Faro

Before there was a river there was a strip of dry ground, red and cracked, with one stunted grain plant growing out of it. Everything else that had been sown there was dead of thirst. This is the earth as Pemba left it, and it is the earth Faro was killed to mend.

The account comes from the Mande heartland on the upper Niger, where it was recorded around Kangaba in the middle of the twentieth century. It begins with the creator, Mangala, who made a seed so small it could hardly be seen, then its twin, then six more, and bound all eight to the four elements and the four directions. Wrapped together they formed the egg of the world. Inside that egg, alongside the seeds, lay two pairs of twins, a male and a female in each, who were to be the pattern for every human being that followed.

One of the males could not wait. Pemba tore himself out of the egg before his time, and the piece of placenta he ripped away fell with him and became the earth: hard, sterile, and his. He tried to climb back for the rest, but Mangala had already turned it into the sun. So he stole eight male seeds from the creator instead and planted them in his own torn afterbirth. Only one came up, and it came up red. The soil was fouled by the theft and by the nature of the planting, a son sowing into his own mother’s flesh.

Faro was the other male twin. He had done nothing. He was the one sacrificed.

In heaven his body was cut into sixty pieces and the pieces were thrown out across space. Where they struck the ground, trees rose, the first green things on that barren crust and the first sign that it could be made to bear. Then Mangala brought Faro back to life, gave him the shape of a man, and sent him down in an ark built from his own celestial placenta. With him rode the eight ancestors of humankind and the clean seeds. The ark settled on a mountain called Kouroula, between Kri and Kri Koro, and the country around it took the name Mande.

He had worn another body first. While still in the sky Faro was a pair of twin fish, the mannogo, long whiskered catfish that are said to swim in the Niger to this day. On a still morning at one of his places on the bank, the water lies brown and slow, a net goes out with a soft slap, and now and then a broad flat head breaks the surface and sinks again without a sound. The people who fish there know whose shape that is. It is a peculiar comfort, sharing a river with the god’s earlier draft.

The river itself is his doing. Pemba’s sister and twin, Mousso Koroni, had also been sowing, scattering impure seed in the fields at Bounan, and when Faro came after her she ran, flinging grain behind her as she went. Faro did not chase her on foot for long. He let the water go. The flood rolled over the planted ground, cold and heavy with silt, and the mannogo swam through the drowned furrows eating the bad seed out of the mud. The channel that flood carved is the Niger, and the Niger is held to be Faro’s body laid across the land.

He stopped many times on that journey, and each stopping place is remembered. They are called faro tyn, there are twenty-two of them along the river, and each carries a name that recalls what happened to him there. The fifth generation descended from the ark numbered forty-four, twenty-two of them men, one for each of those sites, and the lineages that call themselves “from Mande” trace their beginnings to them. At a sanctuary on a hilltop tied to his fertility, a second gift of speech was given to people, and a pair of twins, boy and girl, was sacrificed there so that words and births would both multiply. Ceremonies drawing on this history are still held at Kangaba, with some thirty Mande lineages taking part.

Downstream, among the Bamana of Ségou, the same being changes face. There Faro is very often a she, the mistress of the Niger who lives in its depths, and one learned description calls the deity androgynous and albino, neither one sex nor the other and pale as river foam. In this telling Faro raised the seven levels of the sky, overcame Pemba, set people and animals in their order, and taught farming and the working of iron. Another version pairs a female Faro with a male twin named Koni and gives her the task of repopulating the world after a flood that carried off Mousso Koroni. The puppet masquerades of the river villages still bring Faro out on the water, and they remember that Biton Coulibaly, founder of the kingdom of Ségou, came to power with her help.

What Faro can do follows from all this. Rain falls because it is sent from the seventh heaven, and without it nothing Pemba ruined would ever have sprouted. Floods obey. Polluted things can be washed. Conscience, order and a sense of responsibility are counted among the gifts carried down in the ark, which is a large claim to make for a catfish.

The limits are just as plain. Faro arrives second, always, to a world someone else has already spoiled, and the repair is never complete: the red grain is still red. Mending cost a death and a dismemberment before a single drop fell. And the water that cleans the fields is the same water that drowns them, so the god who restores the earth can only do it by putting part of it under.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Faro in Mande mythology?

Faro is the water deity and restorer in the creation accounts of the Mande and Bamana peoples of Mali. Faro is the twin of Pemba, and was sacrificed, brought back to life and sent to earth in an ark to repair the damage Pemba had done.

Is Faro male or female?

It depends on the telling. The Mande account recorded around Kangaba treats Faro as a male twin who is given the shape of a man, while Bamana tradition around Ségou often makes Faro a female river deity, and one description calls the deity androgynous and albino.

What is the connection between Faro and the Niger River?

The Niger is held to be Faro’s body. The river was cut by the floods Faro released while pursuing Mousso Koroni, and twenty-two sacred stopping places along it, called faro tyn, mark where Faro rested.

Why was Faro sacrificed?

Faro was sacrificed to purify the earth after Pemba left the world egg too early, stole eight seeds from the creator Mangala and planted them in impure ground. Faro’s body was cut into sixty pieces, and the pieces that fell to earth became the first trees.

What are the mannogo fish?

The mannogo are twin catfish, the first form Faro took while still in the sky. They are said to live in the Niger today, and in the myth they ate the impure seeds that Mousso Koroni had scattered once Faro flooded the fields.

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