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People who speak Zorogo can command the Bedu mask to make certain movements such as 'walk like a crocodile swimming in water' 

People who speak Zorogo can command

the Bedu mask to make certain movements

such as 'walk like a crocodile swimming in water'

Greeting Bedu 

Once, Adama Outtara, a proficient speaker of the secret language of Bedu initiates, Zorogo, arrived in Sapia. He sat down in the shade and a blacksmith came to greet him. To honour the blacksmith he told the following story in Zorogo.


'Blacksmiths, they forge iron. Then others go to the bush. They make the wood beautiful and come to the village. They make the costume of wood beautiful. Then, young men stand up, they go and take it and put it on their heads and go walking around the village. Go and salute the elders, the old women, the young people, the children, all of them. They will say it is Bedu.'


This story was meant to tell the blacksmith that he should not come to greet a speaker of Zorogo. Instead he should stay at home and the others should come and salute him because without the blacksmith there would be no sculpting, no Bedu and no Zorogo. 
 

 Greeting the elders  Greeting the children

                       Greeting the elders

                                                     Greeting the children

 

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