Loko (people)
The Loko (pronounced Lɔkɔ ) are an ethnic group in Sierra Leone . As an endonym , they and their language are also called Landogo . They speak the language of the same name . Its main distribution area is in the North West Province , especially in the Bombali and Port Loko districts and around the capital Freetown . There are still just under 166,000 Loko (as of 2015), of which only around two thirds use their language as their mother tongue.
Much of the Loko ended up in the Atlantic slave trade .
Way of life
The Loko traditionally live in small villages at the foot of mountains and hills. Their huts are round with wooden walls and thatched roofs. They are farmers and hunters . Agriculture is an important social aspect of the Loko. Particularly good farmers gain a higher status. The Loko follow patrilinearity and live polygamous .
Famous Loko
- Samura Kamara , 2018 presidential candidate and former foreign and finance minister
Literature and Sources
- C. Magbaily Fyle: Historical Dictionary of Sierra Leone , Scarecrow Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0810853393 , p. 107 ff
- Kirill Babaev: Person Marking in South-West Mande Languages: a Tentative Reconstruction , Institute of Linguistics for the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 2010, pp. 3–48 ( available online )
- Kirill Babaev: On the Origins of Southwest Mande Ethnonyms , Institute of Linguistics for the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 2011 ( available online )
- Larry M. Hyman: Notes on the history of Southwestern Mande , In: Studies in African Linguistics, Vol 4, No 2, 1973
- Clark Speed: Swears and swearing among Landogo of Sierra Leone: aesthetics, adjudication, and the philosophy of power , University of Washington, 1991 ( available online )
