Loko Erotic

The Loko are a Mande-speaking people who live somewhat out of place, at least by the logic of a language map. Their language, called Landogo by its speakers and Loko by everyone else, belongs to the Southwestern Mande branch along with Mende, Kpelle and Loma. Those languages are centered to the south and east, in southern Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. The Loko heartland, though, lies in northern Sierra Leone, in the wooded savanna and farm country of Bombali. There the dominant neighbor is Temne, an Atlantic language with no close kinship to Landogo. That language island is the clearest marker of who the Loko are, and it hints at older ties to the Mende country to the south.

Loko life turns on farming towns such as Kalangba, Kagbere, Batkanu, Gbendembu and Tambiama. None of them is only Loko: Temne, Mandingo and Fula families live there too. Generations of marriage between groups and shared markets have made Temne a second language for many Loko, and Krio, Sierra Leone's national lingua franca, covers the rest. Being Loko rests less on isolation than on holding on: people switch languages all day and still call themselves Landogo. A second center sits at the edge of the capital, in communities such as Regent in the hills behind Freetown, where Loko families are part of the city's mixed population.

Most Loko are Muslim. Islam spread through northern Sierra Leone with Mandingo and Fula traders and clerics, and there is a Christian minority, especially around Freetown. Neither faith has pushed aside the initiation societies that shape adult life across much of the region. Men traditionally join Poro and women join Sande, also known as Bondo. These societies still carry weight in teaching the young, in settling disputes and in marking the move from childhood to full adult standing. Praying at the mosque on Friday and taking part in society rites later in the season are not seen as a contradiction.

Larger neighbors have shaped Loko history. Temne expansion over past centuries redrew the country around them, and the town of Port Loko is commonly said to take its name from a time when Loko held that ground. The slave trade that worked the rivers and creeks of this coast took Loko captives, as it took their neighbors. Today the pressure is quieter and falls on the language. In mixed towns and in Freetown, Temne and Krio pull steadily at younger speakers, so whether Landogo lasts is still an open question.