Rogbonko Basketry Village

Rogbonko is a subsistence-farming Temne village in Tonkolili District whose basket-weaving traditions have striking parallels to the Sweetgrass basket tradition of South Carolina's Gullah Geechee people — a direct cultural thread linking both communities across 300 years of separation.

The community runs a visitor retreat and a small museum where artisans demonstrate their craft. The baskets use different materials than Carolina Sweetgrass (local raffia and palm fronds vs coastal cordgrass), but the coiling technique, the form, and the cultural role are strikingly similar — documented by anthropologists as evidence of a retained African craft tradition carried across the Middle Passage.

Day 7 brings the group to Rogbonko before the return journey south to Kent.