Body Adornment in Old Tivland: Camwood, Maa, Marks and Teeth

Before woven cloth was common, much of Tiv adornment was worn on the body itself. Akiga Sai, who wrote his History of the Tiv in 1935, describes these customs in detail, and they are recorded here as history: most belong to the past, and several, such as scarification, are no longer practised by most Tiv families. Camwood (kpagh) Camwood is a forest tree whose red bark the Tiv ground into a lotion. Akiga writes that the Tiv first learned its value from the Udam, their neighbours, and that the Kparev, who lived nearest the Udam, were the first to use it. The bark, bought raw, was cut up and given to a woman of the household, who pounded it to powder, ground it smooth on the grinding stone and rolled it into balls to dry; she kept one ball and returned the rest. A portion was then mixed with water and rubbed all over the body after oil. Camwood comes in shades from bright red to dark, and in Akiga's words, "camwood was to the Tiv as the riga or gown is to the Hausa". It was thought to keep the skin smooth and free of scabies, and it was above all a young people's cosmetic: a young man who did not use it risked being dismissed by young women. By the 1930s fashions had changed, Akiga notes, and the dry powder had replaced the wet lotion, except among the Iharev, Masev and Nôngov, who still valued it highly. Maa body painting Maa is the name for several wild trees whose fruit gives a black dye, among them aginde, ipwa, asange, maachikor and ibohough. The inside of the fruit was ground on the grinding stone, rolled into balls and kept in cotton wool. A skilled artist mixed it with charcoal on a piece of broken pot until it was as black as ink, then drew designs on the client's body with a trimmed feather shaft. Steady hands made the best artists, and young men and women were the keenest wearers. Henna By Akiga's time young people had taken up henna (lele) from the Hausa: the pounded leaves, mixed with lemon juice, were left on the finger- and toenails for about three hours to stain them red. Marks of identity Akiga writes that when the Tiv lived alongside the Fulani they had no facial or body marks, and that they adopted them after the two peoples parted, to set themselves apart from their neighbours. Marks became so much a Tiv fashion that other peoples believed the Tiv had always had them. They followed an order: piercing the ears, shaping the teeth, and later the facial marks and, for women, marks on the body. A boy old enough to carry arrows had his ears pierced, and the boys who had been pierced teased those who had not with a mocking song. Next he might have his upper front teeth chipped by a specialist to make a gap-tooth, sometimes also filed to points; the stylish gap-tooth was called kogh or iase, and the fee in the old days was a measure of tobacco, later an arrow. The best-known facial mark was abaji, raised scars made beside the eyes above the cheekbones, usually in a pattern of five cuts, though some had three. A young man or woman with well-made marks was praised as abakuma, "the one with fitting marks". Many women also had marks traced around the navel, which were believed to keep the belly firm after childbirth, and some had marks at the waist or on the backs of the legs. Akiga notes that by his time fashions differed between clans: most women of the Kunav clan were unmarked, while among the Nôngov body marks were growing in variety. A newer facial mark, kusa, scratched with a nail, had been brought in by young men who had travelled among the Jukun, and spread quickly as a fashion. All of these customs have faded. A 2018 study of Tiv weaving recalls that in the old days cosmetics such as camwood and native oil were applied over the whole body, and that the body which could once be seen "today ... is hidden in beautiful clothes and shoes". Sources: Akiga Sai, History of the Tiv (1935), translated by Harold M. Bergsma and Martin L. Akiga, Africa 85(4), 2015, chapters one and two; P. I. Iorja, International Journal of Agricultural Research and Food Production 3(3), 2018; Wikipedia, "Tiv people".