SENEGAL. Etome. The cultural basis of Islam, born in the desert of Arabia, is the oasis and its civilisation. Is that the reason why in Africa, it did not spread further than the desert and the savanna, never entering the forest ? The Diolas of Casamance, a region of forests and swamps in Senegal are still mostly animists. Every twenty years, each village holds an initiation ceremony, when all the males born during that period have to enter the "sacred forest" at night, to celebrate pagan rites. Their heads are shaven, and they wrap themselves in indigo clothes. Many of these young men are high school or Dakar University students. 1988.