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Drinking the Word    of God Introduction The Towns of Zinder and Bondoukou • Zinder • Bondoukou The Production of Writing Water Education and Scholarship in Zinder and Bondoukou • Education • Scholarship Health, Well-Being and the Talismanic Tradition • Erasure: Writing Water • Talismans • Special Prayers Resources for Further Study Acknowledgements Comments

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Bondoukou (Côte d'Ivoire)


Bondoukou, situated in the savannah region just north of the coastal forest, was originally a small farming village. But in the 18th century, a community of Muslim merchants, the Dyula, moved to Bondoukou. The town became the southern terminus for a major trade route that linked the rich gold- and kola-producing forest region with the great trading centers of the Western Sudan, and it quickly grew into a cosmopolitan community of several thousand inhabitants. Over the last 250 years, Bondoukou has served as a center of Islamic learning for the region. Its multi-ethnic nature is reflected in numerous neighborhoods that have been established based on the ethnicity of their residents. Today, Bondoukou is still an important trading community. It also serves as an administrative center, the capital for the prefecture (state) of Bondoukou, with a population of roughly 30,000.

View of Bondoukou from the roof of the town's congregational mosque.
Street in Bondoukou in 1888.		The marche (market).
Some of the elders of the Gromen quarter of Bondoukou.
The Imam's mosque.		Young girls at the annual korobi festival celebrating the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting.
Call to prayer at the old earthen mosque in the village of Sorobango located near Bondoukou.

Zinder . Bondoukou

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