Today I had the first contact with hunters, during a small festival next to the city council in Bobo Dioulasso. I was invited there by Pascal, the uncle of a friend of mine who has been for years my music teacher in Italy. He is a donsojeli, or donson’gonifola, a musician of the hunters’ brotherhood….

I arrived in Bobo Dioulasso from Ouagadougou on the 25th of August. Today the month of Ramadan ends and people celebrate the end of the fasting period. I quickly realised that many here declare they are muslim but are not, strictly speaking, very observant. There are in fact many different ways of being muslim in…