Lebere’s rhombe, lent and never returned

Dwo

Source term: rhombe

Lebere Dwo: a figure of the Bobo god Dwo first revealed at Lebere. Byépla, Byétale, Wurozolo: its three red-fibre masks, “two horns,” “one horn” and “rain from the sky.” rhombe: French for bullroarer.

Out in the bush, an ancestor began to hollow a cathedral-shaped termite mound for a shelter, as Bobo farmers still sometimes do to guard far-off fields. Inside he found a rhombe, then the woven heads of three masks: first Byépla, “two horns,” then Byétale, “one horn,” and last Wurozolo, “rain from the sky,” a mask that dances even in a downpour. All three were dressed entirely in red fibre. Their finding came at the moment a taboo of Kwele Dwo was broken, and it began the cult of Lebere Dwo, one of the god’s oldest. A Lebere rhombe also gave a clan its motto. The smiths of Kuka once lent theirs to the village’s land-chiefs, the Sanu of the eagle, who never gave it back, and the land-chiefs’ own motto still says so: “Bad returner, he takes a thing to look at and never gives it back!”

Mauvais rendeur, il prend une chose pour regarder et ne la redonne plus !

Bad returner, he takes a thing to look at and never gives it back!

Motto of the Sanu (eagle), in Guy Le Moal, Les Bobo (1980), p. 308

Particulars

Object

An iron rhombe of Lebere Dwo: a long narrow blade pierced near both ends.

Function

Sacred body of Lebere Dwo, found with the cult’s three red-fibre masks inside a termite mound; a Lebere rhombe lent by the Kuka smith lineage to the village land-chiefs was never returned.