Bac 2011 Oral Test
Famed for their skills, the Senoufo brotherhood of "dozo" (hunters) is feared and respected. Nowhere is initiation more demanded. Like a kind of African Samurai, the "dozo" live according to a strict code of rules and privations necessary to ensure survival in the dangerous, magical world of forest and savanna. They have reputedly been in possession of magical powers themselves including invisibility and invulnerability to arms.
The training, by a master dozo, is a complete schooling in the art of hunting and spiritual and moral values. Lying, jealousy and stealing are forbidden, as the dozo is the epitome of good and noble conduct. The entry requirement is 12 kola nuts and a chicken. If this pleases the fetishes the initiate takes a symbolic bath that makes him a dozo student. Dress is instantly recognizable, as is smell: it is forbidden to wash the dozo uniform of floppy bonnet and loose-fitting cotton shirt and trousers, usually dyed in earth browns, yellows and greens and adorned with charms for protection and good luck.
Dozo culture draws heavily on the animal kingdom. Cotton masks represent beasts of the bush, while the "sogogbankele" dance is that of the one-horned animal that is the rhinoceros.
Katrina Manson & James Knight, Burkina Faso: the Bradt Travel Guide, p.272.