Keepers of the Seeds: the Bijagó women of Guinea Bissau

Although there are many matrilineal customary systems in Africa, the Bijagos islands holds a special place. It is a matriarchal society where women occupy prominent positions from the gods and the myth and symbolisms about how the earth was created all the way down to how the family unit works. It is a truly remarkable civilisation that has resisted numerous external pressures (the Sahel kingdoms, colonialism, capitalism and the war of liberation) without losing its core foundational principles. Capitalism may eventually tear their social fabric apart. But for now, they are still going strong.

The Bijagos are an archipelago of about 88 islands located off the coast of Guinea Bissau in West Africa. The archipelago has a diverse ecosystem with mangroves, palm forests, savannah and semi-dry forests. It is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The entire coastline all the way to Senegal has many UNESCO protections because the entire area is a sanctuary for marine turtles and migratory sea birds.

Senegal recently started pumping oil in the Sangomar Delta a few hundred kilometres up north and a number of companies that are prospecting just off the Bijagos also hope to find oil. These events could do untold damage to the Bijagós environment and way of life.

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Origins

According to Bijagó cosmogony, the first human being on earth was a woman called Okanto or Akapakama. Akapakama married Obide, the first man, and gave birth to four girls, Orákuma, Ogubane, Ominka and Oraga. Each one of them received special powers to help protect and grow the community. Orakuma was given control of the land. She oversaw the growth of the Bijagós along with its customs, beliefs and traditions. She made the first portable shrine, which the Bijagó call Iran, to represent their creator. Ogubane was given command over rain and wind. As you can imagine, she is the patron of farming and providing the community with food and sustenance. Ogubane is believed to determine when the rainy and dry seasons start and end. Ominka inherited the sea and the fisherfolk ask her for protection and abundance when they take to sea. Oraga was given power over nature and its diversity of flora and fauna. All Bijagó clans trace their lineage back to one of these four lineages.  

The Bijagós all believe in supreme beings called Motó (the goddess) and Nindo (god). However, they also believe that the energy of these gods exist everywhere, that there is life force and energy in the plants and animals around us. Accordingly, they pray to these different energies known as Eramindé for healing, protection, abundant harvests, children, permission to build a house, everything. They believe that these spirits watch over them and guide them all the time. Families usually have a shrine or balboa in the house. Offerings of palm oil and other gifts are made to the family deity when prayers are made.

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Culture

From the story of the Bojagós’ origin, it is easy to see that women play a powerful role in the society. Here, it is women who choose the person that they want to get married to and initiate courtship. Women choose their partners based their strength and ability to take care of the family. When a woman is interested in a man, she prepares a meal of fish and palm oil stew and invites him over. Women are also in charge of building the house that they will live in. If a marriage is not working, the women will throw the man’s things out of her house.

Women play a prominent role in choosing the village chiefs and ensuring that they are descended from the right bloodline. The chiefs have the responsibility of ensuring that the villages are safe. They ensure that the fire that they are given on the day of their enthronement never goes out. The women make sure that chiefs do not get out of control by participating in the village council.

Men have a role to play in the archipelago. The Bijagó have found the right balance that works for them. The men prepare the fields for sowing. They climb up the tall palm trees to bring down the palm fruit. Palm trees are very important to the Bijagós because palm oil is needed for cooking, offering sacrifices and performing dozens of different rituals that people do all the time. Men hunt or fish to bring food home.

Farm work is often done together. Each family takes turns to invite the entire village to help with the work. No cash payments are made for this. This practise helps to complete in one day what it would ordinarily take an individual farmer months to achieve. Every villager gets a turn to invite the rest of the community, so it is all fair and honest. The rice fields are away from the villages. Closer to home, women can also produce other crops like bananas, beans, potatoes and corn. Some families rear pigs. Young girls are usually given a small plot of land to grow their own food. After initiation, they get a bigger plot that can feed the entire family.

