FEATURE the buffalo woman, Dô Kamissa, of whom she was the avatar,40 saying: “The king promises to give the conqueror the hand of the most beautiful girl in Dô; when all the people of Dô are gathered and you are told to choose the woman you want as a wife, you will search through the crowd; you will find a girl sitting aside on an observation platform, a very ugly girl, uglier than anything you can imagine— she is the one you must choose. She is called Sogolon Kedjou or Sogolon Kondouto because she is a humpback.” 96 41 In the version of the epic told by Youssouf Tata Cissé and Wa Kamissoko, she is described as “Warty Sogolon.” Her father, Dô Moko Niamoko Djata,42 is ashamed of her and says he dare not show her “because she is so ugly and her body is covered all over with deformities and warts.” Slowly Sogolon Koudouman was brought out and she stopped in front of the other girls of the land. Seven warts, all different, marked her body; she had one eye higher than the other, one arm longer than the other, one leg longer than the other, and one buttock higher than the other.43 As related by Jan Jansen, et al., she is “Pimply Sogolon” and much is made of her ugliness, her warts, and the fact that “she has one leg longer than the other, one arm longer than the other.”44 In the David C. Conrad and Djanka Tassey Condé rendition, the buffalo woman explains that it is her fault that Sogolon is so afflicted: “The duct in her eye is injured and the tears run down, And I’m responsible for that. Her head is bald. She has a humped back. I, Do Kamissa, did that. Her feet are twisted. When she walks, she limps this way and that, And I am the cause of that.”45 In Bamba Suso’s version, it is Sunjata’s father, whose name is given as Fata Kung Makhang, who pays a visit to King Sankarang Madiba Kante as the diviners instructed. They told him that he could find a woman called Sukulung there who would give birth to the future king of the “black people.” Nine Sogolons (Sukulung) are brought forward, but a clairvoyant, consulting the signs, declares that none of them is the right one: FIG. 11: CT scans of figure 10, opaque 3D views from three angles. © Dr. Marc Ghysels, Brussels.
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