© A. Pappone
A small fairy-tale world opens up in the south of Burkina Faso, on the border with Ghana, gathered around the ancient traditions of one of the most evocative royal courts in the West African region. We are in the heart of the Pays Kassena, home to a magical people belonging to the large group of Gourounsi.
Arriving from Ouagadougou, the magic begins as we pass through typical Sahelian landscapes of baobabs and red earth, which gradually move into wooded areas, favourite haunts of migrating elephants, who sometimes stray to the edge of the asphalt road. Once past the quiet town of Po, with its cheerful market, along a beautiful reddish dirt track, surrounded by fields of maize, millet and cotton, you arrive at the Royal Court of Tiebelé, where time suddenly stands still.
A people of fishermen, farmers and hunters, the Kassena migrated to these lands back in the 16th century, driven by the need to preserve their animist traditions, escaping the increasingly looming Islamisation to the north and the expansionism of the Akan kingdoms to the south.
An architectural jewel, the Royal Court, with its system of clay dwellings, moulded like real sculptures and painted like a small terracotta-glazed artefact, contains all the secrets, spirituality, customs and ancestral traditions of this ancient people. A synthesis of identity aesthetics and spontaneous engineering, the construction technique of these dwellings recalls ancient savoir-faire that has been handed down intact for centuries. Windowless, rectangular, square or circular with a double body (similar to the infinity symbol “ꝏ“), depending on their intended use, each element is designed for utilitarian, defensive and symbolic-religious purposes, while the materials used are those offered by the surrounding nature: earth, wood, straw and natural pigments. The shapes and decorative motifs painted on the clay plaster are the most fascinating of traditional West African architectures, and one cannot help but be enchanted as one walks through the narrow alleyways that criss-cross the labyrinthine village.
Everything here is invested with sacredness, animist spirituality and symbolism: the audience hall, a sort of court of elders, with its low thatched roof; the royal family tombs in the main courtyard; the sacred hill where the fetishes of newborn babies are buried; the community granary, protected by the spirit of the agricultural genius (an elegantly stylised female figure in relief with a scythe, a symbol of abundance and protection); the refined polychrome and geometric variety of the wall decorations. Decorated and hand-painted by the women of the village, their red, white and black polychromy stands out vividly from the monochromy typical of other clay constructions in Burkina Faso, making this place extremely fascinating, in a collection of stylised motifs, each containing a precise symbolic meaning, dear to the Kassena tradition. Made with natural pigments such as ochre, charcoal, kaolin or macerated plants, and applied with guinea fowl feathers, they alternate geometric lines with the silhouettes of totem animals such as the snake, the crocodile, the turtle and the lizard, the latter being an animal of great importance, as it is the only one with the power to establish the safety of a new house, which will only be inhabited when this reptile populates its walls. If not, it will be razed to the ground and rebuilt from scratch.
A land rich in gold mines and precious clay, fertile fields, ancient craft traditions and ancestral customs, the Pays Kassena is one of the most fascinating regions in all of Burkina Faso, and will win over even the most sceptical traveller. And remember not to wear red clothing, a colour considered to evoke wars, hostility and violence, and banned within the peaceful Royal Court of Tiebelé.
