o - Aceh Books website

714 soso
carries a sense of belonging by people who carry the same clan name and have
a vague idea of descent from a common ancestor.
Within the bankhri (or bonsoe, as understood by the Soso of Guinea), there
is the khabile, relatives on both their maternal and paternal sides. Members of
the khabile do not necessarily live together in the same locality but regard
themselves as blood relations. The smallest and most important unit is the dembaya
or bankhide. This group consists of the immediate household—a man, his
wife or wives and children and those living in the household as his dependents,
which might include servants or brother's children living with him. It is even
claimed that a man's son may still be part of his dembaya even if that son has
a different compound not contiguous to his father's. It is the dembaya which
breaks up at the death of its head to create several dembaya headed by his sons.
A group of dembaya may inhabit a compound (fohke), especially those connected
by marriage or blood. This is often through the father line, and the fohke is then
identified with the suffix ya added to the clan name of the inhabitants, as in
Banguraya, Sesay-ya.
Soso parentage, inheritance and succession are traced through one's father.
Soso society is generally polygynous, and as Muslims they are enjoined to marry
no more than four wives; but marriage to more than four is not particularly
frowned upon. A child refers to its biological mother with the term nga and uses
the same appellation for the other wives of its father, but not with reference to
its mother's sisters. At the same time it calls its father n'baba, the same way it
addresses its father's brothers, but never its mother's brothers.
When a child is born, a brief ceremony called bara akona borun ("he has
been made to eat") is performed in which a member of the paternal family,
male or female, chews kola nuts and spits it into a cup and this is fed to the
newborn before it receives its mother's milk. This is supposed to introduce the
child to this world and to the habit of eating. The same person who chews the
kola nut also speaks to the child, advising it to be obedient to God and his elders.
At the naming ceremony eight days later, an imam recites passages from the
Quran and the father's sister's children, called gine di, distribute ricebread and
kola nuts to the visitors. Eldest sons usually carry the name sare, while the term
sire is attached to the eldest daughters. This nomenclature is important since
rank order dictates the way one relates to older or younger people. To distinguish
between children in a dembaya who sometimes have the same name, the Soso
always add the mother's name to precede that given the child. Thus two mothers,
Hawa and Atta, having children each called Lamina, would distinguish such
children as Hawa Lamina and Atta Lamina.
Marriage above all is an affair between families, with the partners-to-be playing
little or no part. Marriage is allowed, even encouraged, between a boy and his
mother's family. Thus a boy may marry his maternal cousin. The Soso claim
that this helps to cement family ties. A girl's hand can be promised in marriage
even before her birth or before she reaches the age of puberty. The prospective
husband's family must then look after the girl until she reaches puberty. The