Gongoli, also spelled Kongoli, is the individuated clown character of Mende masquerade in Sierra Leone. His huge, intentionally ugly wooden face mask is often too unwieldy to stay on without a supporting hand, and he appears in rags with a stick that serves by turns as crutch, whip, and lewd prop. Unlike the masked spirits of the Poro and Sande societies, Gongoli is regarded as the least sacred and most secular of Mende maskers, free to crash any festivity, beg, and lampoon chiefs, elders, and onlookers alike; Siegmann and Perani describe him as a vehicle for the ritualized reduction of social tensions through social commentary and criticism. Samuel Mark Anderson's study documents Gongoli's continuing, even growing, fame in contemporary Sierra Leone as a shameless public satirist whose license depends precisely on his exclusion from the sacred masking hierarchy.