongly accepted by those Jolas who still practise their ancestral religion that without performing these funeral sacred rites, the soul is prevented from entering the presence of the creator (Ata Amit), and the ancestors.
The political system
Like most of the indigenous ethnic groups of the Senegambian region, the Pepel, the Manjago, the Balanta, the Konyagi etc, the Jola ethnic group did not develop a political scale that expanded beyond village level compared to ethnic groups that migrated to the region like the Sonikes and the Mandingos. But this does not mean they did not develop a sophisticated political system.
The egalitarian nature of their societies, structured around the limited village environment gave them the possibilities to develop a political system based on collective consciousness, which they worked through their initiation rites. In a sense the Jolas political achievement in the village was representative socialism based on leadership among equals. It was totally tied to their religious belief (Bakin). This political achievement to any one who knows politics is not easy to reach if the society that runs it does not have well defined rules of administration and penalties.
* A more extensive material on the Jola Community will be available in a few years time
when I hope to have finished my dissertation “The Senegambia Akonting and the Origin
of the New World Gourd Banjo
