Qualla: Lake Sonfon

Lake Sonfon: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the shores of Lake Sonfon, the people send their prayers out on the water. Offerings of rice and food are set onto calabashes and floated into the lake, gifts to a place that traditional belief holds sacred and to the powerful djinn said to dwell within it. High in the Sula Mountains, this is no ordinary body of water. It is Sierra Leone's largest inland lake, a center of religious and cultural life, and a refuge for rare wildlife, all of it now threatened by the gold buried in its bed.

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Lake Sonfon: A Lake in the Hills

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Lake Sonfon, also called Lake Confon, sits in the hills of the Sula Mountains at 549 meters above sea level, in the chiefdom of Diang. The nearest towns are Kabala, 60 kilometers to the north, and Bendugu, 40 kilometers to the south, distances that keep the lake remote and little...

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Lake Sonfon: Sacred Water

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

To the people of Diang, Sonfon is holy ground. It is woven into traditional belief, and ceremonies are carried out along its shore, where calabashes bearing rice and food are floated onto the water as offerings. In local tradition a powerful djinn inhabits the lake, and the water...

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Lake Sonfon: An Unguarded Sanctuary

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sonfon is a place of striking biodiversity, recognized as a key conservation area and long proposed as a protected area, though as of 2011 no formal protection was in place. Even without thorough surveying, researchers have identified 105 species of birds here, among them the iri...

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Lake Sonfon: The Price of Gold

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There is gold at Lake Sonfon, locked in its rocks and scattered through the alluvial deposits washed down around it. Only the alluvial gold is worked, but it is worked hard: an estimated 15,000 miners labor around the lake, drawn by a livelihood the region badly needs. The cost i...

Read more: Lake Sonfon on Qualla