Malidoma Patrice Somé
Malidoma Patrice Somé (1956–2021) was a West African writer and workshop leader, primarily in the field of spirituality. Born in a Dagara community in Dano, Burkina Faso, he was raised by Jesuits from the age of four. He passed December 9, 2021. Background. At age four, Somé was kidnapped from the Dagara by a Jesuit Missionary and taken to a Jesuit boarding school where he was forcibly kept for 16 years and forced to learn the ways of the White Man by the priests. Somé writes that he endured sixteen years of physical and emotional abuse by  the priests, and that he then left this school when he was twenty to return to the village of his birth. Upon his return, integration into his traditional tribal religion and customs was difficult, due to his long absence from his parents' culture, and his apparent indoctrination into Christianity and a "white man's world". Elders from the village said that they believed Somé's ancestral spirit had withdrawn from his body and that he had already undergone a type of rite of passage into manhood in the white world. Despite this, they agreed to let him undergo a belated  manhood rite with a younger group of males in the tribe. Somé says that, having been raised outside of the culture and not speaking the language made the month-long, "baor" process, believed to unite soul and body, more dangerous for him than for the culturally-Dagara youths undergoing the rite. Somé writes that each person is born with a destiny, and he or she is given a name that reflects that destiny. Somé says his name, "Malidoma", means "friend of the enemy/stranger." Somé believes it is his destiny to come to Western audiences and promote an understanding between  Western and African cultures. After living in the US for about ten years, while completing a PhD at Brandeis University, Somé went back to Burkina Faso for an arranged marriage to Sobonfu Somé, a member of the Dagara tribe. They later divorced. Sobonfu Somé died in 2017. Education. Somé held three Master's degrees and two doctorates from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. Before his death, Somé conducted "Kontomble" initiation and divination retreats and other workshops in the US and Europe.