Sande, also known as zadεgi, bundu, bundo and bondo, is a women's initiation society in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and the Ivory Coast. The Sande society initiates girls into adulthood by rituals including female genital mutilation. It is said by its supporters to confer fertility, to instill notions of morality and proper sexual comportment, and to maintain an interest in the well-being of its members throughout their lives.
In addition, Sande champions women's social and political interests and promotes their solidarity vis-a-vis the Poro, a complementary institution for men.
Geographic extent
The Sande society is found throughout the Central West Atlantic Region, an ethnically plural and linguistically diverse region that lies within the forested littoral zone bounded by the Little Scarcies River and Cape Palmas. As early as 1668, a Dutch geographer named Olfert Dapper published a description of the "Sandy" society as it existed in the Cape Mount region of Liberia, based on a first-hand account that seems to date from 1628.
Anthropologists believe that Sande originated in Gola society and spread to the neighboring Mende and Vai; other ethnic groups adopted Sande as recently as the present century. Today this social institution is found among the Bassa, Gola, Kissi, Kpelle, Loma, Mano and Vai of Liberia; the Kono, Limba, Mende, Sherbro, Temne and Yalunka of Sierra Leone; and in the northern and eastern extension of these ethnic groups in Guinea.
The predominantly Christian Sierra Leone Creole people are the only ethnicity in Sierra Leone not known to practice FGM or participate in bondo/sande society rituals.[Bassir, Olumbe (July 1954). "Marriage Rites among the Aku (Yoruba) of Freetown". Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. 24 (3): 251–256]
Common features The common features of all of these women's associations are: Group initiation in a secluded area of the forest. The use of Sande society names in lieu of birth names following initiation. Scarification. Body modification in the form of piercings and skin removal. Hierarchically ranked female leadership. A pledge of secrecy vis-a-vis men and uninitiated girls. Female genital mutilation performed by female specialists.
An additional characteristic Sande feature – the wooden helmet mask and raffia palm costume worn by Sande leaders – is absent among the Kono, Loma, and Mano.
Regional variations Although anthropologists and art historians sometimes describe the Sande society as an all-embracing, pan-ethnic association, there is considerable cultural variation throughout the region. The ethnic groups where the Sande Society is present speak languages belonging to three language families (Mande, Mel and Kru). They may be animists, or like the Mende, Vai and Yalunka, they may have significant Muslim populations.
In some societies, such as the Bassa, Kissi and Kono, the complementary men's society, the Poro, may not be present. Among the Dei and Loma, the Sande society regularly admits male blacksmiths as ritual specialists, and in Gola society, the spirit represented by the mask is considered to be male rather than female. Indeed, the quintessential symbol of Sande among many of the ethnic groups where this woman's association is present – the wooden helmet mask – is entirely absent among the Kpelle, Kono, Loma and Mano.
Initiation and transformation
Sequestration and female genital mutilation (FGM) Adolescent girls are initiated as a group during the post-harvest dry season in a specially cleared area of forest surrounding the town or village. The initiation period varies from several weeks to several months, depending upon such factors as the initiate's age, lineage membership, school attendance, and ethnicity.
In the past, the girls are said to have remained in the forest, called the bondo or bush period, for upwards of one year, during which time they made rice farms for the Sande leadership. Nowadays, the initiation period lasts around 3–4 weeks. In addition to the initiate's labor, Sande leaders receive a substantial initiation fee from the girl's father or her prospective husband, as a girl may not marry before initiation.
The details of what transpires in the bush are kept secret, but it is known that the clitoris and part of the labia are excised. It is a highly respected female elder who usually performs this surgery. She is reputed “to have a good hand” and good social influence to welcome girls to the bush.
Sande membership and initiation practices are promoted by zoes, who are typically elderly women who lead the Sande bush. The primary purpose of the female genital mutilation (FGM) procedure is to remove the sexual desire and promiscuity of women, thereby making them “clean” and suitable for marriage. On the day to perform FGM, girls are first asked to ‘numb the area’ by sitting in a bucket of water. Then, they are each tied down with their hands and legs separated. The zoe will perform the ‘procedure’ without any anesthesia. In the past, zoes have used ‘ritual knives’, now it is more common to use unsterilized razor blades or surgical blades.
Post-initiation education
After their wounds have healed, the girls are instructed in domestic skills, farming, sexual matters, dancing, and medicine. Specialized skills such as dyeing cloth may be taught to girls who demonstrate special aptitude or, according to some sources, to girls from high-ranking landowning lineages. Although there is some debate about whether the emphasis of bush school is to offer girls novel skills that they might not otherwise have at this stage in their lives, it is vital for cultural integration. It is through Sande school education that girls learn cultural customs, such as what it means to be a good wife and mother, as well as how to treat elders. As Carol MacCormack suggests, it is through the bush school where “they begin to anticipate the role of wife who must work cooperatively with her co-wives and her husband's female kin."
