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Return to the Yénu bwãndo page.

I've received a lot of questions over the years about some of the information presented in this series, so I've set up this page to answer some of these questions. If you've got a question, please e-mail it to me.


1) How do you pronounce yénu bwãndo?

Yénu = yay-new, bwãndo = bwan-doe. In Baatonu, a tilde over a vowel means that syllable is pronounced nasally.

2) Does it really mean "the house's breasts are going?"

Yes, "bwa" means breast and "do" means go. Bwãndo is a catch-all phrase that can be applied to anything. "How are you doing?" "My breasts are going." The fact that an idiom with such obvious motherly roots is so common in their language reflects the cultural importance placed on producing children.

3) Was Charles de Gaulle's mother really American?

In the chief's story about being drafted into the French army during WWII, he explains that the reason the Americans helped out the French was because they're related through Charles de Gaulle's mother. In reality though, CDG's mother was French and was from Lille. I speculate that this was probably how it was explained to him by an army official or perhaps he invented the relation himself in an attempt to make sense of what must have been a very confusing situation.

4) How could this region have been uninhabited just a few hundred years ago?

It is true that this part of Africa has been inhabited for about as long as humans have existed. I can't verify that the Banikoara region was in fact uninhabited when the Bariba moved in a few centuries ago, but it was definitely inhabited by a different people sometime prior to this. In 1998, a family that lived near the stream in Arbonga asked me to come look at something their daughter had discovered in front of their house. A few weeks previous, she had begun to notice small pieces of bone cropping up whenever she would sweep the ground, but never thought about it much. By the time I saw this, you could clearly make out the outlines of several human skeletons (two are visible in the linked photo at right). No one seemed the least bit concerned or creeped out by this. The bodies were buried on their sides in the fetal position facing random directions. The Bariba typically bury their dead face down in the fetal position with the head pointed toward Mecca. In addition, none of the elders could remember ever hearing about a burial in that location. Everyone concluded that these were not Bariba burials, and since they were not the bodies of their ancestors, it wasn't a big deal for the bones to slowly be scattered while sweeping the yard. As to why this area might have been uninhabited 200-300 years ago, I can only speculate. Since the trans-Atlantic slave trade was in full swing at the time, that's probably a good place to begin the investigation.