MUS2026-175 - museum specimen
Kouroumba / Yoro
Mali - Yoro - Mopti region - French Sudan - Africa
Play / practical
atongu French / Kouroumba term
Source term: Rhombe
atongu: vernacular name for the complete boat/toy object; no literal gloss recovered
At Yoro, boys made the bamboo atongu in the dry season. The hollow little object could be a boat and a toy on the ground, then take another life in the air as they whirled it overhead. It was part of children's play, not the community's circumcision rites.
Les enfants le font tournoyer au-dessus de leur tete et s'en servent aussi comme d'un rhombe.
The children whirl it above their heads and also use it as a bullroarer.
Musee du quai Branly object 71.1939.39.30
- Object
- Hollow bamboo-stem boat/toy form, 29 x 2.4 x 2.2 cm and 12 g; the exact photograph shows one cord attached at an end.
- Function
- Made by boys during the dry season, whirled above the head, and also used as a bullroarer; explicitly not used at circumcision.
- Map confidence
- high - Modern Yoro settlement center represented by OpenStreetMap node 1703672511 and GeoNames 2448449; not a household or exact collection point.
- Source location
- object 71.1939.39.30; collected by the 1938-1939 Mission Lebaudy-Griaule / Niger-Lac Iro
- Toy / secular survival