Losso
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The Lossos are an ethnic and linguistic group of people living in the Doufelgou District (Préfecture) of the Kara Region in Northern Togo, West Africa. The district capital is Niamtougou which is also an important regional market town. The Lossos live on a plateau between two mountain ranges in the communities of Niamtougou and Koka (Canton of Niamtougou-Koka); Baga and Ténéga (Canton of Baga-Ténéga); and Siou, Djorergou, Sioudouga, Padeba, Hago, Koukou, and Kounfaga (Canton of Siou).
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[edit] People
The Lossos are primarily engaged in subsistence farming and small animal husbandry. They grow millet and sorghum that they make into a thick porridge (la pâte) that is the staple of their diet and that they brew into a thick low-alcohol beer called dam. They also grow yams and cassava, groundnuts (peanuts), beans, and fonio. In the late 1800s, early European explorers such as the ethnographer, Leo Frobenius, baptized them the "palm tree people" because of the concentration of oil palm trees in their home area.
The Lossos have migrated in search of fertile available land to the area along the North-South National Road No. 1 between Sokodé and Notsé, where they have founded numerous communities. In addition, they have migrated to Togo's capital city, Lomé, and to Accra, the capital of Ghana, in search of wage employment. They have also migrated to the Plateau Region of Togo and the Volta Region of Ghana where they work as sharecroppers in coffee and cocoa plantations. Losso men served in the colonial armies of Germany, Britain, and France as well as in the Ghanaian and Togolese armies in the years following the independences of the two countries.
[edit] Language
The Lossos call themselves Nawde (singular) or Nawdba (plural), and their language is Nawdm. There are approximately 200,000 native speakers of Nawdm in Togo and Ghana. Nawdm most closely resembles the Yom language of the Pila-Pila and Tanéka people who live near the city of Djougou in the Donga Province (comprising the Southern portion of the old Atakora Department) of Northern Bénin. Nawdm and Yom, like Mòoré, the language of the Mossi people of Burkina Faso, are classified under the Oti-Volta sub-group of languages in the Gur (or Voltaique) group of the Niger-Congo languages.
"Losso" is a name by which the Nawdba call themselves in dealing with non-Nawdba. The name "Losso" was attributed by Togo's French colonial administrations to all residents of the present Doufelgou District, regardless of their ethnic or linguistic affilitaion. While there has been considerable mutual influence between the Nawdba and their closest neighbors, the Kabyé and the Lamba, their languages do not resemble each other and are not mutually intelligible.
[edit] History
Like most of Togo's ethnic groups, the Lossos (Nawdba) claim to be the original inhabitants of their region. Also, like other groups, their formal tradition states that the original Nawdba descended from the sky directly into two sacred forests - one in Koka and one in Siou.[1] The original inhabitants were in each case a man replete with bow and arrows, hoe, and other tools of his gender and a woman also carrying the tools appropriate to her roles.
Informally, many older Lossos state that the Nawdba came "from the East, toward Djougou (in Bénin)." This statement is supported by the close relationship between Nawdm and the Yom language of the region near Djougou. The apparent similarity between the Yom-Nawdm languages and Mooré of Burkina Faso suggests that the Nawdba, Pila-Pila, and Tanéka peoples may have a common origin in what is today Burkina Faso.[2] This hypothesis has yet to be tested and proven.
[edit] Prominent Lossos
[edit] ADZALLA, HOLA
Hoja Adzalla was born in June 1950 and died in 1996. Among his contributions to the Nawdba and the Nawdm language is the elaboration of a calendar in Losso.
[edit] ALASSOUNOUMA, BOUMBÉRA
Boumbéra Alassounouma was born in Niamtougou on December 31, 1942. He completed primary and secondary school in Togo before attending the University of Caen in France, where he obtained his licence in psychology. From 1973 to 1978, he was Director of the Pedagogical Institute. From 1978 through 1982, he served in the Cabinet of President Eyadéma as Minister of Labor and the Civil Service and as Minister of Education and Scientific Research. From 1983 through 1985, he was Ambassador to China, North Korea and Japan. From 1985 to 1992, he was Ambassador to France, Spain, and Italy. He was a technical advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation from 1992 to 1994. He was named Foreign Minister in 1994 in the coalition government of Prime Minister Edem Kodjo. On June 2, 1995, Alassounouma was killed in a freak accident at the construction site of his new home in Lomé. [3]
[edit] BAKÉLÉ, KOGUELMA BARANDAO
Mme. Koguelma Barandao Bakélé was named Chef de Canton of Siou on May 13, 2004, one of only three women Canton Chiefs in Togo at that time.
