Africa-Press – Angola. The deputy governor for the Social, Political and Economic sector of Lunda Norte, Frederico Barroso, said this Wednesday that the elevation of the ethnomathematical art “Sona” to the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, puts the province on the tourism route cultural.
Reacting to the elevation of “Sona”, a symbol of Tchokwe culture, Frederico Barroso said that the local government and its partners are already working to create conditions for greater dissemination and promotion of art.
Among the projects in the pipeline, he highlighted the construction of the future Sona village, to be financed by the Brilhante Foundation, the social face of the diamond subsector.
The project will be implemented within a year and will have 90 units (circle-shaped barracks), of T1 and T2 types, four tennis courts, two basketball courts and an equal number of football courts, in addition to green spaces.
It will also have an arts school, a church, a protocol house, a space for rituals such as mukanda (male initiation), Cikwmbi (female initiation), mungonge-cyiwila (high level of mukanda) and three jangos.
According to the official, Sona drawings are expected to be on the walls of all residences to be built in the future village, to make it easier for tourists to have contact with art.
He called on the business class to take advantage of the business opportunity that the culture sector offers, expanding the hotel and restaurant network in the province, to meet the demand of tourists who will visit the province, attracted by Sona.
For Frederico Barroso, the diversity of functions represented by Sona, whether as a means of communication or as a figure in the field of ethno-mathematics, demonstrates its sociocultural, educational and scientific usefulness, representing a unique and exceptional testimony to the creative genius of the Lunda Tchokwe people .
Sona in its extensive understanding is a communicative code of the Lunda Tchokwe people and understood in several anthropological, social/cultural, geometric and geographic aspects, in a set of configured elements (language, geographic orientation, mathematics, games, proverbs and representation of the world).
It is an art of learning, initially in mukanda and at the high level of mungong (circumcision), in its complexity of practice and understanding.
Sonas, which means writing in the sand, was a form of communication of the ancestors of the eastern region of the country, predominated by the Tchokwe people, who wrote messages through engravings on the walls of houses, trees and on the ground (sand) in the villages, to be deciphered by the other members of the community.
These engravings (Sona), which are difficult to understand, are currently found in the Dundo Museum, and in a book that addresses Bantu culture and has already been portrayed in the feature film “The Water Gods”, in a co-production between Argentina and Angola, in 2013.
Currently, there are more than 10 scientific works, published in various parts of the world, portraying the Sona and none in Angola.
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