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Gerewol Festival
Young Sudosukai clan performing a psychedelic line dance, their faces painted red or caramel and speckled with little white motifs and dots, sporting sleeveless dream coats adorned with layers and layers bead necklaces.
N’japto boys plumped for a fetching scarlet rouge with blue-painted lips; they’d donned lime-green turbans with ostrich feathers, and homemade sashes hung with cheap plastic whistles. Wide-open rolling and crossing eyes are considered very attractive among the Wodaabe.
The Wodaabe might be the only African culture which allows girls to take the lead in choosing their betrothed—even married Wodaabe women have the right to take a different man as a sexual partner. After her favorite has been lightly tapped, the girl quickly retreats.
Wodaabe awaiting the Gerewol Festival performances.
It is women’s responsibility to deconstruct the suudu (“house”), a two-storey structure comprising ten upright sticks supporting a middle platform for sleeping and a top deck piled with calabashes, millet and the treasure chests.
The nomadic Wodaabe are an ethnic Fulani people who range across the Sahel of Chad and Niger
The Wodaabe girl swathed in bright color patterned wraps
Elder lady in front of the dancing line exhorting Sudosukai young men greater effort
Wodaabe girls are swathed in brightly patterned wraps, hair plaited or undone at the front to create an afro-quiff
The Wodaabe faces are marked with geometric patterns created through facial scarification that begins at a very young age in infants of both men and women.
Wodaabe girl tying cows
Women manage the suudu, tending huge broods of children, collecting firewood and milking long-horned m’bororo cattle.
Geegeai young lady
Geegeai woman cook
Each family has marked their own space with a large wooden bed constructed from brightly painted poles, and adorned with numerous small mirrors and beautifully carved calabashes that passed on from generation to generation, and considered the pride of each Wodaabe woman.
Married Wodaabe women can be identified by permanently black-tattooed lips. Wodaabe woman braiding her daughter’s hair
Wodaabe preferring to eat a diet of milk, millet and the yogurt churning in the calabash.
The Wodaabe are nomadic cattle herders, always on the move
Wodaabe family on arrival
Wodaabe young man
Daadaa
Wodaabe young girls are swathed in brightly patterned wraps
Preparing food
Wodaabe family
GeeGai young men photographing the N’japto boys dancing with their cell phones
Young Wodaabe girl applying make ups
Married women can be identified by permanently black-tattooed lips.
Wodaabe woman at Gerewol Festival
Both Wodaabe men and women’s faces are marked with geometric patterns created through facial scarification that begins at a very young age.
Wodaabe women
Geegeai women dancing
Geegeai cooking
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