Jola people

The Diola are an ethnic group in Gambia, Senegal and Guinea- Bissau. In Senegal, mainly in the Casamance region, living about 1 million DIOLAS.

They are mainly active in the agricultural sector of the areas of Senegambia, here especially in rice cultivation.

Although they live in a mainly populated by Muslims region, the Diola mostly Catholics. The center of their culture can be found at Bignona and Ziguinchor especially in Casamance delta.

The most famous representative of the Diola was the tribal chief Ahoune Sane, who took up the struggle against the colonization of their home very early. Many Diola brought their animistic religion as slaves to North America and thus influenced, for example, the emergence of voodoo in the Caribbean significant. In the afterlife a moral concept is to recognize that man consists of a good part of which is reincarnated, a bad part, which is extinguished, and a great part of which enters into a paradise.