Not all the Bijagós are inhabited. Some islands have been deliberately left untouched because the Bijagó believe that their spirits live there. Bijagós believe in reincarnation. They believe that death lasts only a short time. After that, the spirit goes to the protected areas where they dwell forever.

Like many African communities, the Bijagós also have initiation ceremonies to mark the official transition from girls and boys to men and women. Festivals are organised to offer prayers, finalise advice to the youth and then perform the rituals confirming that they are now adults. Unlike the rest of West Africa, the Bijagós do not practise female genital mutilation. Some would say that this comes as no surprise in a matriarchal society where women are in charge and make sensible decisions about their bodies. Instead, each girl gets geometric scarification on their stomach. Being tough enough to go through the scarification process is a sign that one is ready to be a woman.

During the initiation season, boys and girls go to different forests for an extended period. They are taught about their customs and the roles that have to be performed as adults. The young people have to obey all orders as given. Initiation ends with a big celebration. The girls don headgear and dance in a style that mimics the behaviour of goats. This is to symbolise youthfulness and ignorance. Later, the dance changes and their dance steps become more assured, forceful and assertive. This is the dance of the adult cow, a sign that the girls have shed their youth and adopted more powerful personas. Boys wear zoomorphic masks representing different energies.

A rich culture of seed sharing and storing

The Bijagós is one of those places where the general trend of men controlling all the valuables in the home is turned on its head. The women are in charge of the granaries and household supplies. The women argue that men are too irresponsible to assume this responsibility.

Bijagós women have singlehandedly ensured the survival of many varieties of indigenous crops. African rice (Oryza Glaberrima) in indigenous to West Africa and the Bijagó have been growing it for centuries. They still have some of the oldest varieties of the crop that they have carefully passed down from generation to generation. The fertile soils of West Africa, from Casamance in Senegal all the way to Liberia still have fairly stable rainfall suitable for rice cultivation. This ensures that the Bijagós always have abundant harvests of their staple food. However, the region has warmed a bit in recent times. If this trend continues, it would spell disaster for the archipelago.

Women keep many varieties of pumkin, green leaves, beans, tomatoes, yams, cucumbers, aubergines, millets, fonio, maize, potatoes and cassava. They carefully dry the seeds and store them for the planting season or to exchange with other women. A unique tradition among the Bijagó is the practise of putting a layer of mud on the walls of their homes and then spreading seeds over them. The mud dries up quickly and the seeds cannot germinate. This protects them from insects.

Some villages have seed sharing associations. They gather and swap seeds to ensure the survival of different plant varieties on the archipelago. Whenever they have bountiful harvests, women sell a portion of their seeds to raise money for other basic needs. The relative isolation of the Bijagós means that many crops that no longer exist elsewhere are still available in the archipelago.  

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The passing of traditional society

Like the rest of the world, modernism and the cultural hegemony that comes with it is getting the better of parts of the islands. Younger people are slowly turning their backs on Bijagó customs. It is already remarkable that Bijagó custom has remained intact for so long. The archipelago has fiercely guarded its identify for many centuries. A people imbued with a truly indomitable spirit, the Bijagós waged war against the Portuguese during the slave trade. They also resisted colonialism by the English and the French. Portugal only pacified the island in 1936. Benkos Biohó, the African king who was kidnapped by a Portuguese and sold into slavery before escaping into the jungle to found the first black community in Colombia, San Basilio de Palenque, was a Bijagó.

Today, new forms of colonialism are taking over the archipelago. Asian investors are buying up many hectares of land to produce cashew nuts. Every hectare that is sold puts pressure on the community’s food supply. Others are buying sea front real estate to build hotels. The land is cheap and it is relatively easy to attract tourists from neighbouring Senegal. All these events are fundamentally changing the preferences of young Bijagós. Unlike their parents who operate on barter and exchange, younger people have a much stronger preference for cash transactions.

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