One of the most enduring images of west African art is that of a sowei Official, wearing a bondo helmet mask and cladded totally in a black voluminous raffia costume.
In these usually staged photographs she is accompanied like a brooding hen by her young novices which are covered with kaolin (white chalk found in riverbanks of the tropical rainforest). Into which in some groups intricate designs are embedded.
The bondo mask a must have trophy for every collector of African art is hailed as an apex of depicting the female beauty in the art of west Africa.
The notion that these masks were commissioned worn and danced by Women and that each is vested with a whole range of iconography dedicated to women Beauty and virtue – physical and spiritual – is especially appealing to the western audience.
Each of these mask was supposed to be miraculously retrieved by an association elder from a magical pool – the dwelling place of Novo the sande head female spirit.
The typology of this art form has been closely studied. the concentric bands at the base of the mask in the shape of a moth chrysalis representing transformation of the novices into fully feminine sexually mature women, facial features, elaborate coiffure with intricate zigzag decoration – referring to water unworldly origin, and typical ornamentations each symbolizing sande family and feminine virtues.
The bundusande society is a pan west African society, encompassing most of the female rural population of the Guinea coast, among which are the Mende and Temme, in Sierra Leone and the Gola,Bassa and Kpelle in Liberia. With a current Estimated audience of more then three million members.
The society is organized in localized chapters each recognizing the hierarchy and power symbols of its neighbor, but no evidence of structural pan tribal leadership was found.
Although the society is dated from the early fifteen century the actual Practice and it’s liturgy is mostly unknown. the secrecy oath taken by the initiates is closely guarded and is upheld as a great virtue, depicted in the rendering of the bondo mask mouth –small sealed and unsmiling,
On 2011 the Liberian government canceled all permits given to the sande initiation Schools around the country. And in fact giving a green light to disband a social association with a recorded 500 years of continuous practice.
Unlike other modernization movement: the 1960-1985 iconoclasm in Guinea, and political initiatives by Monrovia directed against the Sande’s male counterpart – the Poro which were conducted nearly a century ago, this decree is signed by a democratic elected government on behalf of its citizens.
The Sande society can be viewed from two seemingly contradictory angles –
One – an all-encompassing powerful woman association, through which women can find their voice in the harsh guinea coast environment, establishing a net of communal support, companionship and compassion, and is instructing it’s novices of how to survive and raise a family in this traditionalist male repressive rural environment.
Creating an alternative family to whom one can returns in time of need. An association whose officers carry most of the Medical and social civil roles critically neglected and unanswered by the state in the Liberian hinterland.
On the other hand, a reactionary traditionalist hierarchical ranked female society which is intolerant to change or criticism, whose main task is to prepare the novices to fulfill their role as wives, mothers and work power in their future Patriarchal polygamous households.
Exploiting the long strand of bush school to extricate funds from the girl’s families as well as supplying free labor to society elders rice farms. A compulsory service in which the first initiation ceremony includes FGC – a procedure in which the girls clitoris and part of the labia are excised. A plight from which 67% of the female population of Liberia still suffers.