Makalondi

Makalondi lies in the eastern Gourma country west of the Niger, among savanna and seasonal streams. Gourmantché communities inhabit the region, where farming villages and pasture occupy the land between the Niger valley and the country farther west. In the nineteenth century the growth of the Islamic polity of Say brought new political relationships to eastern Gourma, whose settlements already had their own chiefs and traditions. The landscape preserves the meeting of these neighbouring worlds.