As two women traveling alone, we were frequently adopted into extended single families and given African names. Carol was variously called Nanyuki (The Red One) and Mokorol (She Who Wears Dangling Pendants on Her Long Black Braids); Angela was known as Dede Gaga (Firstborn Girl Tall) and Julama (after a particularly beautiful Wodaabe woman). We were fortunate to be able to form close contacts with both sexes. Women invited us into their personal lives, revealing to us the intimacies that they could never have shared with a man. Yet we were equally adopted by the men, who saw us as foreigners and would treat us as honorary males. In this way we were privileged to photograph male rituals to which women were often denied access.

We traveled in many ways: on foot, by camel, horse, mule, sailing dhow, and four-wheel-drive vehicle, often finding ourselves in remote areas that had never before been visited by outsiders. To reach the Surma of southwest Ethiopia and photograph courtship rituals that culminate in dramatic Donga stick fights, we formed a mule train of fifteen animals loaded with all our food, camping gear, medical supplies, and photographic equipment for a six-week stay. We trekked for three days through spectacular rain forests and over 8,000-foot mountains.

During our years in Africa, w have observed that life relies on a continuing cycle of giving and receiving. Each rite begins with a gift or an offering and nothing is taken from the land without giving something back to it. Survival depends on this basic principle. We have looked for the appropriate ways to reciprocate the support given to us by the communities we lived among. For the Wodaabe we have funded the digging of the wells to bring water to their dry Sahel home; in Kenya we helped to set up the first all-Maasai school. The Tuareg in Niger have eased their struggle for survival during the dry season through craft initiatives that we helped them to establish. And in Ethiopia we set up a basketry and weaving project for women in relief camps, so they could support their children and survive the worst of the famine. We have seen how much Africa has suffered in the past from people coming to extract resources without reciprocation. As a gesture of appreciation, a portion of the royalties from this book will go to assist communities we have photographed.

Living in traditional African societies has made us aware of the value that rites of passage have for the individual and the community. Ceremonies that mark the stages of life from birth to death provide clear definitions of what is expected of the individual and give him or her a sense of identity and belonging. Ceremony is the structure for celebrating the passage from one stage of life to another, and ritual is the powerful mechanism for keeping in touch with one's own spirit and the spirit world.

As we have come to admire the beauty, strength, and vitality of Africa's peoples and their traditions, we have also realized how vulnerable many of these cultures have become. Famine, drought, and political upheaval are taking a toll. Some groups we visited a decade ago have now disappeared, and Western ways are eroding the belief systems of many cultures. Concerned that many of these traditions are in imminent danger of being lost, we embarked on this project to document these vanishing ways of life and create a visual record for future generations. We have approached this project not as anthropologists but as artists, following our creative spirits. It has been a rite of passage for us that has tested us, sometimes to the limit of our endurance, and changed us in ways that we never could have imagined.