Foroforondou, Mistress of the Milk

Foroforondou is the wife and ritual partner of the bush-spirit Koumen in the pastoral initiation recorded by Hampâté Bâ and Dieterlen. She is the mistress of the milk: she governs the milking and the apportioning of milk and watches over the kaggu, the lattice milk-altar that is the chief shrine of the Fulɓe shepherds, together with its sacramental herding objects. Alongside Koumen she conducts the herder Silé Sadio through the twelve clearings of knowledge, and at their completion she places in his hands the rope of twenty-eight knots, whose untying corresponds to the twenty-eight days of the lunar month and signifies the attainment of full pastoral knowledge.

Domains

• milk and dairy
• pastoral ritual

Powers

• to govern the milking and the use of milk
• to bestow the cord of twenty-eight knots on the initiate

Epithets

• debbo ngaynaakaAmadou Hampâté Bâ and Germaine Dieterlen, Koumen: Texte initiatique des Pasteurs Peul, Cahiers de l'Homme, n.s. 1 (Paris: Mouton, 1961). (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: Koumen, the Bush-Spirit Master of HerdersForoforondou is the wife of the bush-spirit Koumen, with whom she jointly conducts the herder's initiation, she holding the office of the milk and the milk-altar.Amadou Hampâté Bâ and Germaine Dieterlen, Koumen: Texte initiatique des Pasteurs Peul, Cahiers de l'Homme, n.s. 1 (Paris: Mouton, 1961). (secondary)

Sources

• Foroforondou is the wife and ritual consort of the bush-spirit Koumen in the Fulɓe pastoral initiation, mistress of the milking and of the kaggu milk-altar, who bestows the cord of twenty-eight knots on the completed initiate.: Amadou Hampâté Bâ and Germaine Dieterlen, Koumen: Texte initiatique des Pasteurs Peul, Cahiers de l'Homme, n.s. 1 (Paris: Mouton, 1961). (secondary); Amadou Hampaté Bâ and Germaine Dieterlen, Koumen, reviewed by Alice Hopen in American Anthropologist 64, no. 4 (1962): 868-869. (secondary)