Border Town Research Articles

Dwa kościoły. Budownictwo kultowe w międzywojennych Niemczech jako przestrzeń modernistycznych eksperymentów

The time between WW I and II was a period of intensive development of church architecture in Germany. In the new situation after the defeat in WW I on the wave of Christian renewal movements, the concept of the church as a building corresponding to its functions, as an object expressing the character of religion and the vision of a congregation as a community in modern society was re -formulated. The dynamically developing church architecture was an area of intense experiments (especially in the 1920s.), creating new forms, as well as devising new iconography by Rudolf Schwartz, Otto Bartning, or Dominikus Böhm. The paper draws attention to a certain community of the main antagonized Christian and Protestant denominations on the example of two buildings erected on the eastern periphery of the then Germany (from 1945 constituting the western part of Poland): the Catholic Church of St Anthony in Schneidemühl (now: Piła, Hans Herkommer, 1928–1930) and the Protestant Cross-Church in Stettin (now: Szczecin, Adolf Thesmacher, 1929–1931). The first was built in a small town as a representative seat of the Prelature, a branch of the Catholic Church in the Protestant region, near the then border with (revived again) Poland. The building is a continuation of an innovative and conservative concept realized by Herkommer at the Frauenfriedenskirche in Frankfurt am Main (1927–1929), and is a testimony to the search for forms expressing the rationalist aspirations for the renewal of the Catholic Church, however without abandoning the main principles of the Tradition. For this purpose, Herkommer applies ‘industrial’ forms used in the Bauhaus circle, creating a clearly avant-garde building: not only in the local context of a small border town of eastern Germany, but also in the Catholic tradition of sacred architecture. Hiring an avant-garde architect and using modernist forms was the decision of one man: Monsignor Maximilian Kaller, the leader of the Prelature. The Church of the Cross in Szczecin was raised in a luxurious district of a great Protestant city, so it was the parish church of the Protestant elite. Although built of brick and clearly referring to the tradition of the Gothic architecture of this region, the Church of the Cross also reveals its striving for the maximum reduction of forms and the use of the language of abstraction. When building a Protestant church, Thesmacher resorted to forms applied primarily in Catholic architecture, especially to the forms used by Herkommer. Thesmacher created a facility expressing attachment to the local tradition and manifesting the modernity of the Evangelical church in Pomerania. As a result, both churches are a testimony to functionalist aspirations, although, of course, the functions differed from those on which, for example, the founders of the Bauhaus were focused.

Revisiting Ballybogoin: Lines, traces and tidemarks in the Northern Irish borderlands

The article departs from William F. Kelleher book (2003), The Troubles in Ballybogoin, investigating how everyday practice in the Northern Irish borderland – ranging from whom people interact with to where they move – is influenced by the social memory of division and political identity, with origins in the Troubles and the British imperial legacy. In dialogue with Sarah Green’s concepts of lines as traces and tidemarks (2018) and by way of field studies in the borderlands, particularly the border town (London)Derry, the author revisits the everyday practices to illustrate how the borderland is infested with lines parting ”the two sides of the house.” Michel de Certeau’s concept of spatial practice, also applied by Kelleher, makes the divisions physically present in the town scape – as the case is in Belfast – and the local tradition of “telling” keeps the divisions alive in stories and other mental images. The borderlandscapes are thus haunted by the ever-present mapping of the populations in us/them, either/or, here/not there, a mapping of people, which is also constantly brought into being by local talk.

