Malidoma Patrice Somé


Malidoma Patrice Somé is 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 currently lives on the West Coast of the United States.

Background

At age four, Somé was abducted from his people, the Dagara by a missionary, and taken to a boarding school where he was inflicted with a Western education. Somé endured sixteen years of physical and emotional abuse by the priests, but he left the 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 culture and his apparent indoctrination into Christianity and a "white man's world". Elders from the village believed that Somé's ancestral spirit had withdrawn from his body and that he had already undergone a type of rite of passage into manhood in the white world.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 in the tribe. 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 also 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 10 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 holds three Master's degrees and two doctorates from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University.
Somé currently conducts Kontomble initiation and divination retreats and other workshops in the US and Europe.