To the heart also belongs “togu”. If people love you, value you, seek you, we say that this is due to your togu. There are people everyone wants to be with, not because of their wealth but for their company. We say that this is due to the blood in them, the bones in them, and the water that fills their whole body. The togu is like a force. The lack of this force is weakness. The togu is linked neither to wealth nor to beauty, it’s something else. Togu is in the heart, in the blood. If someone has good togu, we say he has good blood with people, warm blood. Togu is in the way one speaks. Togu is happiness because it grants love and the admiration of others. Togu always brings fruitfulness. The happiness of a person is in her charm, in her togu. Happy is the person who is admired and sought after. (1)

My name is Sogolon, the Buffalo Woman, the mother of Sundjata, the Lion King of Mali; I am a woman of great power and wisdom as I have the spirit of the buffalo within me and I am fortunately a woman with togu. May I take this opportunity to welcome you to West Africa.

Concerning our lineage, the first kings of Mali were not indigenous. They came from the East and were descendants of a faithful servant of the Prophet Muhammad. This lineage held the power and they were initiated into the arts of hunting and healing and through them their people conquered the neighboring lands and they became kings of the vast empire known as Mali (Malinke Empire). You will read more about my son in the legend to follow.

I am writing this book as a griot or djeli, an oral historian of Mali, West Africa. In this role I am a vessel of history and I hold in my mind the black beauty secrets of many centuries and the secrets of the universe; I intend to keep you busy looking, interpreting and exploring.

It has long been the role of the West African griot to preserve the community through the magic and powerful beauty of her art. It has also been part of the griot’s heritage to tell the authority figure, or the people at large, when their conduct is out of balance with the traditional ideals of respect for nature, for ancestors, for community, for future generations. My narratives, even when they appear on the surface to be straightforward chronicles or mythic tales, frequently serve as a disguised critique of current repressive regimes or indirect reminders that contemporary cultural and social practices have veered away from the traditional ideals of balance with and harmony within the natural world, the ancestral world, and the communal world. (2) The globalization tendencies of modern life are changing not only the roles of griots in African society, but threatening their very existence.

I am in the “Bright Country” my land is only a few degrees north of the equator, so it receives strong sunlight all year. Sunset and twilight are the most beautiful times to be in Africa, the time when the late afternoon sun transforms this tired brown land into the luminous colour of gold and then soft orange. A barely perceptible mist hovers just above the scrubby plain, just before darkness, the moment when the day turns its final corner into dusk, into a revelation of beauty. To the west of Mali is the Futa Djalon mountain range which is wet and cool and these characteristics may contribute to the rich source of gold hidden in the land. In the south, traversed by the Niger and Senegal rivers, are fertile areas where peanuts and rice are grown. Elsewhere my country is an arid desert and barely supports the grazing of cattle, sheep and goats. The Niger River is our wealth; it is an important transportation artery and a rich source of fish.

I am sitting under an enormous baobab tree with a bloated trunk and stubby, bristle-tipped branches. The baobab is a very useful tree for the people here; its inner bark can be twisted into rope and its fruit is ground into a cereal and made into candy which children adore. To my right are fields of cotton, what a thirsty crop this is and there are gigantic white calabashes lying in the fields as evidence. To my left are mango groves and plantations of neem, tamarind and kalia tea. The Malian herbal pharmacopoeia can be highly efficacious, as Western researchers have discovered. (3)

I am drinking a palm wine and I am wrapped in large shawl of bogolanfini also known as mud cloth, the traditional woven cloth from the countryside north of the Malian capital, Bamako. The colours are rich blacks, browns and whites with individual motifs of little stars. The black colour denotes seriousness and my union with ancestors; it also implies spiritual awareness. (4) The language of the weaving loom is a great lesson in philosophy. Everything speaks: the shuttle, the treadles, the thread on the weft, the reed, the roller, the warp beam etc. Each element represents one of the aspects of the play of cosmic life: creative world, dualism, the law of cycles, past, present and future, the rolling up of time, etc. While manipulating each part, the weaver chants or recites a precise litany because he knows that he touches one of the mysteries of life, in any case its symbol, which for him amounts to the same thing. (5)

We have a saying that one bracelet cannot make a noise and so I have eight metal bracelets on my right wrist which jangle harmoniously as I move my arm. Metal is believed to contain nyama or a life force and it is considered powerful for medicinal amulets. (6) This perception of a sacred force within all things received the name ‘animism’ from Western ethnologists because our black people attribute a soul to everything (7)
The existence of a “Supreme Being” indefinable and living “in the heavens” is found among the majority of religious traditions in black Africa in general.
Amandou Hampâté Bâ

My hair, neck and arms are adorned in brightly coloured beads with an emphasis upon the golden amber from Mali. The beads have been used to create objects which represent a spiritual value for the survival of the community. These objects play an essential role in rituals to ensure the continuity of the group, birth, marriage and death. In societies like mine, without the written word, art objects acquire vital importance as visual documents and serve to transmit traditional knowledge. They represent a dense concentration of ancestral wisdom which has to be preserved and passed down to the following generations.

