Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Benin: Running Around In A Fetish Dance


Yoruba women and girls irrupting into a joyous circular fetish dance in Benin’s Ita Djebou, near Sakete.
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Monday, June 9, 2014

Niger’s Wodaabe Nomads: From Yakey To Gerewol



In previous posts my photographs showed how the Wodaabe nomads of Niger’s Sahel prepare for, and perform in, the Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest among the members of a clan. Again, in this new image, an important part of the game is the display of white teeth and eyes.


The Yakey was only a way to warm up for a much more important and challenging festival. This one, the Gerewol, now pits clan against clan. And pity the less attractive or less spirited dancers for the mockery they will endure, including the threat to get saddled up like donkeys,




The elders, women and men, spare none of the dancers. And as they spur them into a more energetic act you can imagine their words, which are universal. “Come on, girls. What have our grandsons come to?  What a generation of weaklings!



The old men selected a few of the prettiest girls to judge the dancers. Unlike the granddaddies, they watch the young dancers respectfully. When asked for their choices at the end, they will each rise and walk towards a dancer while pointing at him.




The onlookers.
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Sunday, June 8, 2014

Niger: Yakey dance, A Wodaabe Male Beauty Contest


In the last few days I posted photographs of Wodaabe men preparing for a Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest. Here is a section of a row of men making great efforts to show the whiteness of their eyes and teeth to a parallel row of young women watching them as they dance and sing without leaving the spots they are standing on. They are wearing sheep skins pants and swords. 


The third photograph shows a rear view of one of the men. 





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Saturday, June 7, 2014

Niger: Wodaabe Male Beauty Contestants




Men of the nomadic Wodaabe tribe, also known as Bororo, are made up to participate in a Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest among members of a clan. Later, during the short rains, when pasture will be abundant enough for those people’cattle not to need to keep moving for a while, the clans will gather and compete in a Gerewol dance. 
     This will be a much more demanding beauty contest. This time it will oppose clans against clans, and the less-than-handsome will be ridiculed by the elders. The good-looking ones will hook up with potential wives.
     The Wodaabe canon of beauty demands light skin, thin nose and lips, high forehead, and mostly shining white teeth and eyeballs. This invites much make-up.
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Friday, June 6, 2014

Niger: A Wodaabe Man Checks The Whiteness Of His Teeth And Eyeballs Before Joining A Male Beauty Contest


Looking into a small mirror in his hand, a man of the Wodaabe tribe, also known as Bororo, is checking the whiteness of his teeth and eyes before joining a Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest among members of a clan. Later, during the rains, when pasture will be abundant enough for those nomads’ cattle to stop moving in search of grass for a while, the clans will gather and compete in a Gerewol dance. This will be a much more demanding beauty contest. This time it will oppose clans against clans, and the less-than-handsome will be ridiculed by the elders. The good-looking ones will hook up with potential wives.
     The Wodaabe canon of beauty demands light skin, thin nose and lips, high forehead, and mostly shining white teeth and eyeballs. This invites much make-up.
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Thursday, June 5, 2014

Niger: Wodaabe Man Preparing To Participate In A Male Beauty Contest


Looking into a small mirror, a man of the Wodaabe tribe, also known as Bororo, is painting his face to participate in a Yakey dance, which doubles as a male beauty contest among members of a clan. Later, during the rains, when pasture will be abundant enough for those nomads’ cattle to stop moving for a while, the clans will gather and compete in a Gerewol dance. This will be a much more demanding beauty contest. This time it will oppose clans against clans, and the less-than-handsome will be ridiculed by the elders. The good-looking ones will hook up with potential wives.
     The Wodaabe canon of beauty demands light skin, thin nose and lips, high forehead, and mostly shining white teeth and eyeballs. This invites much make-up.
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Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Amazon: Angelical Face Of A Yanomami Girl


Little Yanomami girl of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. Having lived in isolation in their Edenic forest over many centuries, the Yanomami have not benefited from outside influences. But they are as human and intelligent as of any of us. And they have an amazing sense of humor. Their children are the happiest I have seen anywhere in the world.
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Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Amazon: Yanomami Indians On A Hunting Expedition



Armed with bows and arrows much taller than them, those Yanomami of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest are headed on a hunting expedition. On their return they will share the meat of their preys with the whole community and only keep for themselves the least appetizing parts. They won’t work hard the next couple days. The Yanomami are so well organized that they do not need to work more than an average two and a half hours a day.
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Monday, June 2, 2014

Colombia: A Sting That Could Have Killed


This Noanama man is showing me around his Colombian Choco rain forest. My wife, Martha, was part of the journey, as were two of her Colombian teenager cousins, Diego and Juan Carlos. That journey would have been idyllic if at some point we had not been close to lose Martha. It was sudden and frightening.
     We were walking down barefoot the muddy ground that separated the Noanama’s big stilted hut from a canoe in which a Noanama man was waiting to pole us up the Docordo River to his family’s forest plantation when Martha cried in pain. Something had stung her lower leg. The pain was brief. But soon her skin inflated all over her body. Large blisters were quickly spreading like rain water or oil on metal, swallowing each other as they grew.  
     “I see black,” Martha suddenly complained. And having said that she started struggling desperately to breathe. It was scary and happening too fast to allow thinking. We thought we were seeing her die.
     Diego suggested we rush downriver to try to find a dispensary. But there was no time.  Somehow I thought Martha could find some relief lying down. The river was shallow and the banks too muddy. So I asked everyone to leave the canoe and laid Martha down in it. I had no idea how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but thought nothing else would save her at this point and I had to try it. However, before I could even start she breathed better. She told me she was seeing again. And her blisters left little by little, the way they had come. It seemed miraculous. And perhaps it was. We never knew what had happened to her, but figure she suffered from an allergy, perhaps to a spider sting.
     Some years earlier, in Afghanistan, I had seen a young Frenchman nearly die from an allergy to flea stings. Armies of fleas were leaving cracks in a wall of the caravanserai where we slept to feast on our blood.

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Sunday, June 1, 2014

Colombia: Noanama Canoe Parking


Pulling sugarcane with her left hand, a Noanama woman steps out of a canoe at the bottom of her family’s tambo, a large wall-less hut on stilts above the Docordo River in Colombia’s Choco rain forest. Floating on the water are canoes for every member of the family. Children get canoes fitting their own sizes as soon as they can walk—to play with them while learning to use them. In a road-less world, moving is over rivers.
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