Scarifications Fade in Modern Nigeria

By KATHARINE HOURELD

IBADAN, Nigeria – The wail of 6-week-old Quari Babaola cut through the air like the blade that had just sliced through his chin.

His mother Kafilat shuddered but kept a determined grip on the tiny limbs as a traditional healer smeared the cuts on her baby’s hands, feet, back and chest with a sticky black paste of ground-up charcoal and chanted incantations to stop the oozing blood.

"Marks will help him to be part of the family … all the family used to do it," the 28-year-old said in her native Yoruba, as a queue of mothers cradling querulous infants nodded their agreement.

The women here say traditional scarification has healing powers and is an important part of their tribal identity.

Originally used both medicinally and to identify friends and foes in times of war, many Nigerians believe it offers precious continuity in a rapidly changing world. But Dr. Tolu Fakeye, head of the government’s traditional medicine development program, says urbanization and education are gradually eroding the practice.

"In the last one to two decades, it’s been mostly restricted to rural areas," he said. "The origin of the practice – to identify people in the tribal wars – is no longer relevant and the people who identify it with cultural beliefs haven’t had so much contact with formal education or urbanization."

Scarification is no barrier to success in most of Africa. It is a tradition in all three of Nigeria’s major tribes and President Olusegun Obasanjo has faint parallel lines scoring his cheeks. But the once universal practice is gradually declining. None of the president’s children bear their father’s marks. No statistics are kept, but a quick walk around most of Nigeria’s major cities will show many smooth young faces next to scarred and wrinkled ones.

Still, in a country of 140 million, with one of the highest population growth rates in the world, there are plenty of new babies to keep traditional doctors like Razak Ahmed busy. Known locally as an Oola, he is part healer, part tattooist and part keeper of tribal traditions. He knows all 14 women waiting to see him today and his family has performed the ceremonies for generations.

Ahmed has made some concessions to modernization, such as adding a splash of antiseptic from a plastic bottle of Dettol to the plastic bowl of water used to wash his knives and insisting that mothers return with their infants for a checkup. Fakeye says the government has begun to register traditional doctors and encourage them to sterilize their instruments and perform noninvasive techniques, but Ahmed says that he has had little contact with the Ministry of Health.

Although circumcision – which he performs for both boys and girls – remains popular, there is slightly less call for tribal marks, he says. These days it is more about fashion than providing an instant visual history, he believes, pointing out parents with elaborately carved faces who have opted for a simple dash-dash known as a minus sign across the cheeks for their children.

"It makes the face beautiful … they cannot stop it, it is our culture," he explains.

Quari’s mother says his teeth will grow in painlessly after his chin was cut. Another of Ahmed’s customers requests that he cut her wrist and smear on the black paste before he circumcises her son, believing that she can take the pain of her child upon herself.

"That’s the way we do it in our father’s house," explains 35-year-old Ganiyat Azees, cradling 2-month-old twins in yellow jumpsuits. Both have a deep incision blackened by charcoal and herbs down each cheek. "If we don’t do it for the children, people may not know they are from this family."

In postcolonial Nigeria, exposed to American hip-hop and migration, tribal scars can even be a form of individual self-expression, like tattoos in the West.

Faruk Lasaki, who has produced a book and a film on scarification, says, "I know one woman who had the scars done as an adult, because she liked them … My problem is when they do this to the children so young that they don’t have any choice about it."

For the mothers outside Ahmed’s house, abstract talk about ethnic identities versus globalization does not translate easily. Few can critically compare traditional and western medicine, which is far beyond the reach of the vast majority of people in Nigeria. The country produces tens of billions in oil revenues every year but squanders most of it through corruption. A protective scar, believed to work for life, costs just over a dollar – half the price of a packet of brand-name pain killer.

With no social security and not enough functioning clinics, some Nigerians see scarring as a reassurance that help and health can still come from within the tribe.

"If I am in another place and I see someone with marks like mine, of course I will have a soft spot for that person," says Ade Muyiwa Adegoke, a famous Yoruba actor with triple lines radiating out from his mouth.

Adegoke, who has traveled to Berlin and is due to visit New York, says he is not ashamed of his scars, which along with a bracelet of beads mark him as local royalty. But he has decided not to mark his children.

"These days, it is not necessary that anyone can look at your face and tell where you are from," Adegoke said, standing among the dusty streets and rusty roofs of downtown Ibadan. "And I did not want to hurt my children."