Jambo!

 The air has become quite cold these days which is the perfect weather to want to learn more about the warm Africa. My previous columns introduced Africa through its food, travel destinations and celebrities, so today I'd like to talk about what is considered as 'beauty' by a few special tribes in Africa.

 Maybe it's the influence of the phrase 'Our great dream of changing the world through beauty' that I see first thing on AP-ON every morning at work, but I've thought deeply about the definition of beauty since I joined our company, Amorepacific.

 Standard Korean Language Dictionary defines beauty as;
 1. a state of which the object that is viewed through the eyes or the sound or voice achieves balance and harmony, providing joy and pleasure to the eyes and ears.
 2. when the task at hand or the state of mind is grand and admirable.

 According to the dictionary definition, the thing that is viewed as beautiful is something that is considered satisfying or admirable in the perspective of the viewer, and there are no specific attributes defined objectively. Internal and external beauty can change greatly depending on what the society, environment or time pursues. And so, what is considered as beauty by one tribe in Africa may not be considered as beauty in Korea, much like how what is considered the most beautiful facial feature in Korea may not be considered the same in other countries.

 Let's take a look at what is considered as a beautiful person by African tribes who may be ethnic minorities but are preserving their way of life.

 There is a national park called the Mago National Park located at Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia. Here, there is a tribe called the Mursi who are a nomadic tribe living along the Nile River in harmony with nature and animals. The most notable characteristic of this tribe, a tribe with only about 10,000 people remaining, is the 'lip disk' or the 'lip plate'. Young Mursi girls all at the age of 10 pierce their ears and then remove their lower teeth and pierce their bottom lip at the age of 15 or 16 as a sign of becoming a woman. As they grow older, they use bigger 'lip plates (or just plates from here out)' to gradually stretch out the size of the hole in their lips. The size of this plate is considered as the symbol of beauty.

 The plate is mostly made of pieces of wood or clay that the women themselves design. And the bigger the plate, the stronger you are considered to be. Other than the plate, there are also other ways to express beauty as a woman such as 'scarification (inscribing designs and patterns on the skin by making a scar)' or wearing necklaces and accessories using beads, animal horns or bones, seeds of fruits and flowers. To the Mursi people, a strong woman who can protect her family is considered a beautiful woman and they pursue that value in their own way. Mursi women who wear larger plates and who dress up more are given more dowry and can marry the best man in the tribe.
(I did a little research to learn about the pain Mursi women go through wearing the lip plate, but they say the plates are only worn on special days and not generally in everyday life.)

 Neighboring the Mursi tribe lives a tribe named Karo, which is also called Kara. The Karo tribe lives farming the lands of Omo Valley. The people of the tribe, famous for its outstanding artistic sense, decorate their bodies and faces, men and women alike, using colored oats, white chalk powder, powdered yellow rock, charcoal, and iron ore. Numbering at around 1,000 people, the Karo tribe does not raise livestock having lost many of its people to tsetse flies. They instead hunt for food. The most important thing to the tribe with a low number in population is to maintain blood lineage and men who demonstrate patience and courage are given the opportunity to continue their bloodline.

 Karo tribe boys take part in the coming-of-age celebration as they enter manhood. If they can step on and walk over at least six cows standing in a row without falling, they are recognized as having entered adulthood and can marry. However, if a boy has an older brother in the family he is allowed to marry as long as his brother has already married. And the boy who is now recognized as an adult is given the right to accompany other adults of the tribe to the sacred place. Once they are recognized as adult men, they can hunt for the tribe and sometimes, though rarely, can fight other tribes as well. Men who successfully hunt and kill a big prey or defeat any threatening neighboring tribes leave a mark on their skin through scarification on their upper body and wear a huge feather decoration on their head as a symbol of courage.

 The Karo tribe considers women with strong endurance and who can endure the pain of bearing many children as beautiful. That's why Karo tribe girls, starting from a young age, engrave different patterns and design by scarifying their face and body for beauty. The using of knives or needles to scar the skin, applying strong plant juice to prevent the skin from healing well or applying charcoal to the skin to darken the scar color have huge hygienic and health concerns. There is a growing number of young tribe people who are against this practice as a result of accepting Western culture, but there are still many Karo girls and women who think 'bare skin is ugly' and bear and endure the pain of making new scars every year to become a beautiful woman.

