EXTREME TRIBAL BODY MODIFICATION CULTURAL PRACTICES IN AFRICA #1

Africa has always been known for their rich cultural practices ranging from body modifications to believes, some considered to be bizarre some humorous, while there are several theories as to the origin of some of this practices some maintain the believe that most body modifications were done as a deliberate act to make women less attractive to slave trade.

But as civilization sets in some of this practices began to go into extension in this post am going to bring us some of the practices that has remained till date.

LIP STRETCHING.

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Lip stretching also known as labret, lip plate, lip disc

Lip stretching is a form of body modification that is peculiar to the people of Omo River in Ethiopia

omo valley is a small normadic tribe who number only 10,000 people known as the mursi, they live in the most isolated area of Ethiopia surrounded on three sides by rivers.

While to non-mursi this may look like a form of body mutilation but to a mursi woman it is an expression of female maturity and sign that she has reached the age of child-bearing.

Lip stretching is a type of body modification whereby a female child lower lip is cut open and a disc or plate is affixed to it, the act is usually performed about 6 months to a year before the girl child is to marry, the process is usually performed by the mother of the girl or her fellow kinswoman, during this process a small incision of between 1 and 2cm in length is made in the lower lip and a wooden peg or ceramic disc is placed in the incision and this remains there for approximately 3 weeks or until the wound is totally healed. The peg is then replaced with a slightly larger disc, thereby gradually stretching the lip this process continues until the lip stretch further to about to 4cm then at this point the peg is replaced with the first open.

In some cases the female child lower front teeth about two to four is removed in other to accommodate more plate, each woman crafts her own lips plates and decorates them with pride.
This customary believe that the size of the plate was a sign of social or economic importance/worth the larger the plate the higher the diary.

The main reason as to why the mursi and suma pople wear a disc plate has been a subject of debate to researchers and anthropologist for some time now, while according to research by BECKWITH and CARTER in 1990 claimed that the size of their plate indicate the number of cattle paid as the diary, turton an anthropologist who studied the mursi for 30 years maintained that women use lip plate to describe their value, strength and self-esteem.

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Image of mursi woman without the disc

The women of mursi although suffer talking difficulty therefore tend to only wear their plate in the company of men but remove them to eat and sleep or when they are only in the company of children.

This particular practice has captured the attention of tourist as people now travel to there just to behold the site of the people of mursi, other tribes who have practice body stretching include sudan, coastal Ecuador.

NECK STRETCHING

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Having an elongated neck has been a standard of beauty for centuries, while this is seen as primitive practice to the people of TIBETO BURMAN ethnic minority in Myanmar Kenya this is a still well practiced.

The neck stretching otherwise known as neck ring is a body modification that is most famous with the people of Kenya, a process in which numbers of ring coil is worn on a female child.
At the age of 5 the girl child are often given their first sets of coils a set which consist of coils weighing about 4.5 pounds and through time more coils are added as time progresses the coil is gradually increased to as much as twenty turns.

While they are several arguments and believes as to why they wear coils some legends claimed that the rings are worn by villages as defense against tiger attacks which were most likely to be directed at the neck another say that it was to protect women from being taken by men of rival tribes by giving them less appealing look.

However today this has become the exact opposite as myanmer considered this look beautiful and elegant.
To people it might appear that the neck is actually elongating but this appears to be an illusion as the neck is only forced upwards and the shoulders collar bones and upper ribs pushed downwards as a result of the pressure of the coil exerting on the neck appearing to be elongated or extended.
Document ref 1, 2, 3, 4