Ceremonial Masks

Is where Sahara ends and begins a more humid area, in Western Africa, where inhabits one of the most fascinating tribes of the black continent. In the boundary between wildness and civilization. Going to the South, there is the most populated place in Africa, the countries from the Guinean gulf.

Well, lets focus in this place, lets pay attention to this tribe. They are the dogons. A tribe that tries to keep away from the piercing globalization that threatens with destroy the astonishing variety shown by this and other tribes.

Not in vain they live in a place so far from cities, a rocky place full of cliffs, with an extremely hot climatology, where temperature often rise up above 113º F.

Dogon villages are built upon the hillsides of this terrain, with small huts instead of real houses.

Most of dogons practice animism, this is, the cult of one or more deities that have their avatar in this world (sky, stars, animals, plants, the weather phenomenons, etc)

An example of animism, would be the Egyptian Civilization.

For dogons, their particular god is Sirius, the most brightning star of the sky. Their beliefs are based on cosmology. However, some of them were converted into islam or cristianism. Due to dat, there are some villages that have their population divided.

In terms of cosmology, there are people who believe that they established contact with aliens from Sirius. That theory is based in a conversation between a shaman guru of a village, called Ogotemmeli in 1939. (I suppose that the chat was in french, a language extended in that area by the fact of being a colony).

Ogotemmeli gave really specific data of astronomy. He even said that 'Po Tolo' (the twin star of Sirius, Sirius B) was ''so heavy that even the entire humankind wouldn't be able to hold it''.

Casually, it is known that Sirius B, is a high-density star, (as big as the Earth but as heavy as the Sun).

However, all this stuff can be destroyed by the fact that this data were known since 1862 by Western world. So, it is supposed that a jesuitic missionary or anyone that had contact with dogons before, would try to teach them about modern knowledges, and that chaman guru only spoke what he learnt before.

Apart from that, it is also interesting the masks ritual. Specifically, Sigi's ritual, of the Mali's dogons. It is very difficult to be seen because they celebrate one every sixty five years. With no doubt, be able to see them dancing in an atmosphere filled of sparks coming from the bonfires and with giant masks them loose the balance, should be something unforgetable.

Sigi represents the worlds renovation, something like the start of a new cycle.

I hope that a tribe with so many folklore like the dogon, will have success stopping the irrepressible advance of Western culture, that has became something like a virus that once lost the notion of restriction of it expansion. If not, events like the Ogotemmeli's speech would be the daily bread, and dogons would loose their identity.