OLAC Record oai:soas.ac.uk:MPI1034559

Metadata
Title:		wedding: informing the father of the pride
		wedding_informing_the_father_of_the_bride
		Documentation of Baga Mandori (Atlantic, NIger-Congo) (ISO 639-3:bmd)
Contributor (recorder):		Frank
Coverage:		Guinea
Date:		2014-03-28
Description:		At 6m: from left to right p024, p039 (p024's son), p029,p022, p050. Woman on mat who came later: p037. I was later informed that the father was not too happy about how the whole process was initiated on the groom's side. And this is evident in this conversation. I suspect that this is also why the p037 came to sit close by who is p029's mother. Debriefing for this session was very shallow, owing to the slew of activities everybody was involved in during the day. So I do not have much more information. It would be nice to be able to show this to the participants and converse with them on what is going on in the video.
		This project delivers the first in-depth linguistic documentation of any of the Baga languages spoken in the Basse-Côte region of Guinea-Conakry, West Africa. Baga Mandori (also Baga Ma(n)duri), the focus of this project, belongs to the Atlantic (Niger-Congo phylum) group of languages and is part of the Mel cluster. Baga Mandori represents one of the two linguistic communities – the other being Baga Sitemu – that still use a Baga variety in intra-communal communication to some degree. The language is, however, under pressure by Soso, a Mande language and the dominant lingua franca of the region. This project will employ an immersive research approach, which aims to deliver a diverse and integrated multimedia documentary archive that will combine linguistic documentation with community training and participation. Linguistic documentation will be in the form of a trilingual dictionary (Baga Mandori-English-French), an extensive grammatical outline, an orthography, and annotated and transcribed audio-visual material from a variety of linguistic genres.
		He has learned how to carve mortars and does that for trade. He is not part of a Sèrè and he is not initiated. He stays mostly in Bitonko. If he moves he goes to Kamsar or Conakry to visit relatives or buy clothes. He says he goes once a month of 1 or two weeks. He sometimes goes to Koba. He travelled there to work in the palm oil buisness, but worked for the Chinese in the rice fields. He did this during the time of Lansana Conté. He did that for 7 months. He says that he got a salary of 50000 FG and one sack of rice.
		We established that he was about had his first child around the time when Sekou Touré took power, which makes me think he is around 65. He gave his age as 70 years. He stays mainly in Bitonko, but he can go for a short time to Kamsar, if necessary. He said that a family father can only leave for two reasons: sickness or the necessitsy to manage some personal affairs. For the latter one takes about 2-3 days, in the former case that can be of longer duration.
		He says that he was born during the second year after the opening of the military camp in 1972 (as given by p031) close to Bitonko. He goes to Kamsar maybe five times during a year to stay for a week or a month. He also goes to Conakry, or Guinea-Bissau to sell some of his produce.
		He is the representative of the groom's party while arranging the wedding ceremony that is held at the place of residence of the bride (the father's house). He was the one dressed in yellow who appears in some clips concerning the preparation of the ceremony. Even though I made an appointment to record his data, we never got around to it. He was too busy during the day, and then the whole wedding ceremony shifted to the place of residence of the groom in Dobali. It will have to be done later.
		He said that he is 35 years old, but then we established that it was long before Lansana Conté took power that he was born. He already had 2 children at that time. He also said that he was born durng the reign of Sekou Touré By estimating that he was about 22 years old at that time, we arrive at an age of 54. He studied to be a mason and builder with a local mason at Dobali. He says that he has been doing this for 8 years. He is not a member of a Sèrè. He is not initiated. He does not move around very often and goes to Kamsar maybe once a year, he says. He says he moves around in the immediate region around Dobali.
		As a note on the nickname in "Nom de terrain": Women are often identified by locality or family in my interviews. When asked interviewees did not provide nicknames as readily as men. The age is also unsure. As orientation she indicated that she was already married when Sekou Touré took power. Let's say she was 20 in 1958, that would give an age around 76. She used to farm the most common crops of this area: grounduts, rice, millet, fonio. She says that in case of the groundnuts, it was her who cultivated them and then her husband went to sell them at the market. She says that she gets a little bit of money for her mid-wife services (this includes female excision). She is not part of a Sèrè at the moment. That is for younger people, but she used to be part of a Séré, called /makissa/ for a few years. She said that she is not initiated. In the interview she used an interesting phrase (in translation from p002) Baga d'ici to differentiate from the other Baga people. She is the mother of p029 and lives with her second husband. Both husbands were Baga from Bitonko (Cherif Camara (Kandoma, near Kolaboui, is where he studied), Soriba Camara.) She is currently limited to Bitonko, but when her husband lived she often went to Kandoma.
		p001 is the main researcher in this project which he runs from the University of Florida. He is emplyed as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies. This is his second language documentation project. In the first documentation project he documented the Atlantic language Nalu (naj) spoken in close proximity to Baga Mandori (bmd).
Format:		audio/x-wav
		video/mp4
Identifier:		oai:soas.ac.uk:MPI1034559
		PD-50029-13
Identifier (URI):		https://lat1.lis.soas.ac.uk/ds/asv?openpath=MPI1034559%23
Publisher:		Frank Seidel
		University of Florida
Type:		Audio
		Video
OLAC Info
Archive:		Endangered Languages Archive
Description:		http://www.language-archives.org/archive/soas.ac.uk
GetRecord:		OAI-PMH request for OLAC format
GetRecord:		Pre-generated XML file
OAI Info
OaiIdentifier:		oai:soas.ac.uk:MPI1034559
DateStamp:		2016-11-05
GetRecord:		OAI-PMH request for simple DC format
Search Info
Citation:		Frank (recorder). 2014-03-28. Frank Seidel.