| Masam, Pujehun District | |
|---|---|
  Masam, Pujehun District Location in Sierra Leone | |
| Coordinates: 7°21′2″N11°43′5″W / 7.35056°N 11.71806°W Coordinates: 7°21′2″N11°43′5″W / 7.35056°N 11.71806°W | |
| Country |  |
| Province | Southern Province |
| District | Pujehun District |
| Chiefdom. | Masam Kpaka Chiefdom. |
| Time zone | GMT (UTC-5) |
Masam is a small rural town in Pujehun District in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone. The town is the chieftaincy seat of Masam Kpaka Chiefdom. The major industry in the town is farming.
Pujehun District is a district in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone. Its capital is the town of Pujehun. The other major towns in the district include Gandorhun, Zimmi, Gendema, Masam, Bomi and Potoru. As of 2015, the district has a population of 345,577. The population of Pujehun District is largely from the Mende ethnic group; and the district is predominantly Muslim.
The Southern Province is one of the four provinces of Sierra Leone. It covers an area of 19,694 km² and has a population of 1,438,572. It consists of four districts. Its capital and administrative center is Bo, which is also the second largest and second most populated city in Sierra Leone after the nation's capital Freetown. The population of the southern province is largely from the Mende ethnic group.
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, informally Salone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It has a tropical climate, with a diverse environment ranging from savanna to rainforests. The country has a total area of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi) and a population of 7,075,641 as of the 2015 census. Sierra Leone is a constitutional republic with a directly elected president and a unicameral legislature. The country's capital and largest city is Freetown. Sierra Leone is made up of five administrative regions: the Northern Province, North West Province, Eastern Province, Southern Province and the Western Area. These regions are subdivided into sixteen districts.
The inhabitants of Masam are almost entirely from the Mende ethnic group, and the Mende language is by far the most widely spoken language in the town.
The Mende people are one of the two largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone; their neighbours, the Temne people, have roughly the same population. The Mende and Temne each account for slightly more than 30% of the total population. The Mende are predominantly found in the Southern Province and the Eastern Province, while the Temne are found primarily in the Northern Province and the Western Area, including the capital city of Freetown. Some of the major cities with significant Mende populations include Bo, Kenema, Kailahun, and Moyamba.
An ethnic group or an ethnicity, is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, history, society, culture or nation. Ethnicity is usually an inherited status based on the society in which one lives. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language or dialect, symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art or physical appearance.
Mende is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone.