[edit] BARANDAO, JEAN-MARIE
Jean-Marie Barandao was born in Siou to the chiefly family.
[edit] BIRREGAH, EMMANUEL
Emmanuel Birregah was the son of the Paramount Chief (Chef Supérieur) of the Lossos (i.e. the inhabitants of the Doufelgou Prefecture). In 1952, during the final years of the French mandate in Togo, he was one of the founders of the Northern regional political party, the Union of Chiefs and Populations of the North (L'Union des Chefs et des Populations du Nord - UCPN) that was allied with the Togolese Progress Party (Parti Togolais du Progrès - PTP) of Nicolas Grunitzky. In 1969, he was one of a group of young men who were called upon by President Gnassingbé Etienne Eyadéma to create the single national political party, the Togo People's Assembly (Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais - RPT). He was Chief of the Secretariat at the Ministry of Finance.he died on cotober 27th 1999
[edit] DADJO, KLÉBER, COLONEL
Col. Kléber Dadjo, was born in Siou on August 12, 1914. Col. Dadjo served in the British Army during World War II and in the French Army in the IndoChina and Algeria conflicts. At the time of Togo's independence in 1960, he was the longest-serving and highest-ranked Togolese in the French Army. He held the rank of Captain and commanded Togo's tiny defense force, the Garde Togolaise. He was promoted to Major and eventually to Lieutenant Colonel after the 1963 coup d'état and served as head of the military cabinet of President Nicolas Grunitzky. After the second military coup d'état on January 13, 1967, Dadjo was named interim President of Togo (as Chairman of the Comité National de Reconciliation), a position that he held until April 14, 1967, when Lt. Col. Gnassingbé Etienne Eyadéma was named President. From 1967 through 1968, he served as Minister of Justice. In 1969, he retired and returned to his home in Siou where he became Chef de Canton. It is widely reported that he died in 1979 but this is incorrect. He died after the mid-1980s. In 2006, Col. Dadjo was recognized by the government of President Faure Gnassingbé along with former Presidents Sylvanus Olympio and Nicolas Grunitzky as part of a decision to rehabilitate the image of Togo's previous leaders. The former avenue de la Nouvelle Marche in Lomé was renamed avenue Kléber Dadjo in his honor. Col. Dadjo is frequently and erroneously identified in print as a Kabyé rather than a Nawde (or Losso). [4]
[edit] NGUITA, ODILE BARARMNA
Mme. Odile Bararmna Nguita was named Chef de Canton of Niamtougou on May 13, 2004, one of only three women Canton Chiefs in Togo at that time.
[edit] YWASSA, LÉONARD BAGUILMA
Léonard Baguilma Ywassa was born on December 1, 1926, in Koka (Canton of Niamtougou-Koka) in Doulfelgou Prefecture. Ywassa was an agronomist who graduated from the Agricultural College of Nancy (France). In the 1950s, he served in several positions of the agricultural services. He was active in the UDPT political party (l'Union Démocratique des Populations Togolaises) that resulted from a de facto fusion of the UCPN (Union des Chefs et des Populations du Nord) with the PTP (Parti Togolais du Progrès) of Nicolas Grunitzky. He held a ministerial post under Grunitzky from 1956 until the latter's ouster in the elections of 1958. He was an opposition politician of the UDPT under Sylvanus Olympio's CUT government until opposition parties were banned and a single-party state was created in 1962. When Grunitzky assumed power after the January 13, 1963, coup d'état, he served as Director of Agriculture and then Minister of Rural Economy until Grunitzky was overthrown in the January 13, 1967, coup. In 1968, he was named Ambassador to France, Great Britain and the European Economic Community and later served in several high-level positions in the Ministry of Rural Economy until his retirement in 1986. He died in 2004. [5]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Froelich, Jean-Claude, Pierre Alexandre, and Robert Cornevin, Les Populations du Nord-Togo, Presses Universitaires de France: Paris, 1963, p.69.
- ^ Froelich, Jean-Claude, Pierre Alexandre, and Robert Cornevin, Les Populations du Nord-Togo, Presses Universitaires de France: Paris, 1963, p.65.
- ^ Source: The program and remembrance card from Alassounouma's funeral.
- ^ Sources include: Decalo, Samuel, Historical Dictionary of Togo, Third Edition, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996, pp. 106-107.
- ^ Sources include: Decalo, Samuel, Historical Dictionary of Togo, Third Edition, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996, pp. 292-293.