“Urban by nature”: The Sokoto jihadist approach to urban planning

Like other Islamic reform and state-building movements across the pre-colonial Sahel, the Sokoto Jihad of 1804 had started genuine urbanization processes with architectural references to Islamic ideals of inhabited space. But in the early Sokoto Empire, jihadist urban planning met with a Hausa environment already divided into urban centers and rural areas. Existing Hausa towns were often restructured and enlarged, with a shift from the central position of the palaces towards that of the new mosques built under the aegis of the Jihadist leaders. This article hence analyses the construction of Sokoto as a capital city from the “drawing board” as a case study. In addition, it discusses the location and style of Jihadist mosques in Sokoto, Kano and Zaria within a new concept of Muslim urbanity. Although urban planning in Sokoto was not carried out by map sketches, several maps produced in the Sokoto Empire will be used to study the graphical understanding of Sokoto Jihadist urbanity expressed by rectangular walls and a special mosque-palace order with only very simple and puritan décor. But despite the private activities in mosque building among the male Jihadist elite, Sokoto lacked a state-owned and constant central mosque, because donors and their offspring personally had to care for the upkeep of the buildings. And with the second Sokoto Sultan, Muhammad Bello, urbanization activities gradually shifted from the “old” centers to the frontier of the Empire: on the one hand, militarized border towns (Arabic ribāt, pl. arbita) were erected as profane material protection against military enemies in the periphery. Yet on the other hand, they served as a reference in the Jihadist ideology contrasting the Land of Islam with the Land of Unbelief. The ribāt was a planned city attracting mainly slaves longing for freedom and salvation by the Jihadist promise that any inhabitant of the frontier city would eventually be liberated and enter Paradise. But only for a limited time span did they serve as social and ethnic melting pots on the frontier, before many of them were turned into slave plantations. This phase of intense foundation of fortified settlements must also be understood as a process of sedentarization and aging of the first Jihad soldiers. Equipped with land, wives and slaves from the booty, many soldiers and commanders were settled in new towns and established a living there with their families. The article will thus finally analyze the Sokoto utopia of a completely sedentarized and urbanized Muslim state—a policy propagated both against fellow Fulbe pastoralists and mobile Tuareg allies. This study engages with Sokoto Jihadist urbanization in their theories and practices in the first half of the 19th century and unfolds the Jihadist claims to be “urban by nature.”

Characteristics Associated with Feeding Tube Placement: Retrospective Cohort Study of Texas Nursing Home Residents with Advanced Dementia

ObjectivesTo investigate resident-level, provider-type, nursing home (NH), and regional factors associated with feeding tube (FT) placement in advanced dementia. DesignRetrospective cohort study. Setting and ParticipantsNH residents in Texas with dementia diagnosis and severe cognitive impairment (N = 20,582). MethodsThis study used 2011-2016 Texas Medicare data to identify NH residents with a stay of at least 120 days who had a diagnosis of dementia on Long Term Care Minimum Data Set (MDS) evaluation and severe cognitive impairment on clinical score. Multivariable repeated measures analyses were conducted to identify associations between FT placement and resident-level, provider-type, NH, and regional factors. ResultsThe prevalence of FT placement in advanced dementia in Texas between 2011 and 2016 ranged from 12.5% to 16.1% with a nonlinear trend. At the resident level, the prevalence of FT decreased with age [age > 85 years, prevalence ratio (PR) 0.60, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.52-0.69] and increased among residents who are black (2.74, 95% CI 2.48-3.03) or Hispanic (PR 1.91, 95% CI 1.71-2.13). Residents cared for by a nurse practitioner or physician assistant were less likely to have an FT (PR 0.90, 95% CI 0.85-0.96). No facility characteristics were associated with prevalence of FT placement in advanced dementia. There were regional differences in FT placement with the highest use areas on the Texas-Mexico border and in South and East Texas (Harlingen border area, PR 4.26, 95% CI 3.69-4.86; San Antonio border area, PR 3.93, 95% CI 3.04-4.93; Houston, PR 2.17, 95% CI 1.87-2.50), and in metro areas (PR 1.36, 95% CI 1.22-1.50). Conclusions and ImplicationsRegional, race, and ethnic variations in prevalence of FT use among NH residents suggest opportunities for clinicians and policy makers to improve the quality of end-of-life care by especially considering other palliative care measures for minorities living in border towns.

The Age Factor in Linguistic Variation: A Reference to the Use of Kiswahili at Busia Border Town in East Africa

This paper deals with age as a linguistic variable in the use of Kiswahili among ordinary citizens in Busia town at the Kenya-Uganda border. I chose age over other possible factors because it emerged as a salient ground for variation in the use of Kiswahili among ordinary citizens in my PhD research on language as a lived practice. Thus, the paper is intended to demonstrate how the ordinary citizens in Busia use Kiswahili across three different age categories: the youth, the adults, and the elderly, and what this variation reveals about how Kiswahili is socially construed and constructed by its speakers. Specifically, three objectives are embedded in the discussions of the paper, 1) to ascertain the age-related patterns of the use of Kiswahili in Busia town, 2) to explore the salient age-related linguistic forms of Kiswahili used by each age category, and 3) to provide a sociolinguistic account for the patterns and forms that emerge. The findings reveal several complex age-based patterns of the use of Kiswahili, but generally show that the youth prefer slang-like and other “sub-standard” forms of Kiswahili, the adults employ some standard forms of Kiswahili but with extensive code-mixing between Kiswahili and English, and the elderly prefer their vernaculars to Kiswahili, which (vernaculars) influence the forms of Kiswahili that they sporadically speak. The paper concludes that Kiswahili, just like any other language, is dynamic and prone to variations based on various contextual and social factors. With this conclusion, the paper recommends further extensive studies that can shade more light on other linguistic variables such as level of education and gender, and how these complement the age variable in the use of Kiswahili within the context of this study.

