Witch doctors

Who do you go to when you're feeling sick and in need for medical advice? Who do you go to see when you have financial and personal problems? In our society we often have someone for everything. Teachers to teach students. Accountants to deal with our money. Mechanics to deal with our cars and so on.

In African societies, witch doctors are part of their daily lives. We may feel skeptical about them and may not believe in witch doctors because of its practices which conflicts with science.

The following article tells us a chilling story about a the owner of a farm and how he went bankrupt. He also provides details about witch doctors and their practices. It opens up a discussion and lets us get involve with the debate.

For example, if the practices of the witch doctors do not work then how else did people back in the medieval times get through?

Hope you enjoy the article just as much as we did. Tell us what you think.

http://www.squidoo.com/africanwitchdoctors

Marriage in Africa

In today's post we will look at marriage customs within a particular tribe in Africa.

The Wundabi tribe annually hold a beauty contest for men as a custom for the women of the tribe to choose their husbands.

The family hierarchy in the tribe on the male side is not traditional when it comes to monogamy, but rather they are given the chance to try and win over another wife in this contest. From a feminist point of view this might seem outrageous, but surprisingly the women have the upper hand, and are allowed to find a new husband, however have to stay monogamous.

In this beauty contest, as featured in the video below, men must adorn themselves with make up, dance and dress up to show their masculinity and attractiveness. The women are the main audience and they choose who they want to be with.

It makes me think of all the cheesy pick up lines that guys would try to say to girls and how girls try to impress guys with their looks and personality. I think the Wundabi tribes way is much more entertaining and worth the effort.

Beauty in Africa

We'd just like to take note that this post is not aimed at generalizing the idea of beauty in African culture.

Our main focus for this post is on a video that we have come across about the Mursi Tribe of Southern Ethiopia. It features a woman exploring the tribes customs and values where she reveals the ideas behind the lip plate (see video below).

This lip plate is the tribes symbol for beauty, where the bigger the lip plate, the more beautiful you are.

In a way this parallels itself to western culture as well as we go from a simple piercing of the ears to extreme mutilation, for example having surgery to create elf ears, or more so as we know, the famous snake man and tiger man.