Go-Seydou Traoré is a blacksmith, he works iron and wood following the Mande tradition of numu families. He has big, strong hands, and makes chips fly around when he cuts the hard wood he makes mortars from. But he is at the same time a very gentle and sensitive person, who often comes by to greet me and smiles frequently. It is rare to hear him raise his voice, even when he is drunk. He is also a donso, and hunts with a gunpowder shotgun. In Karankasso many hunters still use this kind of gun that arrived around the end of the 19th century in this part of Africa, with the French. Sometimes they are inherited from a father or a grandfather, but sometimes they are bought new, for they are still hand-made these days. They are cheaper than an artisanal cartridge shotgun, around a third of the price, so for many they are the only affordable choice. But they are heavy, slow and imprecise. Loading a gunpowder shotgun takes about one minute, if you are skilled. You definitely don’t have a second chance if you miss the shot. Still, hunters like Seydou bring meat home thanks to this kind of technology, preparing gunpowder and balls completely by themselves. You have to know the exact ingredient proportions in order to make the powder detonate in the right way, which requires experience. There are no recipes.
I wanted to see how gunpowder is prepared, for I knew it is used for hunting and also for ritual purposes, or as an ingredient for traditional medicines. So while I was in Bobo Dioulasso I bough the ingredients, sulphur, potassium nitrate and bars of some alloy of lead and tin, to make balls. I asked Seydou to film him, and in exchange he would keep the gunpowder and the balls. This is a short summary of the making, which took about an hour. Despite the title, it is not really an instructional video, for I don’t want you to do this at home.