TENGA

Tengbiiga

Tenga is the earth deity of the Mossi of Burkina Faso, one of the central figures of their traditional religion alongside Wende, the god of the sky and of destiny. A feminine power, she is the earth itself: she feeds the living, shelters the dead, and draws her authority from the ancestors buried within her. The Mossi say she is more feared than Wende, for she watches over morality and justice: lying, theft and blood spilt on the ground are offences that call for reparation, on pain of drought or barren fields. Her cult illustrates the fundamental division of Moaaga society between the political power of the chiefs, bearers of the naam, and the religious power of the tengsoba, the earth-priests descended from the autochthonous lineages that preceded the Mossi conquerors. It is they who keep the earth altars, grant farming rights and offer the sacrifices that appease Tenga before the sowing and after the harvest. Deity of rootedness and of the soil's memory, Tenga binds every Mossi village to the land of its ancestors and makes fertility a matter of moral covenant between the living, the dead and the ground that bears them.