Stick fighting in Surma
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African Ceremonies Niger, Senegal, and Ethiopia
The Wodaabe, Niger Wodaabe men use ornate face makeup to compete in a charm competition to win wives or lovers. The contestants line up in front of hundreds of female judges, says Beckwith, “rolling their eyes around and showing their teeth and broad smiles and then puckering their lips up, and all the while they’re making these clicking and hissing sounds.” A man does not have to be beautiful to win but must have what the Wodaabe call togu, magnetism and charm. Under the Wodaabe marital system, a man can take four wives—the first in an arranged marriage to form a solid foundation for an extended family. The later marriages, Beckwith says, are to satisfy “the other half of human nature, a tendency toward wild, inexplicable passions, romantic love, and powerful sexual attractions. This system has worked for centuries.”
The Bedik, Senegal The Bedik behind the mask is not donning a disguise, but taking on a new identity that is no longer human. So the expression “mask” includes the costume and the individual inside. “Their role is to enter all of the houses, to go into every nook and cranny of the village and make sure that there is nothing evil or negative that could impact the agricultural activity that’s soon to take place,” says Carol Beckwith. “The Bedik believe that the land was something given to them by the spirit world, and if you make any adjustment to the land, you have to ask permission of the nature gods.”
The Surma, Ethiopia Every year after the harvest, Surma men and women enjoy a leisurely courtship period, spending days by the river, painting their bodies with beautiful designs to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex. “Young girls sit under trees and play the thumb piano,” says Fisher. “It’s a very beautiful instrument found in different areas of Africa, and the Surma have perfected many tunes on the thumb piano.”
When the body-painting stage ends, the Surma courtship ritual turns violent, as men from different villages meet in day-long tournaments of stick fighting. The fierce jousting with donga sticks, six-foot-long (1.8 meter-long) hardwood poles, serves to prove their masculinity and settle vendettas, but most importantly, to win wives. The victor at day’s end is carried to waiting girls on a platform of palms, and one of the girls accepts the man as her husband-to-be. The girl’s lower lip is then pierced and, over a period of months, stretched over a series of ever larger plates. The size of the final lip plate indicates how many head of cattle must be paid as the bride’s dowry.
Common Ground The tribal customs of Africa, in all their vibrant variation, testify to a common human spirit that crosses all boundaries. “[You have] a sense that we’re all sharing the same emotions,” Beckwith says, “and the same desire to find meaning in our lives. No matter how different we are in terms of religious beliefs, body adornment, whether we wear clothes, whether we don’t wear clothes, who our gods are, we come to find we have an extraordinary common ground.”
Related Links, Products, Articles, and Events Look for African Ceremonies, Beckwith and Fisher’s two-volume masterpiece, at your local bookshop. Webcast: Beckwith and Fisher show and tell what it took to take these groundbreaking photographs in an exclusive National Geographic presentation.
David Bradnum recorded all sound in this feature story.
Learn more about African ceremonies in the following NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine articles:
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the DuPont Company, with additional support from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. © 2000 Jim Metzner Productions and the National Geographic Society. All rights reserved. |
