Fundraiser for Bandomé Didier Somé

FUNDRAISING NEEDS:

Bandomé Didier Somé (Malidoma Somé's brother) is working on a book in an effort to preserve, revitalize, and share the traditional medicine of divinations – a form of shamanism in the Dagara community of West Africa. For centuries, this traditional practice has been central to cultural and spiritual life of the Dagara people, serving as a means of seeking guidance, understanding natural phenomena, and connecting with the unseen worlds. Yet today Didier is one of the few diviners left in his community. As the number of cultural carriers dwindles, preservation and revitalization is more urgent than ever.

He hopes to also include cultural teachings to further support grief rituals through his book.

Without electricity or a computer it has been a very time-intensive project, but Didier has already written nearly 100 pages of his first draft by hand. As a next step, he is raising funds to purchase a computer and get access to enough electricity to charge his computer.

He is offering one-on-one sessions for donors, which you can learn more about below.

Anything helps!

LEARNING SESSIONS WITH DIDIER:

While general donations are encouraged, Didier is also offering one-on-one learning sessions to support relationship building and fundraising efforts. To schedule a session with Didier, please make a donation here and reach out to Siena to get connected.

Learning Session with Didier:

PROJECT BACKGROUND:

Bandomé Didier Somé is the little brother of the late Malidome Somé - beloved author, spiritual teacher, and grief tender. In the 1980s, at the instruction of his elders, Malidoma journeyed from his small village in Burkina Faso, West Africa to share about Dagara spiritual practices, rituals, and worldviews with the Western world. While this sacred bundle of cultural wisdom was shared as a gift, it was also a survival response to stop the harm their village was experiencing as a result of colonization. Malidoma was one of many children in the region to be taken away from his parents at the age of 4 by a missionary and forced into a Jesuit boarding school. The elders believed that only a people spiritually impoverished by disconnection from their ancestors and grief could commit such atrocities. Their response was to share their cultural practices as a pathway back to reconnection, belonging, and healing in the world.

Over decades of teaching, Malidoma and Sobonfu shared Dagara cultural wisdoms with many thousands of people. Other teachers who learned from them – including Francis Weller, Michael Meade, Martín Prechtel, Therese Charvet, and Laurence Cole – integrated these cultural teachings into their own work to reach hundreds of thousands more. Grief work is on the rise, which offers such essential medicine for the converging crises of our times. And deep personal and collective healing continues to ripple out from this teaching lineage.

Yet – back in the Dagara villages, systems of colonialism, modernization, and Christianization continue to threaten their way of life and pose challenges to preserving traditional practices. Malidoma’s borther Didier confronts this daily through his work as a diviner.

Since time immemorial, the traditional practice of divinations has been central to cultural and spiritual life of the Dagara people, serving as a means of seeking guidance, understanding natural phenomena, and connecting with the unseen worlds. Diviners hold an essential role for maintaining harmony and balance within the community. They act as an intermediary between the physical and spiritual realms, using ancient practices for communicating with ancestors and spirits to help guide individuals and communities in making important decisions and navigating life's challenges. In addition to serving as spiritual advisors, diviners also play a role in mediating disputes, healing the sick, and performing rituals for various life events such as births, marriages, and funerals.

Today, Didier is one of the few diviners left in his community to serve the surrounding villages. The decline of traditional medicine carriers like Didier began through missionary effort to impose Western cultural values and systematically eradicate or marginalize indigenous spiritual traditions in favor of Christianity. This involved efforts to demonize or delegitimize traditional beliefs as "pagan" or "primitive," leading to the stigmatization and suppression of indigenous spiritual practices. In some cases, missionaries actively outlawed indigenous ceremonies and coerced converts to abandon their traditional beliefs.

As a traditional medicine carrier, Didier experiences this stigma on a regular basis – yet many of people still come to him to learn, practice, and seek guidance. In his 35 years as a diviner, he has helped thousands in need. He recognizes the power of this traditional medicine to offer guidance in times when we feel truly lost. He has foreseen that we are entering into a time of converging crises where we will need these ancient technologies of connection to find our way forward.

FROM BAONDOMÉ DIDIER SOMÉ:

"My love to all the living human beings and species on this planet is deep inside myself. That's why I always grieve when I see someone with pain. This gift started acting in me when I was 7 years old - the year in which every human creature’s brain develops to remind them which food they have eaten the past 24 hours. Love always starts when you are able to feel and to contain the pain of others, other than to measure the size of their cuffing.

Lovely human creation,

My name is BAONDOMÉ DIDIER SOMÉ born in 12 October 1971 in a village called DANO in the south west region of Burkina Faso, 48 kilometers from the border with Ghana republic. I am the little brother of the late Malidoma Patrice Somé. SOMÉ is our family name, named for similar attitudes to the "hare" - the living bush animal. My name BAONDOMÉ, started by the second modern alphabet, means something important: to be alerted in one’s brain capacity to know who your enemy. This word for me is considered a big load of alarm: caution, precaution, and a warning of something devastating that will hit our world entirely if we don't do something soon.

My brain scale grew up in some weirded circumstances during my childhood by seeing other worldly beings arrive in front of me. This made me cry for help. One day, after school, my dad called me to a corner in the compound saying this: “You were in your mother’s womb for 13 months and a diviner named Gowru saved your life through incarnation energy. The diviner told me that you will become a diviner like him when you are 17 years old. You are seventeen years old now, and that is why you see the supernatural world is manifesting their new coming to you. Don't cry, they will not kill you.”

Since this time, my life’s work has been as a diviner. I've cured and taught many thousands of sick people over my 35 years of my experience doing divination, including helping elder Malidoma in his work with you.

I want to share my knowledge with the world. I believe these traditional wisdoms can help my dear beautiful people know what to do even when they are in the direction of nowhere. I know that they will need it by the given code and signals signified by my name. This medicine is needed to guide us through the devastation that is coming upon our world.

I want to write this book as a gift and my contribution to help the beautiful living men and women. This book will be something special to support all life, for this massive stone is also a gift from the great spirit.

The huge trouble I have encountered is how to get the equipment needed. That's why a solution is found to create a fundraising system to be able to pay for the equipment to make this book writing project possible. I ask to anyone who can contribute or donate funds, or who will like to join with a have 1 hour session over direct video chat with me.

I love you all, and be blessed. Ashay!

SOMÉ BAONDOMÉ DIDIER"

ABOUT NORTHWEST GRIEF TENDING

This fundraiser is organized in partnership with Northwest Grief Tending.

Northwest Grief Tending (https://northwestgrieftending.com) supports individual and collective healing by welcoming grief back into community spaces. While there are many teachers who inform our approach to grief rituals, it is particularly important to us to honor the lineage of Malidoma Somé, Sobonfu Somé, and the elders of the Dagara tribe of Dano, Burkina Faso, West Africa. Without their generous teachings, the community grief tending movement that’s emerging in the Pacific Northwest would not be happening. For those who have benefited from grief rituals connected to this teaching lineage, we ask you to learn about their stories and give back. Northwest Grief Tending donates 10% of all proceeds from grief rituals to the Dagara community and our local Duwamish tribe. We invite you to join us in practicing reciprocity.

Siena Tenisci, MA, LMHCA, is a therapist, community organizer, and founder of Northwest Grief Tending. She is a descendant of Abruzzese and Celtic peoples - lineages where keening women once held dedicated and respected roles in society as vocal rituals who midwifed collective grief within their communities. She completed her Masters in Counseling at Antioch University in Seattle and is committed to a lifelong practice of dismantling systemic and internalized oppression.