The Distinction Between Pastoral and Elegy — the Interpretation of the Causes for the Tragic Ending of Border Town

Pastoral or elegy? Comedy or tragedy? The novel that can cause such entanglement and confusion in modern Chinese literature is none other than Border Town. Whether it is the author's "counter-attack" of the original creative style of Xiangxi theme, the frustration of readers' aesthetic expectations, or the "violation" of the popular aesthetic habits, all things have a reason. In the final analysis, there are at least three reasons for this intense and long-lasting discussion and persistent suspicion: the influence of the female view formed by the author’s life experience on the work; the lack and dislocation of the heroine’s view of love in the work; high-level requirements for aesthetics in literary works.

Unsettled authority and humanitarian practice: reflections on local Iegitimacy from Sierra Leone’s borderlands

ABSTRACT Calls to localise humanitarian practice and to engage communities in emergency responses have gained prominence in recent years. Using the case study of the response to the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, this article probes into the assumptions underlying efforts to mobilise ‘community stakeholders’ to legitimise emergency measures, revealing how they envision authority within communities as static and independent of experiences of humanitarian intervention. Drawing inspiration from Raufu Mustapha’s intellectual legacy, it shows the limitations of these assumptions by paying attention to structural factors, historical legacies, and the empirical workings of power. Through an ethnographic account of how the Ebola response was experienced and remembered in a remote border town, the article proposes instead the concept of unsettled authority. Stories from these borderlands show how the legitimacy of local authority was dynamically negotiated, made and unmade, through encounters with humanitarian interventions as these became intertwined with longer-term contestations of power with unpredictable consequences.

Walking in (a) Bordertown: Sorjonen, Liminality, and the Spatial Imaginary of Lappeenranta

Finnish programming is increasingly finding success beyond the country’s borders. Sorjonen - or as it is known internationally, Bordertown - is perhaps the best example of this trend, having been distributed with subtitles in multiple languages via Netflix. Set in the idyllic lakeside resort of Lappeenranta, which is also Finland’s closest city to St. Petersburg, Russia, Bordertown revolves around Detective Inspector Kari Sorjonen (Ville Virtanen) following his relocation there in the wake of his wife’s illness. Hoping to leave major crimes behind in the capital of Helsinki, Sorjonen is soon investigating horrific violence and gruesome events. The criminal networks he discovers often extend far beyond tiny Lappeenranta, thus placing the city at the nexus of illicit flows that link Russia to continental Europe. While Bordertown does not engage in the crass Russophobia of many other screened geopolitical interventions, the series does deploy its setting’s geopolitical liminality to engage with a variety of challenges to Europe. This essay interrogates Bordertown’s use of a real place, i.e. Lappeenranta, to sculpt a geopolitical imaginary that can tell a story. Focussing on a variety of elements from water to windmills and from the city council to the cellar, I employ various scales of engagement (i.e. the local, border, state, land and nation) to examine the series’ narrative, dramaturgical and visual “scaping” of a chimerical “border town” that maps on to the “real” city of Lappeenranta. Informed by my June 2018 Bordertown TV-Series Walking Tour, my analysis synthesises approaches from cultural geography, critical IR and television studies to assess the Bordertown’s intervention in the everyday, lived and embodied geopolitics of this south-eastern Finnish city.

