I thought I would wrap up my week long retrospective of previous Africa themed blog entries with two shorter posts I made in June of 2007. I'll get back to poker themed posts this week.
Time and Space
Traveling throughout Africa over the years has always been an extreme learning experience. Africans experience time and space very differently from the more developed parts of the world. Things move at a much slower pace in all aspects of their daily lives. You have to slow down your expectations for everything when you are living within African communities. This often forces you to focus on the in the moment realities of survival and living.
To illustrate this concept, I'll share a situation I've encountered on multiple occasions in Africa. Walking is the most common mode of transportation. Most people walk many times the distance the average Westerner walks in a typical day. I will be traveling by foot and ask for directions to some rural destination. Invariably the person you ask directions of will offer to take you/lead you to your destination. You begin your journey fully expecting to reach it shortly if he's leading you there personally. You walk for 15 minutes and ask, "is it close?" They respond it's just ahead. You walk another 15 minutes and ask again. Once again the same answer. You wonder how you can get the same response when you've just walked another 15 minutes. After the next 15 minutes you ask specifically "where is it, how close are we?" They will often say it's just around the hillside, or around the bend ahead of you. Each new hill or bend seemingly brings you no closer to your goal. Exasperated and tired, you ask for a rest. They indicate "but we are almost there". You get up again and continue on. Eventually you reach your destination. You may even ask why they didn't tell you it was going to be this far? But they don't understand. It takes what it takes; time and space are all relative. When you have lived centuries walking by foot, the journey is not to be diagnosed. The destinati on will arrive when it is supposed to, no need to dissect it too closely.
In the West, our first priority is usually the efficiency of our time. We don't worry about the excess resources used to get to where we are going, only that it take as short a time as possible. We often micro manage our time as if its the only consideration. It is the destination, not the journey that often matters to us. That is not the case in traditional Africa. The journey is just as valuable. You live in the moment more and simplify your life in the process. Those are difficult things to do living in the US, so I was always glad of the reminders when I traveled abroad.
The Masks of Africa
African people, on the whole, are some of the most hospitable people on the planet. Regardless of their wealth or poverty, they will shower you with incredible hospitality and priority. The balance to this incredible hospitality to strangers is their private parts that they will hide from you no matter what. If they ever do open up about deeply personal issues or secrets, consider it an immense honor and rare privilege.
I have always admired and collected masks from Africa. I have always relished the diversity of expression and technique they create in them. I had always wondered how so many 'old' masks could end up in markets, and tourist shops around the world to be sold. At the end of my 9 month 15 country trip in 1990 and 1991, I was shown the secrets behind the masks of Africa. While many masks have been created over the centuries, the mass majority nowadays are faked 'old' masks.
The last country I visited on that extensive trip was the Ivory Coast. A Belgian friend I had known for 15 years lived and worked there. He had suggested if I appreciated masks that I visit Korhogo in the north of the Ivory Coast. It was one of the remote epicenters of the crafts created in the Ivory Coast. I took the all day trip up to the town with a trusted local as a guide. Because of this connection I was shown the world of 'making old'.
So much energy goes into faking old because that's what the public wants to buy. But so many centuries of people collecting and removing masks from the continent have depleted the authentic versions. The craftsmen use a multitude of methods to give the appearance, even to trained professionals, of being an antiquity. They will put the wood mask in animal guts and bury it in the ground. They will immerse it in urine, tanning liquids, and astringent agents to prematurely age and degrade the wood and appearance. They brought me to a workshop with hundreds of 'fresh' new looking masks waiting their turn for 'treatments.' After the tour, I was taken to where the finished masks were stored before their sale to galleries and shops in the capital Abijain. In the end, seeing this process didn't diminish my interest or appreciation of masks. It only provided a better context for understanding these beautiful and stirring creations. It did influence my decision in later years to not sell "old" masks in my gallery in the US, because I didn't want to play the game of misrepresenting the artform.
Masks are created for many reasons; to educate, inspire, channel the spirits, instill fear or simply mask what is underneath. They represent Africa in so many ways and I will always treasure each and every one I've ever collected.
