Baramba

Village in Sikasso Region, Mali

12°35′5″N 5°27′10″W / 12.58472°N 5.45278°W / 12.58472; -5.45278Country

MaliRegionSikasso RegionCercleKoutiala CercleCommuneNampéElevation

312 m (1,024 ft)Time zoneUTC+0 (GMT)

Baramba is a village and administrative centre (chef-lieu) of the commune of Nampé in the Cercle of Koutiala in the Sikasso Region of southern Mali.^[1]^[a] The village is 25 km north of Koutiala.

The French explorer René Caillié stopped at Baramba on 18 February 1828 on his journey to Timbuktu. He was travelling with a caravan transporting kola nuts to Djenné. In his book Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo published in 1830, he refers to the village as Bamba.^[2] Caillié wrote:

After proceeding four miles we halted at the village of Bamba, which is shaded by boababs. At the market I observed that women wore glass rings in the nose; and some had these ornaments made of gold or copper. This village contains three to four hundred inhabitants.^[3]

The route of Caillié's caravan passed a few kilometers to the west of what is now the town of Koutiala. The town did not exist at the time: it was founded at the end of the 19th century by the French army after the conquest.^[2]

Notes

^ Written as Barhamba on the 1:200,000 Koutiala map issued by the French Institut Geographique National (IGN) in 1970.

References

^ Communes de la Région de Sikasso (PDF) (in French), Ministère de l’administration territoriale et des collectivités locales, République du Mali, archived from the original (PDF) on 3 December 2013.
^ ^a ^b Viguier 2008, p. 60.
^ Caillié 1830, p. 425.

Sources

Caillié, René (1830). Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo; and across the Great Desert, to Morocco, performed in the years 1824-1828 (Volume 1). London: Colburn & Bentley.
Viguier, Pierre (2008). Sur les Traces de René Caillié: Le Mali de 1828 Revisité. Versailles, France: Quae. ISBN 978-2-7592-0271-3..