Kaba

Kaba, also known as Kangaba, lies in the Manden heartland of Mali. Its Kamablon, or House of Speech, was built in 1653. This circular sacred building housed objects of symbolic value and served as a place of village deliberation. It gave the community a physical centre for memories and obligations associated with the Manding past.

The house’s thatched roof is renewed in a ceremony held every seven years. Members of the Keita clan and Diabate griots keep its history and organise the event, which recalls the Manden through oral traditions. Re-roofing also provides an occasion to renew social ties and settle disputes. The seventeenth-century building thus joins the preservation of inherited objects to spoken history and the repeated work of maintaining a communal institution.