Burkina Faso: Tiebele painted houses are a real work of art

If you are lucky to go to Burkina faso, Afroculture.net recommends you to visit the village of Tiébélé. Located in the south of Burkina Faso, near the Ghanaian border, Tiébélé is an atypical village where each house is a real work of art.

This village is populated by the Kassena. This is one of the oldest ethnic groups in the country with 17,500 inhabitants. When you get there, you see unique houses covered with murals decorated with traditional pattern.

Who are the Kasséna?

Kassena people are very popular in Burkina Faso. They settled on the territory in the 15th century. They are famous for their incredible huts with traditional architecture in the form of rectangular and round houses. The facades of the houses are charming. They are painted with geometrical tribal motifs, which represent daily life.

Among the Kassena, women from villages decorate facades of the houses with black and white color. This is part of their ancestral heritage. These colours are obtained by crushing a black stone or a white stone. For red colour, they mix clay soil with cooking water from the pods of néré, a tree found in the Sudanese and Guinean savannahs.

How are the houses in the village built?

In the past, houses were built with earth, wood, cow dung and straw. They mixed the soil with straw and cow dung, which resulted in a plasticized material.

Today, they use mud brick molding walls with foundations resting on a large stone. The houses are designed without windows.

You can admire below the beauty and art of Tiébélé houses.