o - Aceh Books website

MANDINKA 489
onymous with respect and authority. Each village has a village head, an elder
of a prominent (usually said to be the founding) lineage, who presides over
meetings. Such meetings are conventions of village elders, who meet to adjudicate
matters involving crime and local disputes. Each village also had an imam,
who leads prayers at the village mosque and serves as the religious leader of the
community. Other men in a village can achieve positions of authority by having
large families, bountiful supplies of food, considerable wealth and a large following
of dependents and supporters. Such persons are known as kandas. "When
a kanda talks," the Mandinka put it simply, "people listen."
Mandinka women work hard—some say harder than men. Women do all the
domestic chores in addition to seasonal rice farming, and through childbearing
age they perform these tasks frequently with infants tied to their backs. Mandinka
men tend to regard their female counterparts as less intelligent, less educated
and less serious in their practice of Islam. Strong-willed women, however, exert
an important influence in the lives of their families, and men are sometimes not
the dominant figures at home that they consider themselves. Like men, women
who achieve old age are treated with great respect. There are several women's
organizations on the village level, and women tend to enjoy the company of
other women as they work around the home or in the rice fields.
Opposing forces in the minds of Mandinka, especially males, affect their
behavior and often have strong effects on the ways they lead their lives. One of
these forces is called fadenya ("father-childness"), a strong urge to build one's
reputation beyond that of one's father. Mandinka children are born with reputations.
Society automatically has certain expectations of children based upon
the general regard of the children's fathers and their fathers' lineages. To be
considered noteworthy persons, children have to exceed, and usually far exceed,
people's expectations of them. Children of successful fathers or respected patrilineages
thus find it difficult to achieve renown. Sometimes they try to do so
in antisocial ways, and here the other, opposing force comes into play. Badenya
("mother-childness") is pressure to behave in ways that are acceptable to one's
society. Violation of group norms in behavior brings shame, which often stifles
the activities of individuals concerned with what people in the group think of
them. Thus, Mandinka men are pressed strongly to achieve success beyond that
of their fathers and their patrilineages, but when they seek success in ways that
violate group norms, they are socially scorned.
Islam has been penetrating Mandinka society since the days of Mali or perhaps
before. Muslim scribes and clerics played important roles in the affairs of the
Malian court for many years. However, conversion of an individual ruler and
influence in the centers of Mandinka political power did not mean conversion
of most Mandinka. Into the eighteenth century, there were pockets of Muslim
clericalism within small Mandinka states, but the majorities of people in these
states practiced pre-Islamic religions that involved worship of spirits of the land
upon which they live. Muslim clerics were valued at court for their literacy and