My hairstyle is a complicated affair and my hairdresser has spent hours creating what is called a Korbo-Tyirey reserved for married women. The creation is made up of fibred braids from a palm tree, with a braid on the front of the head, a half circle at each temple and another at the nape of the neck. To emphasize my braids, my cowry shell earrings dangle from each ear, yet remain partially hidden too. Our hairstyles are fascinating, rich in symbolism and are indeed masterpieces of artistic creation which I will elaborate upon later. (8)

My face is glowing, it is beautiful and clear and yet, you may be surprised at the deep scarring on my cheeks. The dark pigmentation of my people has been responsible for the sculptural cicatrisation, rather than the tattoo. For women the body scars are regarded as a beauty necessity, if for example a husband refuses to pay for a scarring specialist, a woman may seek a lover who is willing to do so. The personal art of young women is rigidly structured about physiological changes and reproductive capacities, and rigidly fixed on the body with scarification. I will introduce you to more of these techniques as my story unfolds. (9)

Hidden in my wrap around white skirt (white is typically used for story telling) (10) is a talisman that we call a gris-gris this is an amulet that both protects me from evil and brings luck. My gris-gris is a small cloth bag and inside is an alchemical mixture of herb, oils, stones, bones, hair, nails and other personal items. (11)

The main ethnic groups are the Bambara, Marka, Songhai, and Malinke, who are chiefly farmers and fishermen, and the Fulani and Tuareg, who are pastoralists. About 90% of the population is Muslim; most of the remainder follow traditional religions. While French is the official language, Bambara is spoken by 80% of the population and there also many other African tongues. (12)

My Malinke people organize the practice of their religion within “secret societies.” The most powerful of these societies is called Komo and they are all men, except for female sorcerers who possess special knowledge that allows them to use spiritual powers as both positive and negative means. Islam first reached West Africa south of the Sahara in the ninth century AD thanks to the arrival of traders from the north. Traders found Islam useful because it provided them with a common language and gave them access to assistance from other Muslims wherever they went. However, African leaders were slow to convert to Islam because conversion threatened to undermine the traditional religion upon which their leadership was based. Today the Komo continue to flourish alongside Islam. (13)

The farmers are the largest part of Malinke society; they work the land and provide the basis for the rest of society. Then there are the semi-nomadic pastoralists who support themselves by herding animals. There are also several hereditary castes; the head of the Komo society is a member of the caste of blacksmiths. The smiths, who possess the secret knowledge of metal-working, are generally considered the most powerful caste. The other important castes include people like me, the griots, leatherworkers, pottery makers and fishermen. (14)

The family is the essential element in Malinke society as it produces new life, it is led by elders, and it provides a means to connect every individual to the group as a whole. Men and women have very precisely defined roles. Women are responsible for raising the children, cooking and raising the livestock. Men provide the millet for the meal, maintain the structure of the house and handle the relations with other families. As Malinke society is polygamous, children are identified by their mother since many children can have the same father. (15)

When my son was alive, slaves existed. Most often they were war captives or they were people who could be enslaved by someone to whom they owed wealth or service, or because they had lost the rest of their family through a tragedy. Slavery was more humane and was often a means to connect individuals to a family where no biological marriage connection existed. (16)

Mali may have a warming climate, an exploding population and dwindling resources yet it is rich in the art of body adornment. Clothing and body adornment are a universal and highly personal form of expression. They offer women an opportunity to shape their presentation of self to the world. Whether created on the body (scarification, hairstyles) or for the body (garments, jewelry), these art forms are important and highly developed in my country. So, now let me divulge many of my symbolic and sophisticated black, beauty secrets to you, dear reader.

When we are tuned to the universal we shall have earned the right to call ourselves human beings and be worthy of our place in the concert of nations.

Amadou Hampâte Bâ

You can find more info on the website fengshui-monaco.org