A Liberian Journey

Creator

Richard Pearson Strong

Date

9/1/26

Coverage

Zeanshue, Hinterland, Liberia

Transcription

(Written September 1st)

At Zearnshu for example it is the fashion for the women to paint themselves with an indigo dye in symmetrical straight lines of about one quarter inch in width. Thus one woman will have a straight line down her forehead and several parallel ones on both cheeks. Another will have an oblong pattern on her chest or lines like shoulder straps extending from the waist behind over the shoulders and down to the nipples of their breasts in front. Still another will have a stripe from the sides of the neck down the shoulders and arms. The women wear a one-piece garment, an oblong piece of cloth wrapped around the body just above the hips and below the navel. The young girls, say from ten to fifteen years of age, wear a girdle of white shells strung on a narrow strip of rattan fibre, to which a "G" string is attached. The young boys wear nothing, the older ones a “G” string. The adult men may wear only a “G” string or a pair of short trunks. The women very often wear silver bracelets and anklets and silver rings. Occasionally they have patterns worked on their chests and abdomens in the form of linear cicatrizations or keloid formations done by raising the flesh and piercing it with needles and inserting foreign bodies, as granules of dye. The bracelets, anklets and rings are not made of flat metal bands, but of round pieces of silver, about half an inch in diameter. The Krus, men and women, always have their tribal mark, a broad black band on their forehead, burnt in.

Type

Diary

Citation