Bozo Nouhoun-Bozo boys' rhombe

Source term: rhombe / bull-roarer

Before they were circumcised, Bozo boys ran societies of their own. One held its feasts out on a sandbank in the Niger, and the whirr of its bullroarers, carved from the fibrous leaf stalks of the borassus palm, carried back into the village; the old men, it was said, were not allowed to attend or even to know what went on. These boys' leagues led on to the Diarra, the society of grown men, whose thicket shrines kept wooden bullroarers beside a drum sometimes more than two metres long. At Sirano-korro they told how the Diarra once lived in a house in town, until a fire caught it and the women jeered that he was only wood and straw. The real Diarra fled into the river. He stays down there, surfacing now and then, and guards the fishing people against crocodiles and hippos. This slim curved blade, incised with geometric motifs filled in black, was a boys' plaything at Nouhoun-Bozo, in the Mopti region of central Mali.

Ce bâtonnet vibrant n'a aucune signification sacrée et était utilisé comme jouet par les jeunes garçons.

This buzzing stick has no sacred significance and was used as a plaything by young boys.

Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA/AfricaMuseum), object record MO.1965.17.11

Particulars

Object

Slightly curved decorated wooden bull-roarer with cord from Nouhoun-Bozo, Mopti Region (RMCA MO.1965.17.11).

Function

A boys' toy. Bozo boys' societies sounded bullroarers at their feasts on river sandbanks before circumcision.