Gonde is the clown of the Mende women's Sande society, the only major African masking tradition in which women themselves dance the masks. Where the sowei masker embodies the society's water spirit in perfect composure and glossy black beauty, Gonde appears in a cast-off or damaged mask and tattered costume, dances badly on purpose, begs from spectators, and jokes with the crowd. Ruth Phillips and Sylvia Boone both document Gonde as a named, recurring character of Sande performance whose licensed misbehaviour throws the ideals of the sowei into relief, and who comforts and entertains the girls undergoing initiation. Gonde thus functions as the institutionalized anti-ideal of Sande aesthetics, inseparable from, yet always subordinate to, the spirit she parodies.