[1][2] Somé wrote that he endured sixteen years of physical and emotional abuse by the priests, and that he then left this school when he was twenty to return to the village of his birth.

[2][3] Upon his return, integration into the traditional tribal religion and customs of the Dagara people was difficult, due to his long absence from his parents' culture, and his indoctrination into Christianity and a "white man's world".

[4] Elders from the village said that they believed Somé's ancestral spirit had withdrawn from his body and that he had already undergone a type of rite of passage into manhood in the white world.

Somé says that, having been raised outside of the culture and not speaking the language made the month-long, baor process, believed to unite soul and body, more dangerous for him than for the culturally-Dagara youths undergoing the rite.

[1][4] Before his death, Somé conducted Kontomble initiation and divination retreats and other workshops in the US and Europe, and established a community on the East Coast of the United States.