One-third of the world's languages are spoken in Africa, but less than 1% of African languages are represented online. This is significant because the language you speak, write or sign shapes your online experience. In a Google Research collaboration in Mali, we worked with griots to build a language model for Bambara, one of West Africa's most widely spoken languages. Griots are historians, storytellers, and the real keepers of the Bambara collective memory, passing their knowledge only through storytelling. By recording griots narrating generational stories, we were able to build a model for understanding and translating Bambara speech. We release the findings for the research community and everyone to benefit.