Reel Restoration in Drunktown’s Finest

Drunktown’s Finest, a 2014 feature-length film directed by Sydney Free-land (Diné), tells the stories of Luther “Sick Boy” Maryboy (Jeremiah Bitsui), Nizhoni Smiles (MorningStar Angeline), and Felixia John (Carmen Moore), set in the fictional border town of Dry Lake. Freeland renders a visual counternarrative of her hometown, Gallup, New Mexico, featured in an episode of the TV show 20/20 (ABC) that highlighted the alcohol epidemic and gave Gallup the derogatory nickname “Drunk Town, USA.” The characters’ stories on the virtual reservation parallel the real-life stories of many Indigenous people on reservations and in border towns, urban areas, and rural communities. As representative of diverse Diné cultural and political identities, Sick Boy’s, Nizhoni’s, and Felixia’s stories unfold from their aversion to the Navajo Nation to embracing it. The analysis is framed with the Diné philosophy and epistemology of hózǫ́, translated as to be in a state of wellness, balance, peace, and harmony, culminating in beauty. Acknowledging the significance of k’é (kinship and family), ceremony, stories, and language anchored in Navajo land, the film addresses disharmony, sickness, alcoholism, and disconnection and seeks restoration through hózǫ́. “Reel restoration” conveys how Drunktown’s Finest benefits Indigenous peoples from creatives to viewers against decades of aggressive, violent, and anti-Indigenous imagery, restoring their indigeneity, humanity, and ultimately their hózhǫ́.

Vardø Etat and the Comintern Boys: Communist Insurgent Intelligence in Northern Scandinavia 1919–1921

ABSTRACT The Communist International (Comintern) had one of its earliest outposts in the small northern Norwegian border town of Vardø. In dealing with the raison d’etre of this so-called liaison point Vardø Etat the paper adopts anon-state actors’ intelligence perspective, by uncovering the secret communist activities and identities of the main actors involved in the transnational clandestine network and comparing its features with the characteristics of insurgent intelligence actors. The paper argues that the political aim of exporting the October Revolution to the rest of the world, together with a heritage of pre-revolutionary Bolshevik organizational practice and experience, contributed to forming the Vardø Etat’s use of internal security, counterintelligence, HUMINT and covert actions. Though, despite similarities to other insurgent groups the Vardø Etat was a hybrid, a state proxy, deeply entwined with the Soviet state and its intelligence agencies. Reckless militancy was downplayed as the Comintern took form in the period of 1919–1921 quickly evolving toward a more centralized apparatus staffed by professional cosmopolitan communists. In a longer perspective the Vardø Etat can be perceived as part of the first wave of many later waves of Marxist-Leninist insurgent groups around the world throughout the twentieth century and after.

Frontline Support for Concealed Carry on Campus: A Case Study in a Border Town

An increasing number of states have passed legislation allowing individuals to carry concealed weapons on university campuses. Past research has examined the perceptions of campus carry among college students, but most of the extant literature represents efforts occurring prior to these legislative changes and seldom explores the perceptions of minority populations. Current scholarship also lacks research on how faculty, staff, and administrators perceive campus carry policies. This study investigates all campus stakeholders’ knowledge of the campus carry policy and their support for it in a university located in a U.S.-Mexico border town. Results from the structural equation modeling indicate that campus members have limited knowledge of the campus carry policy and expressed low support for the policy. Assimilation of Hispanics significantly impacted their support for concealed carry on campus both directly and indirectly.

Humanitarianism and black female bodies: violence and intimacy at the Moroccan–Spanish border

ABSTRACT Around Ceuta and Melilla, progressive Moroccan migration policies implemented since 2013 have not produced much positive change, as political, diplomatic and economic issues take over, producing a violent game of borders, both material and symbolic, racialised and gendered. Through an ethnographic approach, this article addresses the issue of violence experienced by migrants from Central and West Africa on the Moroccan–Spanish border, emanating from humanitarian and religious actors. Based on two and a half years of field research in Morocco (mainly in Rabat and in the North) and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, with a special attention to embodied experiences of the border, this contribution shows that the humanitarianism practiced in a border town in Northern Morocco is also a space for updating relations of race and gender, which can, contrary to its claims, lead to even greater constraints on the mobility of people, notably women, being ‘helped’, and can reproduce a racialised and gendered order at the border. This contribution also proposes to reconnect this contemporary violence to history and underline the coloniality of such humanitarianism.

Development and Validation of a Rating Scale of Pain Expression during Childbirth (ESVADOPA).