 In the deserts of Niger and Nigeria in West Africa, Cameroon, Chad and the Central African Republic, there lives a nomadic tribe that values external beauty greatly called the Wodaabe. One unique thing about this tribe is that the beauty of women is important, but the beauty of men is more important. The Wodaabe people, which has a population of about 160,000, is also called the Mbororo or the Bororo, and they build their lives following the path of the rain with livestock animals.

 The Wodaabe men start making efforts to become beautiful at the age of 15. And when they reach an age of marriage, they take part in a ritual called Gerewol. Men must be chosen as the most beautiful man by the tribe women at this ritual to get married. What is considered as a beautiful man by this tribe is a long nose, light skin tone, big eyes, and white teeth. And so, it is common to see men who take part in the Gerewol festival decorating themselves with body paint to emphasize these features.

 The Wodaabe women have all the power to choose the man for marriage and they pick based on external beauty. Also, a woman who married a man who is considered as 'not beautiful' can have a more beautiful man's baby, with the consent of her husband. This is how much the Wodaabe people value external beauty.

 In Kunene Region, north to Namibia, there lives a pastoral nomad tribe called the Himba. This tribe decorate their hair and bodies to survive the weather and the lay of the land where they live. They protect themselves as well as pursue beauty in the way they protect themselves. For example, the reason why the Himba people wear copper anklets that weigh almost 10kg is to protect themselves from snakes.

 The region that the Himba live in is a semi-arid climate and desert climate, which means that the weather is very hot, and it is difficult to find water. The people apply what is called Otjize on their bodies to protect themselves from the harsh sun and bacteria. Otjize is a mixture of butterfat, ochre and a plant called omuzumba (Commiphora multijuga). The mixture has a reddish tinge because of the omuzumba plant. Applying Otjize helps protect against insects due to the scent of the plant and protects the skin from the sun. The Himba believe the red color of omuzumba symbolizes earth's richness and blood, the essence of life, and so the Otjize applied, reddish skin is their ideal of beauty.

 The Himba express their position in society through the way they wear their hair and hair decorations. Boys have one braided plait, while girls have two plaits extended forward at the front. A young girl with one braided hair plait extended to the front means that she is one of a pair of twins. There is not much difference in the way postpubescent boys wear their hair, while girls start changing their hairstyle with many hair plaits using Otjize. Once a woman has been married and has children, she will wear an Erembe, which is a sheepskin headpiece, and her hair in thick braids with Otjize paste. Married men wear a head wrap with unbraided hair below.

 Today's Africa is going through modernization with the influence of Western culture. As their way of life becomes more 'modernized', one can observe people in Africa also pursuing beauty that is similar to other regions. However, the most important value in the local culture is mostly about whether men and women become good mothers and fathers, and so, the standard of beauty is in line with this value.

 One day after living in Uganda for about 5 years, a Ugandan I met for the first time in a long time said to me with a huge smile, "Eh! You have gotten fat!". A slender body is considered as a 'beautiful body' in Korea and the West, and so this comment made me very embarrassed. But then, I learned that in Uganda this is the best compliment and I felt grateful and realized that the cultural difference greatly influences the standard of 'beauty'.

 Both West Africa and East Africa consider 'fatter' women as beautiful. Nigeria even has a 'fat camp' to make girls before the age of marriage fatter. However, as more people understand that being overweight is not good for health, more young Africans think women with larger hips that is associated with childbirth are beautiful. It's difficult to summarize what is considered as the ideal beauty for men in one feature, but Africans value confidence, kindness and being devoted to family as beauty for both men and women.

 This column talked about the beauty of the indigenous people of Africa that we, Koreans, saw on TV. The tribes I introduced today accounts for less than 5% of the population in Africa, but they live protecting their beautiful culture and traditions. I cannot stress enough that these small group of tribes do not represent the entire Africans or their standard of beauty.

 I believe that for us to change the world through beauty, we must accept the diversity of the ideal of beauty. We can't develop products customized to all ethnic minority groups, but I look forward to the day Amorepacific represents Asian, Black, Caucasian (ABC) beauty someday and has a product beloved in Africa as well. I will see you in my last column in December!

 Hakuna Matata :)