In 1991, while crossing the Sahelian Steppe of Niger on camelback with our Wodaabe nomad friend Mokao, we found ourselves describing to him our desire to create a book of photographs covering the sacred ceremonies that we had witnessed in Africa. This book, we told him, would record those rituals that African life its special meaning. Never having seen a book, Mokao reflected on our words for a long time. He responded with unexpected understanding. The words he used to describe our dream were maagani yegitata - "medicine not to forget."
After ten years of field work, our dream has become a reality in African Ceremonies. With deep appreciation we present maagani yegitata to Mokao, to Africa, and to the rest of the world.
We first met in 1978, as two fledgling photographers at a Maasai warrior ceremony in East Africa. Each of us was working on a fist book, and we recognized in one another two kindred spirits with a deep love for and fascination with Africa. We quickly agreed to pool resources and traveled together to the Sahel of West Africa to follow the seasonal migration of Wodaabe nomads.
After completing our own books - Angela's Africa Adorned and Carol's Maasai and Nomads of Niger -- we began to make plans together to record the peoples and cultures of the ancient Horn of Africa. The result was our book African Ark, which quickly became a testament to a vanishing world as famine took hold of Ethiopia and civil war raged in Somalia.
The experience of working together on African Ark fueled our desire to create a book that would be a visual exploration of the meaning and power of traditional rituals and ceremonies in Africa before they disappeared forever. We took a year out to raise funds and gather the twenty-seven individuals and three foundations that offered the sustained support that has made it possible for us to realize our dream. Little did we know the extent of our undertaking. Originally, we planned for our years of fieldwork and one year of production. It has taken us nearly a decade to produce our coverage of 43 ceremonies in 26 countries.
Recording ceremonies throughout Africa offers an immense logistical challenge. Rituals do not conform to a calendar. Some ceremonies take place annually; others, such as the Dogon Dama festival, take place only once every twelve years. We needed to learn the timing of ritual cycles, to be constantly in touch with friends and informants across the continent, and we always had to be able to leave our base in London on only a few hours notice. African rituals take place when the time is deemed to be auspicious according to phases of the moon or changing seasons. Some ceremonies must wait for the rains so that the herds may be gathered from far afield; others rely on a bountiful harvest so that sufficient grain is available to brew the necessary quantities of millet beer.
Sometimes, one can arrive to discover that a ritual has been postponed. On one occasion, we came to the West African Sahel to find that insufficient rain had delayed the annual gathering of the Wodaabe nomads. So we bought a donkey to carry our equipment and walked with the nomads for five weeks as we all waited for the rains to fall. Whenever we showed signs of impatience, they would simply say, "He who can't bear the smoke will never get to the fire." We developed a patience that we did not know we had.
Before photographing among a people, we felt it was important to develop their friendship and trust. We ate the same foods and took on the pace of their day-to-day lives. We determined to learn at least fifty words of the language in each place we worked: Carol also became fluent in Fulfulde, the tongue of the Wodaabe nomads, and Angela mastered Swahili, the lingua franca of several countries in East Africa.