One of the most representative symptoms during childbirth is pain, which is one of the most prominent concerns of pregnant women. There are different instruments to assess pain, all of which require interrupting the woman, thus interfering with the intimacy of childbirth. This study seeks to develop and validate a rating scale of the expression of childbirth pain that does not require the mother’s attention and respects her privacy during labor. The study was conducted at a regional hospital in a border town in southern Spain between November 2018 and September 2019. Scale items were developed following a review of the scientific literature, and experts judged the content validity. After a pilot test, the scale was psychometrically evaluated. The psychometric tests consisted of internal consistency analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and determination of the content, construct, and convergent validity. The scale was evaluated by 36 experts in the field and was then applied to 55 women during the active phase of childbirth. The final version of the Rating Scale of Pain Expression during Childbirth (in Spanish, Escala de Valoración de la Expresión del Dolor durante el Trabajo de Parto—ESVADOPA) consists of six items in two dimensions. The scale had a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.78, and the content validity measured by Aiken’s V co-efficient was also 0.78. The exploratory factor analysis yielded two dimensions that explained 68.08% of the total variance. For convergent validity, a comparison was made with the visual analogue scale, yielding a medium–high value of 0.641. As indicated by the internal consistency and by the content and construct validity outcomes, the ESVADOPA successfully measures pain expression during childbirth and represents a suitable tool for pain expression during birth without the need for intervention or the need for the mother to speak the same language as the midwife.

The Minimum Spanning Tree of the Nigeria Roads Network through Multiple-Roads Network System

The research work is aimed at finding the optimal graph of the Travel Salesman Problem of the vehicular movement from multiple sources of the Nigeria roads network of the coastal towns: Lagos, Port Harcourt, Asaba and Calabar through the hinterland to multiple destinations (border towns) of Katsina, Sokoto and Maiduguri so as to minimize the cost of fueling, maintenance and loss customers and goods/services get delivered to destinations in good time. In obtaining the optimal graph, the Kruskal algorithm of the minimum spinning tree was used and was implemented by a computer application package, TORA, developed by Taha. The optimal minimum spinning graph is: Lagos – Abeokuta – Ibadan – Osogbo – Ilorin – Osogbo – Akure - Ado Ekiti – Akure – Benni – Asaba – Owerri - Port Harcourt – Umuahia – Uyo – Calabar – Uyo – Umuahia - Port Harcourt – Owerri – Asaba – Benni – Awka – Enugu – Abakelike – Enugu – Awka – Benni – Akure – Lokoja – Abuja – Minna –Abuja – Kaduna – Kano – Katsina - Kano – Dutse – Kano – Gasua – Sokoto – Brini Kebbi – Sokoto – Gusau – Kano – Kaduna - Abuja – Lafia – Makurdi – Lafia – Jos – Bauchi – Gombe – Yola – Jalingo – Yola – Gombe – Damaturu – Maiduguri with the total distance of 8327Km.

Fluidez territorial como articuladora del turismo con motivos odontológicos en Molar City (Los Algodones, México).

O turismo de saúde surgiu no século XXI como uma atividade econômica de grande relevância para os países periféricos. Entre suas muitas especialidades, a odontologia é talvez um dos casos mais emblemáticos e levou a Los Algodones, uma cidade na fronteira mexicana, a se tornar um dos destinos preferidos por muitos pacientes. O objetivo deste trabalho é entender como o turismo de saúde organiza essa cidade latino-americana. Através da aplicação de 41 entrevistas semiestruturadas aos agentes envolvidos e viagens de campo, descobriu-se que diferentes núcleos de migração e mobilidade se fundem em uma dinâmica de fluidez territorial que explica por que essa cidade é conhecida como Molar City.
 
 
 Palavras-chave: turismo de saúde; Molar City; odontología.

Framing US-Mexican Borderlands: Phillip Rodriguez' visual aesthetics

As cidades fronteiriças dos Estados Unidos e do México são geralmente definidas como multiculturais e cidades transnacionais relativamente recentes, as quais se afastaram apesar de seu passado histórico comum. A política de fronteira, que começou efetivamente durante a administração de Eisenhower, parece favorecer outras diferenças. Cidades fronteiriças, assim como a (construção) da identidade de seus habitantes – estejam eles de passagem ou não – agora parecem mudar mais drasticamente. O presente artigo analisa como o documentarista Phillip Rodriguez traduz o imaginário urbano e as mudanças etnográficas para as telas, especialmente em Mixed Feelings: San Diego/Tijuana (2002) e Los Angeles Now (2003). Será dada muita atenção às estratégias multimodais e outras práticas discursivas, assim como para o dominante uso da Língua Inglesa e ao enfoque de alguma forma enviesado dos atores sociais envolvidos na zona de fronteira. Nós argumentamos que, em seu retrato das cidades fronteiriças, Rodriguez convida sua audiência a considerar essas cidades a partir de uma perspectiva do norte, desejando representar mundos multifacetados e conectados, enquanto se visualiza espaços duais e divididos. Procuramos, dessa forma, responder a questão de em que medida o discurso nas cidades fronteiriças enriquece o polissistema socio-cultural em termos de transmissão de conhecimento e dos efeitos relacionados às experiências de vida em fronteiras urbanas.

