o - Aceh Books website

488 MANDINKA
over social and religious rites, mediates differences and oversees collection and
redistribution of income.
Beyond the patrilineage is the age-set, which brings together all men or women
of the same approximate age and gives them a common identity. Each age-set
includes all those who pass initiation rites together, usually every five years or
so. This normally means circumcision and a period of training prior to the entry
to adulthood. Age-sets provide several functions. Each active age-set also performs
the dual functions of providing intensive labor for individual farms and
providing for the general welfare of their villages. Modernization has altered
age-sets and initiation in recent years. Many males are circumcised earlier,
traditional training periods have been shortened to meet vacations in school
calendars and age-sets tend to be less active and important in urban areas.
Modern Mandinka are sedentary farmers. Their compact rural villages dot the
landscape. Around the villages are the farmlands upon which the Mandinka grow
the staples of their diet: millet and rice. Since the mid-nineteenth century peanuts
have been grown in Senegambia as a cash crop, and small amounts of cotton
are grown in Senegal and Guinea. Cash crops and millet are the produce of
Mandinka men. Women grow rice. Such small animals as sheep, goats and
chickens abound in the vicinity of Mandinka villages, and their meat adds protein
to the Mandinka diet. Millet in sweetened sour milk is a popular breakfast. A
typical main meal consists of steamed rice covered with a spicy stew of vegetables
and, if available, meat or fish. Mangoes, bananas, oranges, papayas and cashew
fruits add balance.
Mandinka villages are organized along lineage lines. A major lineage will
make up a village ward or hamlet, an exogamous group that lives together in a
specific area. Villages can have as few as two or three or as many as several
dozen wards. Within each ward are subgroupings made up of brothers and their
families, and within such groups are the minimal lineages of a man, his wife or
wives (the Mandinka are polygynous) and their children. Normally children live
in their mother's house. Male children can be intensely competitive with their
fathers; closer, more supportive relationships often develop with maternal uncles.
Once through initiation, young Mandinka are more free to marry and form
households of their own. In recent generations, marriage has sometimes been
put off for a number of years so that young men and women can finish their
educations and accumulate wealth.
Mandinka marriage involves payment of a brideprice, usually in more than
one installment. A traditional practice of betrothing girls at birth to a matrilineal
cross-cousin is less prevalent than it once was. Still, marriages are frequently
arranged between families. In addition to the drawn-out marriage ceremonies,
one of the biggest festive occasions is the naming ceremony for an infant, which
takes place about a week after the child is born. Women play major roles in
both marriage and naming ceremonies. Divorce is permitted; both divorced
parties can remarry.
A fundamental concept of Mandinka social organization is that age is syn-