The clown is a key figure in this social order. Social humour in general is highly prized in Mali, much of it revolving around differences in power and status – issues over which tribes in neighbouring African countries such as Sierra Leone (and in the rest of the world, for that matter) frequently go to war. In Mali, some of the most spirited joking takes place between individuals who are “teasing cousins.” Usually a clan has “teasing” relations with four or five other clans within or outside of its tribe.

Bourgeois says the jokes generally revolve around who is a slave to whom, or who “created” another tribe in West African history. The custom is a light-hearted way for Malians of diverse ethnic backgrounds to get acquainted. But it also pokes fun at the hierarchical social order that affects everything from a person’s livelihood to whom he or she can date.

A Woloso clown is able to be more freewheeling in his or her humour than most. Often, when Bourgeois enters a store or gets stopped at one of the many police roadblocks on the road to Djenné, he identifies himself by his Malian name, Baber Maïga, which provokes a slew of slave and creation jokes. In a typical riff, a member of the Dogon Tribe might say, “I know a cave where the Dogon use a stone to make Maïga,” to which Bourgeois might reply, “I have a tree where every night the fruit becomes Dogon.” To give his jokes additional bite, Bourgeois sometimes pretends to whip people with a little leather whip used by Koranic teachers in South Eastern Mali to discipline disobedient students.

One of Bourgeois’s favourite activities consists of sitting on a stool on the dirt road in front of his house in Djenné, bantering with fellow Woloso clowns, members of various tribes, and the occasional tourist. (Clowning is not paid work, and Bourgeois appears to be independently wealthy.)

Among close friends, conversation is even more relaxed, and Bourgeois has come to consider the exchange of such pleasantries as “How is your penis today?” or “Have you washed this morning?” (a euphemism for “Have you made love?”) – both common in Mali–profoundly more natural than the social niceties of the modern Western world.


Of late, Bourgeois has turned from aesthete to entertainer to relentless activist. In some ways he is trying to modernize Djenné; he has, for instance, helped finance a campaign to elect the city’s first woman mayor. In the main, however, he is trying to preserve the city’s traditional culture. He has agitated (unsuccessfully) against a paved highway being built to connect Djenné with the rest of Mali, as well as the project to build a modern sewage system that he says will waste water, a precious resource for most of the continent. His biggest struggle is against the Talo Dam project, which would divert water from Djenné. Bourgeois says the dam is an example of Lewis Mumford’s concept of the “megamachine” – a system imposed by an authority from outside that will ruin the local ecology and reduce tens of thousands of people to starvation.

Bourgeois’s campaign included funding a study on the proposed dam, and appeals to the U.S. government, a member of the African Development Bank (ADB), the multilateral institution financing the project. In 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department took the highly unusual step of prevailing upon the ADB to place a temporary moratorium on the project, even though it had already received approval from the bank’s board. Despite Bourgeois’s efforts, the project is now going ahead, supposedly with more community involvement and a dam design that diverts less water from Djenné.

Because of his activism, Bourgeois is a prominent, if somewhat controversial, figure in Djenné. He has faced attacks from public officials, and been accused of sleeping in the cemetery and performing black magic. But he has also received some of the city’s highest honours. He was declared an “epic hero” by the late head of the influential community of griots, who serve as the country’s oral historians. And the king of Djenné has adopted him as a son. Bourgeois often carries a brass-tipped ebony staff called a Tankara, which indicates his quasi-royal status. (Unfortunately for Bourgeois, his royal status does not provide him with any real political power, because in recent years Djenné’s mayor has superseded the king as the city’s de facto ruler.)

Of all of his diverse roles, Bourgeois believes being a Woloso clown is the most important. He says that in the West, it was once the work of intellectuals to call attention to abuses of power; he sees Woloso clowns performing this function in Mali today. By becoming a Woloso, Bourgeois has found a position, not available to him in the West, where he can both indulge his eccentricities and support his social agendas. “We are off the social scale; we are not members of conventional society; we are not Bourgeois,” he says with characteristic wit. “The Woloso have the freedom to be outrageous. They are free to tell the truth.”