The most essential lessons learned are deference to authority and an absolute respect for secrecy. The ‘secret’ is enforced by an ‘oath’, and they are told the price for revealing what happened in the ‘bush’ is death to either them or a member of their family. The fear instilled by the zoes make FGM a prohibited conversation topic to discuss with non-members, and open conversation around it could be interpreted as questioning the legitimacy of Sande and its moral teachings.
Bonding The shared experience of a lengthy stay in the forest and the risk of the surgery binds the girls together as a cohesive social group. During the bush school period, each girl's family is obliged to send large quantities of food and there is song and dance each night. The songs usually end with instructive mural laws linked to Sande society. After initiation, members obtain the feeling of a larger cultural identity. The induction into Sande society is quite separate from a woman's social status or position, and is an identity and community she can draw on at any point in her life.Little, K. L. (1949). "The Role of the Secret Society in Cultural Specialization". American Anthropologist. 51 (2): 199–212. ISSN 0002-7294.
Membership in Sande is a lifelong identity that members carry down to their daughters. Through this bonding, women are also taught to maintain the peace of the town. If a man abuses or insults a Sande woman, no other woman in Sande will talk to him. Due to the immediate social ostracization that occurs when men step out of line, women hold the power to create accountability mechanisms in the villages based on the strong bonds that occur during initiation.Focus On Liberia. (2021). The Poro and Sande Societies in Liberia. Youtube. Retrieved April 29, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FViP_LDK-Uo.
Return to the community
At the conclusion of their initiation the girls are ritually washed and returned to the community as marriageable adults. They emerge from the forest dressed in their finest clothes, with new names signifying their newly achieved adult status and their persona (i.e. rank) in the association's ritual hierarchy. In some areas, cicatrization in the form of teeth support the view (held by the uninitiated) that the girls were devoured by a forest spirit that has now returned them to society; although death and rebirth imagery is not a universal feature of Sande initiation.
The ceremony that follows initiation is comparable to a graduation ceremony. The initiates are all dressed in white cotton dresses and head veils, and they sing and dance for everyone in the community to watch.Peel, J. D. Y., et al. (2016). Letters from Liberia. London, International African Institute and Centre of African Studies, SOAS, University of London. After, each proud initiate stands with her family and friends, donning an outfit signifying she will never need to be initiated again. The next day, the girls model self-control by sitting still while others celebrate their achievement. The men express their interest in the initiated girls as future brides and celebrate their virtues of virginity and faithfulness.
Within Sande society, these new initiates hold the lowest status, but will gain status as they grow older. Hierarchy within Sande is based on both secrecy and age, and older members tend to have more secret knowledge than younger members. As these girls further immerse themselves into society and gain valuable skills, such as midwifing and medicinal work, they are made more valuable in the community.Liberian Observer. (2021). "Standing Up to Sande Bush". https://www.liberianobserver.com/standing-sande-bush .
Symbolic meaning According to Jedrej (1986), the Sande initiation ritual centers on several sets of spatial and temporal oppositions, such as those between village (public) and forest (secret) space, on the one hand, and ancestral time (sacred) and the present-day (profane) on the other. The initiate's moral transformation from child to adult occurs in three stages (novice > virgin > bride) marked by public scarification, skin removal, and/or body piercings in the town or village. A key symbol of these performances is the initiate's metaphorical movement through water, the realm of the ancestors.
Unique masking traditions in Liberia
Women generally do not wear masks in West Africa, but in this region the most numerous and most important wood masks are produced for use by women for the Sande. Several types of masks, some in wood but many made of leather, fur, and cloth, are used in conjunction with the counterpart male initiation society, the Poro. The masks used in these societies have common iconographic features throughout the region, but each mask is known by an individual person name corresponding to the spiritual force believed to be associated with the local Poro or Sande society chapters.
Iconography of the Mende/Vai helmet mask
This type of mask, also often called bundu, is worn at initiation ceremonies celebrating a successful transition into womanhood. In Mende society, "the term sowo refers to both the supernatural entity which represents the women's secret society, and the masked dancer whose polished black anthropomorphic helmet mask and black raphia-covered body the spirit invests with its presence and power."
In addition to the mask's appearance at girls' initiation ceremonies, sowo also "appears in public to mark important civic events such as the visits of important dignitaries and the coronations and funerals of important chiefs. On these occasions, her presence is a means of impressing on the community the unity and strength of the female corporate body as well as Sande's political significance."
According to Dubinskas, the Mende say a finely carved sowo mask is nyande ("good," "pretty," "beautiful" and aesthetically "pleasing") when it includes the following elements, each of which has a symbolic meaning: