“Tata Somba”, or “takyenta” refers to the traditional fortified residences of some of the Oti–Volta-speaking communities of northwestern Benin and northern Togo, particularly those of the Tammari people, or Batammariba/Bètammaribè. Batammariba means "the real builders of earth”, and are also known as Tamberma, in Togo, which means “good builders”. Another collective term for these peoples is “Somba”, which means “naked”, while the term “tata” is a generic term for many types of fortifications in West-Africa, ranging from fortified houses to walled settlements.
The Batammariba, who traditionally oppose any form of centralized power, and reject hereditary chieftains, migrated to their current location from the northwest, between the 16th and 18th century, escaping slave raids and domination by the kingdoms of the Gurma, Dagomba, Mamprusi and Mossi.
The entire Batammariba household including bedrooms, store rooms, granaries, barn, chicken coop, beehive, etc, is concentrated in a single building, featuring a string of “turrets”, circular, elliptical or square in form, connected to each other by earthen walls which delimit a vast room on the ground floor and a large terrace supported by wooden pillars on the upper floor, where the bedrooms and granaries are located. These houses have only one entrance, which enhances their defensibility. The entrance is oriented towards the west, sheltered from the prevailing rains and the dry, dusty harmattan winds in the winter.
The ground floor houses the inner altar of the ancestors, the tools, a millstone chamber and the animals which are housed in the rooms located below the turrets. Access to the terrace is on the left side of the main door. A first ladder made of a forked and notched tree trunk gives access to an intermediate terrace, where a second ladder leads to the upper floor.
The upper floor consists mainly of a large terrace, which is the main living space of the house, used for drying grains, cooking and other daily activities. It is via this terrace that one accesses the upper parts of the turrets which are either granaries or bedrooms. Granaries are usually half a level above the terrace and bedrooms half a level below the terrace, which can serve to conceal the access to the lower level, in case of an intruder climbing the outer wall.
While they have been likened to small castle houses, their purpose is not simply defensive. They are sacred structures dedicated to the supreme god, Kuiye (god of the setting sun), with a male-female duality, reflected in the architecture itself. The southern half of the structure is male and sacred. It contains the granaries that are filled with seeds with a masculine connotation, like fonio, millet, sorghum and rice. The northern half, is female and houses the female granaries containing beans, ground peas, fruits and peanuts. Another symbolic division is that between the ground floor, which belongs to the dead and contains altars, and the upper floor, where the living sleep. This architecture has anthropomorphic characteristics as well. The doorway is viewed as the mouth of the home, small holes above the doorway are its eyes, allowing it to see the setting sun in the west and the granaries are the stomach of the home.
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