About · Jelikan

A griot does not read from a page. She stands in the square, before the fire, and carries the story in her body. When she is gone, someone else carries it. The story does not end. The fire does not end.

Jelikan is 244 original tellings of African conflicts, written by Kay Adeoba in the oral tradition. Not summaries. Not encyclopaedia entries. Each one is a literary work — shaped by lesson, carried by question, closed by call.

The source is the Structured Conflict Atlas, a record of 250 African armed conflicts across twelve centuries. The 244 tellings here are not neutral: they choose a side, the side the griot has always chosen. The side of what it cost. The side of what remained.

The Tradition

The griot — jeli in Mande, griot in French West Africa, imbongi in the south — is the keeper of communal memory. Not a historian in the academic sense. A historian in the only sense that matters to the people who lived it: someone who carries the dead so they are not lost.

The griot's telling has a shape. There is the story itself. Then the lesson it names — what the fire was teaching, if you were watching. Then the question it leaves with you, because a question you carry is worth more than an answer you discard. Then the call: the thing the griot says before she steps back from the fire.

Every deep telling on Jelikan follows that shape. The ones that do not — the shorter ones, the ones still waiting for their full treatment — carry the story and the era and the weight. They are seeds. They will grow.

How to Enter

The Bead Cord Each telling is a bead. The cord at the bottom of the screen holds them — era-coloured, clickable, glowing amber once heard. It is your record. Sign in with a magic link and it follows you across devices.

Tonight's Telling Every night the fire chooses one deep telling — a full griot treatment, pulled from the deep tellings completed so far. That is the one the fire wants you to hear tonight. You can ignore it. The griot will not be offended. But she will remember.

Tonight's Circle If you want company, Tonight's Circle gathers a group of deep tellings around the night's fire — the chosen one plus others the griot has pulled to sit with it. Scroll through them. Take your time.

The Night's Journey Some fires are not single tellings. They are arcs — seven, eight, nine stories that together trace a longer thread: the Horn from Adwa to the Tigray War, the Great Lakes from revolution to the war that swallowed a continent, Sudan from the Mahdi to 2023. Enter a journey and the griot walks you through it, one fire to the next, with a word between each to hold the shape of what is moving.

The Thread Each telling sits in a web of cause and effect. 118 links connect these conflicts across time. After a telling, the griot will offer you the parent — the fire that started this one — or the child — where this one burned next. Follow a thread and watch how history moves.

The Map and the Web Switch views at the top of the shelf. The map shows where each deep telling sits on the continent. The web shows the whole network — every telling, every thread, woven. Hover a node and light its connections.

Sensitive Histories Some tellings carry histories of atrocity. These are marked and set apart. You will not encounter them by chance. When you choose to enter one, the griot speaks them slowly — one line at a time, at the pace of remembrance. They end with a single word: Remember.

Jelikan is one person's work. Kay Adeoba writes the tellings, chooses the arcs, holds the fire. If it has been useful to you — if a story named something you had not found a name for — you can keep the fire lit.