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Divination among the Lobi of Burkina Faso |
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This essay discusses the Lobi diviner of Burkina Faso, his calling, practice, and position in Lobi society. After describing the divination method used almost exclusively by the Lobi, I discuss the most typical reasons for seeking out a diviner and the most important results of a consultation. The Lobi system, in the quantity and quality of information it conveys, may well be unique in Africa, but until now the only available description of it was a cursory treatment by Labouret (1931: 449-65). |
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Inhabiting the savannahs of the tri-country corner made up of Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Ghana, the Lobi are hoe farmers, living primarily on millet and corn and carrying on small-scale breeding of cattle. The majority (57 percent) of the 160,000 Lobi live in the southwestern tip of Burkina Faso, while 40 percent live in neighboring Ivory Coast. As a result of repression by the French colonial government in the 1930s, five thousand Lobi fled to the Black Volta area in Ghana and settled there. |
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The Lobi speak a Voltaic language, Lobiri. It is similar to the language spoken to the west by the neighboring Dian but quite different from the languages of the Lobi's eastern neighbors, the Birifor, Dagara Lobr, and Dagara Wile, who belong to the Voltaic More group (Köhler 1975:187).
2 The Lobi are, however, culturally related to the Birifor, Dagara Lobr, and Dagara Wile, as well as to the Dian and the neighboring Tegessie. They all have a bilineal mode of descent, for example, and are politically acephalous. Nevertheless, cultural differences from area to area, even within linguistic groups, are very large and cannot be ignored. For this reason I will concentrate my remarks on a single Lobi subgroup, the one that speaks the Tyollo dialect and lives in the Wourbira area of Burkina Faso. |
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