Kono (peuple de Sierra Leone)

The Kono people (pronounced koh noh) are a major Mande-speaking ethnic group in Sierra Leone at 5.2% of the country's total population. Their homeland is the diamond-rich Kono District in eastern Sierra Leone. The Kono are primarily diamond miners and farmers. The Kono people speak the Kono language as their first language and is the most widely spoken language among the Kono people. Many youth from the Kono ethnic group use the Krio language as the primary language of communication with other Sierra Leonean ethnic groups. Unlike many other Sierra Leonean ethnic groups, the Kono people rarely travel outside Eastern Sierra Leone; as a result only few Konos are found in the capital Freetown and in northern Sierra Leone. The Kono people are the descendants of Mali-Guinean migrants who are said to have moved to Sierra Leone and settled in what is now Kono District in the mid-16th century, however there is archaeological evidence of settlement in Kono District as far back as 2200 B.C. Kono history claims that the Kono were once a powerful people in Mali and Guinea. The Kono migrated to Sierra Leone as peaceful hunters. The tribe was split during partitioning of Africa by European colonists and part of the tribe still exists in neighbouring Guinea. Attacks from the related Mende people forced the Kono to seek refuge in the Koranko territory to the north, where they were allowed to farm the land. The Mende eventually moved further south, and the Kono returned to their own land in the east. The Kono are primarily farmers and in some areas, alluvial diamond miners. They grow rice, cassava, corn, beans, groundnuts, sweet potato, peppers, cassava leaf, greens, potato leaf etc. as their main crops, along with banana, pineapple and plantain, and cash crops such as cocoa, coffee and kola nut. They live in towns and villages and travel daily to their surrounding farm lands to work. They are a polite and hospitable people and even allow strangers to lodge with them or their chiefs. The size of rural Kono villages varies from several houses to nearly one hundred dwellings.