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 Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have traversed 44 of Africa's
54 countries over four decades, documenting rituals used to mark
milestones such as birth, death, and courtship, the graduation
of girl to woman or the moment a warrior becomes a respected
elder.
Now their archive - comprising more than a million images,
hundreds of artifacts and field diaries, and thousands of hours
of video - is looking for a home.
They want the collection to go to a university in Africa or some
other venue that will guarantee access to African artists,
historians and researchers.
"This record of Africa won't be taken again. It can't be taken
again because 40 percent of it is already lost," said Fisher, a
vivacious Australian draped in beads and red chiffon for their
book launch in Nairobi on Sunday.
Heat lightning flashed across the sky as models, acrobats and
dancers showcased traditional music and textiles at the event at
Africa Heritage House, a private museum. But conflict, climate
change, and the spread of technology are erasing or transforming
many such customs.
LOSS OF IDENTITY
In South Sudan, decades of war has devastated traditional Dinka
culture, said Beckwith, a petite, curly-haired American. Few now
can make the beaded corsets whose patterns and colors would tell
you the life story of its wearer.
In Ethiopia, desertification and land grabs are pushing nomads
south into farming lands or towns. Samburu elders in Kenya worry
that youngsters enamored of cell phones and city life no longer
care for time-consuming social ceremonies and the obligations
they entail.
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"It's really important for change to happen, but ... in a way that
works without losing your identity," said Fisher.
Encouraged by conservationists, one Maasai community in Kenya
changed from lion-hunting to athletic games as a way of proving male
prowess, she said. The Wodaabe people in Niger still stage male
beauty pageants famed for their use of make-up and grimaces.
The photographers' friend Nike Okundaye, a Nigerian chief and
textile artist, is trying to revive the laborious methods for dying
patterned indigo clothes, a tradition handed down from her
great-great-grandmother.
Women once used the cloth - Nigeria's "color of love", Okundaye says
- to flaunt matrimonial harmony. But the months-long process to
produce a piece makes it too expensive for most consumers, so now
her work hangs in Washington's Smithsonian Museum and is pictured in
the pages of Beckwith and Fishers' books. Okundaye has been working
with them since 1967, she said.
"Carol loved the culture and Angela loved the tradition," Okundaye
said. "We hope their photographs will inspire a new generation."
(Editing by Gareth Jones)
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