by Mathew Swora
October 16, 2018
The title of this post is a polite Jula language phrase that a guest says to his or her host after coming to visit and giving other greetings and blessings. The host says, “Give something” (by way of news or information) to which the visitor says, “Nothing evil; greetings only.” Then another round of of blessings and words of appreciation from the hosts begins, before you get down to any other business for which you might have come.
In this blog thread I’ll be giving you some information about the place and the people whom some of us will visit next month in Burkina Faso, particularly, in the Province of Kénédougou.
Straddling both sides of the border of Mali and Burkina Faso, just to the north of where those borders now touch Ivory Coast, was once the historic kingdom of Kénédougou, which in the Jula language means “healthy land.” Travel there from any direction and you’ll notice a change in elevation and landforms from the lower and drier plains to the north, east and west, and from the lower, more humid forests and jungles to the south, in Ivory Coast. That gives this region an unmistakably unique microclimate and culture. It’s like going from the plains of the Texas Panhandle to the hills of northern New Mexico.
This is also the region whose peoples resisted both Islamic jihads and French colonization the longest and the hardest, though Islamic and French influences have filtered in over the years, through commerce and colonization. On both sides of the border, Kénédougou as a culture, a history and a tradition remain common features in the cultures and histories of numerous tribes living there (Senufo, Samogo, Bwamu, Fulani, Jula and Siamou, et al). On the Burkinabe side of the border, Kénédougou endures as the official name of the province. Otherwise, culturally, tribally and historically, the border between that part of Mali and Burkina Faso, as in much of Africa, is only a fiction, and a recent one at that.
This is of more than passing interest to North Americans. Many of our African-American friends, neighbors and family members have ancestors from the region of Kénédougou, because it was raided by coastal African tribes to procure slaves for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. War, raiding and the enslavement of captives was long a part of African history. But those captives who found themselves chained together on ships crossing the sea, and on auction blocks in the Western hemisphere, would have been horrified at finding themselves and their descendants enslaved for life, with no hope of redemption, release or integration into their new setting, and just because of the color of their skin.
The diaspora of Kénédougou and Sub-Saharan West Africa contributed much to the cultures and countries of the Western Hemisphere. This is especially notable in the customs, cuisine, music and religions of Latin America and the Caribbean Island nations, like Haiti and Cuba. Some influences are also evident in North America as well, such as in the participatory nature of African-American oratory, in the rhythms and harmonies of blues, jazz, Dixieland, and rock-and-roll music, in Cajun and Southern American cuisine, in some proverbs, and in folk tales (“B’rer Rabbit” and “B’rer Fox” are almost identical to West African trickster tales, such as those about the rabbit and the hyena). Imagine newly-arrived African slaves of different tribes on the same plantation trying to find ways of communicating with each other, and it is easy to see how some African words would enter their lingo, and from there into standard American English. The Jula phrase, “o ka nyi” is the most likely source of our phrase, “okay;” the meaning and use are nearly identical in each language.
This region is also the fruit basket of Burkina Faso, kicking out several varieties of mangoes, oranges, grapefruit, guava, papaya, and nuts like cashews, in quality and quantities surpassing other parts of West Africa. And yet, as in the rest of West Africa, poverty is endemic. The province’s main export is still labor. Young people often leave to work the cocoa, pineapple and cotton plantations in Ivory Coast and Ghana. The Jula people of this region also predominate in trade across the region, so much so that the name “Jula” is synonymous with “merchant.” Their language and religion, Islam, have spread along with their trading networks, so that people of different tribes and maternal languages speak Jula with each other in the market, or the mosque, or on the road. While developing Bible translations and worship resources in their maternal languages, Christians of the region also use Jula in intertribal, multi-lingual gatherings and settings.