La pequeña comunidad hebrea de La Línea (1856-1936)

A partir de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX un puñado de familias hebreas provenientes del norte de África o de Gibraltar se estableció en La Línea, una ciudad fronteriza con la colonia británica. Esta presencia hebrea se intensificó tras la guerra hispano-marroquí de 1859, cuando se produjo un paulatino movimiento migratorio de los judíos del norte de África hacia España. Muchos de ellos recalaron en las plazas de soberanía españolas de África, pero una parte de ellos cruzó el estrecho y se asentó en la colonia británica de Gibraltar y en la ciudad fronteriza de La Línea donde ya vivían algunas familias. Todos estos hebreos conformaron una pequeña comunidad cuya presencia se prolongó hasta los inicios de la Guerra Civil española cuando la mayoría de la comunidad judía establecida en La Línea abandonó la ciudad.

The intimate-mobility entanglement: Subaltern trajectories in the Haitian-Dominican borderlands

This article argues that intimacy and human (im)mobilities are interrelated, and that this relationship is integral to the way borders function and are experienced. I propose the concept of intimate-mobility entanglement to describe this relationship of interdependence. Based on primary research conducted with Haitian domestic workers that work in the Dominican Republic (DR), the article illustrates how intimate labour functions as a driver and a strategy for human (im)mobility. The article characterizes the interactions between (im)mobility and intimacy as a relationship of entanglement that is observable in domestic work, childrearing, intimate violence, border crossing and access to the right to nationality. The article centers on the spatial trajectory of Marie, a Haitian woman who works as a domestic worker in a Dominican border town after having lived and worked in several towns in the DR for twenty years. Marie’s spatial trajectories illuminate how the intimate-mobility entanglement is integral to the Dominican border regime. Through individual interviews, participant observation and mapping Marie’s journeys through Haitian and Dominican territories, the article revisits her spatial trajectories and sheds light on the dual relationship between the intimate-mobility entanglement and the border regime. On the one hand, the entanglement intervenes in the way the border is reinforced in the actual border strip while it also stretches out into Dominican territory. On the other, the border regime conditions Marie’s labour, how she moves and settles down, and influences how intimate labours are carried out and experienced. Building on a tradition of feminist and subaltern geographies, as well as on mobilities literature, the article presents a contextualized analysis of the politics of subaltern mobilities and explains how intimacy and intimate labours are critical aspects of how borders work.

Cross-Border Mobility in Nogales Since Trump’s Election

ABSTRACT Building upon previous research on mobility, our study applies the concept of motility as developed by Kaufmann to border towns. This paper seeks to extend our knowledge on cross-border mobility under the Trump presidency by analyzing cross-border practices at the Mexico/US border, in the border towns of Nogales, Arizona and Sonora. The results of the survey lead us to conclude that though the border is present in the residents’ daily lives, the dynamics that shape the border are changing. Cross-border mobility is reorganized locally in a context of rebordering and increased border surveillance.

Analysis of meningitis outbreak data, Jaman North District, Brong Ahafo Region, Ghana

Descriptive analysis of meningitis outbreak in Jaman North districts of Brong Ahafo Region. Descriptive secondary data analysis. records of meningitis cases were extracted from case-based forms and line list. The source and pattern of outbreak. A total of 367 suspected cases with 44 confirmed were recorded from Jaman North during the period of January to March 2016. The mean age of those affected was 58 ± 13 years. The case fatality rate was 0.82% and the proportion of males to females was 1:1.3 (160/207). The age group most affected was 15-29 years (54.7%) and the least was 45-49 years (3.0%). Streptococcus pneumoniae formed 77.3% of confirmed cases whilst Neisseria meningitides was 20.5%. Cases with Neisseria meningitides came from a border town in La Cote d'Ivoire. A protracted propagated meningitis outbreak occurred; and the predominant bacteria strain among confirmed cases was Streptococcus pneumoniae. Cases were mainly females and the most vulnerable group were people aged 15-29 years. This work was funded by the authors. Author BKD was sponsored under CDC (Frontline FETP)-CDC CoAg 6NU2GGH001876.