Eighty-four years old, and the keeper of a lineage never written down.
Fatou Ceesay has held her family's oral record for more than fifty years, having received it from an aunt who judged her the most exact of the children.
Exactness is the qualification. Variation is noticed and corrected by the wider community, which is what keeps an unwritten record stable.
She is now teaching two granddaughters, and permits recording only because, in her words, the young ones travel too much to sit and listen properly.
Photographs
From this recording
Pass this record on — attribution travels with the link.
