Lama (ethnicity)
The Lama are an ethnic group in Benin , Togo and Ghana , which are also called Lamba , Lima or Namba (or in similar spelling and language variants). They are part of the indigenous (autochthonous), so-called “paleonigritic” indigenous population of northern and central Togo and the neighboring Ghanaian and Beninese territories.
The Lama are culturally related to the Kabre ( Kabiyé ), who populate the region around Lama-Kara to the northeast of their core area .
Geographical distribution
Approx. 182,000 lama live in Togo, whose main settlement area is mainly in the prefectures of Kande and Doufelgou. A large proportion of the remaining Togolese lama live in the prefectures of Sotouboua, Ogou, and Haho.
Approx. 82,000 lama live in Benin, most of whom are domiciled in the Atakora province in various localities of the Boukombe sub-prefecture and in the Donga province in the Djougou and Bassila sub-prefectures.
In Ghana, about 2,200 lama live in an area that begins about 100 km southwest of the Togolese city of Bassari ( 9 ° 16 ′ N , 0 ° 47 ′ E ), extends in the direction of Yendi and further to Tamale , and to about southeast of Tamale reaches in.
Social structure
The lama made up about 60 to 65% of the population in the historical kingdom of Kotokoli and had the indigenous clan status (clans aborigènes) here during colonial times , which they still have today. Within the former Kotokoli Territory, the Lama are organized into at least seven different clans, including the Koli , Kozi , Bogom , Deware , Baro , Kobu, and Uruma . The Akima are probably one of them and sometimes the Lambu and Sando are also mentioned at this point. A clan among the Lama defines itself as an exogamous patrilineal maximum line in the genealogical sense.
Outside the borders of the former Kotokoli, north of Lama-Kara in the Losso of Binkoudjiba, a tribe of Lama can be found, which is formed by the local representatives of the Koli , Nayur and Nafale clans .
Furthermore, in the area of the former Kingdom of Bassari, the Kisitikpiu or Bisibi are a group of lamas who once fled from Sansanne mango as a result of the murder of a pregnant woman and the subsequent slaughter. In the area of the historical kingdom of Bassari they belong to the population group of the Be-Tyambe -Bassari.
In Kabou ( 9 ° 27 ' N , 0 ° 49' O ), whose population otherwise to the Be-Tapumbe is expected -Bassari, representatives of the Lama clan find Koli , Nadju , Bisibi and Usiboli in more or less extensive mixing with foreign family associations.
While it is immigrant foreign groups who have provided political rule in the Kotokoli and Bassari lands at the latest since the 18th century, religious rule, insofar as it is connected to the earth cult, lies entirely in the hands of the Lama settlement areas the Lama, since it is they who see themselves as the real owners of the ground on which they had already settled before the other groups immigrated here in the 17th century or later. On the religious level there is also a pronounced clantotemism in the Kotokoli and Bassari lands, as elsewhere in West Africa .
literature
- Pierre Alexandre, Les Kotokoli et les Bassari contained in: J.-C. Froelich, P. Alexandre, R. Cornevin, Les populations du Nord-Togo , Paris 1963
- Pierre Alexandre, Organization politique des Kotokoli du Nord-Togo , Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 4 (14) (1963) 228-274