Paquinou
Paquinou — a Baoulé word literally meaning "during Easter" — is a festival celebrated in Baoulé villages over the Easter weekend, from Friday to Sunday. It brings together Baoulé who have moved to cities or abroad and their home villages, for family celebration and to take part in rural development projects.
| Day | What happens |
|---|---|
| Friday | Travel to the villages |
| Saturday | Community meetings: settling disputes, presenting development projects |
| Sunday | Ceremonial dances, appearance of the goli mask (red, white and black horns) and installation of traditional chiefs |
Accounts of its origin vary; one of the most detailed ties it to the Kossou dam (1969), which submerged 210 villages and displaced nearly 100,000 farmers (mostly Baoulé and Gouro), rehoused in AVB villages or sent west. From the early 1980s these uprooted people organised pilgrimages home. The choice of Easter is pragmatic: a long public-holiday weekend, and April marks the end of the cocoa marketing season, when planters have cash. Paquinou is today a festival of reunion and reconciliation.
Funerals and Great Ceremonies
Funerals are among the largest Baoulé ceremonies: they gather families and villages, with drums, songs and dances such as the goli (see Society & Family).
The Yam
The yam, the staple food, carries strong symbolic prestige, as among many West African peoples. Harvest-related festivals are moments of thanksgiving and sharing (see Land, Gold & Trade).
baoule.ciBaoulé festivals, rites and traditions on baoule.ci →An Engine of Local Development
During Paquinou Abidjan partly empties and the "Baoulé V" fills with executives, civil servants, traders and young city-dwellers: transport, hotels, catering (local dishes, palm wine) and crafts (pagnes, masks, pottery) boom. Village development mutuals use this quorum to hold general assemblies under the palaver tree, raise funds and launch health centres, schools or water pumps. Chiefs and councils of elders also settle land disputes and family conflicts, validate marriages and engagements, and pass genealogies, myths and proverbs to an urban youth. Villages ring with trad-modern bands and the outings of the Goli and Adjomlé masks.