Diola
The (Eng.) Jola (French) Diola are an ethnic group in Gambia , Senegal and Guinea-Bissau . The main settlement is the southern Senegalese Casamance ; about a million diolas live here.
Although they live in a region populated mainly by Muslims , the Diola are to a large extent Catholics . The center of their culture can mainly be found in the Basse Casamance around Bignona and Ziguinchor .
Here they mainly cultivate rice . They have a centuries-old tradition of cultivating African rice . Like the Manjago , the non-Muslim Diola are particularly known for cultivating oil palms and extracting oil and palm wine from them.
Famous representatives of the Diola were the chief Ahoune Sane , who took up the fight for the decolonization of their homeland very early on , and the former president of the Gambia, Yahya Jammeh .
Many Diola brought their animistic religion with them to North America as slaves and thus had a decisive influence on the development of voodoo in the Caribbean. In the concept of the hereafter , a moral concept can be recognized: Man consists of a good part, which is reincarnated , a bad part, which is extinguished, and an excellent part, which enters a paradise .
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Individual evidence
- ↑ Le palmier à huile en Basse Casamance (Sénégal). Gilles PESTAÑA, Octobre 1991 Page 17 of the PDF file on the production of palm wine (vin de Palme)