The Wamei or Konyagi people are a small ethnic group living along both sides of the border between Guinea, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau.
They migrated to Senegal and The Gambia to work in the bamboo belt, settling mainly along the major roads from Tamba to Dakar, and from Velingara to Kolda. Most live in Senegal but some are located in Guinea.
They are concentrated in southeastern Senegal and across the border in northern Guinea.
The global population is 37,000 (Peoplegroups.org, 2024)
Ethnologists consider them among the original inhabitants of the region. They are closely related to the Basari people of Senegal.
Ethnographers traditionally classify them as one of the Tenda groups, which also includes the neighboring Badyaran, Basari, Bedik, and Boin groups. As early as the seventeenth century, the Konyagi were widely scattered and sparsely settled throughout eastern Senegal, but they suffered from slaving expeditions and wars of conquest by the Mandinkas, Fulbes, and Tukulors
Wamey or Konyagi (Conhague, Coniagui, Koniagui), is a Senegambian language of Senegal and Guinea spoken by the Konyagui people.
The Konyagi are subsistence farmers; they do not raise peanuts to sell for cash. Increasingly large numbers of them, however, travel seasonally to towns and cities in search of wage work.
From May to December, they raise millet, fonio, peanuts, rice, and mangos and herd cattle. The Konyagi make and sell bamboo mats for use as house walls, roofs and beds. They also make and sell millet and palm wine, and a pure alcohol beverage called "soum soum."
Their homeland is isolated and one of the least developed economically in the area—700 kilometers from Dakar and 250 kilometers from Tambacounda. Roads are poor and often impassable during the rainy season.
They are slash-and-burn cultivators who live in villages of from 100 to 500 people each.
The Wamei social structure is hierarchical. Those belonging to an older age group are responsible for teaching and disciplining the group that is below them. Belonging and conforming to the group is very important, and they hold initiation rites which are very important to them. These rites are so central to their identity that the government once banned them. They still perform these initiation rites, which are exclusively for men. They include secret ceremonies that women should not know about, and outsider should never hear about. They hold kinship very tightly and even if living apart.
Over the next several centuries, most Konyagi were assimilated or destroyed by those groups. Today, however, a remnant of the Konyagi still survives.
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