‹ Under the BaobabFrançais

The motherless child will suckle the grandmother.

What it means
A child who loses its mother is not left without care. The proverb says that the wider family, here the grandmother, takes up what the mother can no longer give.
Bambara · West Africa
Source and context
From: Bambara, West Africa
Source: Bambara (Bamanankan, Mali) oral-tradition proverb, widely and consistently attributed to Bambara across several proverb collections (e.g. bellaonline.com, inspirationalstories.com, quoterich.com), though no single primary source page could be confirmed to contain it. Earlier recorded here as documented on ankataa.com and consistent with Kassim Kone, "More than a thousand Mande Proverbs" (1995) and Charles Bailleul, "Sagesse bambara" (2005); ankataa.com's actual Bambara-proverbs post, fetched directly, does not contain it, and neither does africanmanners.wordpress.com's 25 Bambara proverbs.

The meaning given here is our own reading. Other interpretations exist.

Family
Open in the app →