Museum of Civilizations of the Lobi People

Its climate is milder than the north of the country and the greenery is more abundant. It is the capital of the Lobi country.

 

Created on December 21, 1990, the museum occupies 492 m².

 

The museum is located on one of the three hills of the city of Gaoua: the "hill of power", next to the governorate of the Southwest region. It is a conservatory of ethnographic type called "museum of the civilizations of the Southwest" in view of all the richness it contains regarding the discovery of the Lobi people.

 

It is a colonial-type building that houses the Museum of Civilizations of the Southwest. It was created thanks to the passionate commitment of Miss Madeleine, a social worker in Gaoua since 1964, doctor in ethnology and author of a state thesis on the Lobi. The Museum of Civilizations of the South-West brings together several entities: the museum itself, which houses the administrative premises, the reserves and the exhibition rooms devoted to the history, arts and traditions of the peoples of the South-West, and a sample of the traditional habitat of the Lobi and Gan people.

 

Organized in structured collections, the different exhibition rooms present a wide variety of objects of ethnological interest, in wood, metal, terracotta and raw clay. Most of them are pottery, gourds, weapons (bows, arrows, quivers, rifles...), divination objects.

 

The Lobi is a farmer, a hunter, a breeder but above all, the Lobi is a warrior. A tradition similar to the vendetta system has always maintained a situation of permanent insecurity and tension between different ethnic groups and sometimes even within a group. For all these high-risk activities, the Lobi systematically calls upon the art of divination. It is obligatory to consult a diviner before any undertaking.

 

The cult of fetishes and divinatory practices are of paramount importance to the Lobi: invulnerability to war, protection against evil spells, fertility ... The altar of the veterans proves, if proof were needed, that these cult practices are still very much alive and are not limited to the manifestations of daily and traditional life, but can intervene on events related to recent history or even current events.