- [Interviewer] I would love to hear about what you know
or what your experience has been of objects
like the Sowei mask or even stories about the Sande society
what they talk about publicly or either of the objects
that you have pictures of. - That is really interesting because,
so here these Sowei masks or Sande as they say
in my native language which is Mende, so I'm a Mende
by tribe from Sierra Leone and this is the Nomoli.
I would say I'm more of with the Sande because up to this day,
it's still going on. It's a big part of the
traditional culture of my people. My parents, my sisters, my
cousins go through this tradition and once in a while or after the end of,
after the end of the initiation rite, if I can still use
that word, the Nomoli here is a very big event or party like
which sort of shows that little girls kind of transition
into women and normally the Sowei masks, they call her the Sowei, that's the leader
so she would be wearing this masks and she would be in front of the dance,
it is a huge ceremony. - [Interviewer] There is a
big kind of festival almost, that's a big after the initiation.
Can you describe, have you ever been to one of them?
- Sort of (laughs), to my cousin's, when my cousin's.
- [Interviewer] Can you describe what you remember being,
was there dancing, was there food, what was it?
- It was a combination of all of that so, I'm not sure.
I'm trying to compare it to a celebration in the U.S.
that to be comparable to but I can not really think
of one because how it's like. Basically they cook a lot
of food to feed everybody, the family members and all the people
that went through the process. Basically you have everything
new, from their shoes to all the clothes they wear,
to all the clothes they wear. I remember my cousin's, they
sort of paints their faces and their bodies with like
this kind of white clay so everything is white.
So that is what I would say, and for the Nomoli,
it's not very common, but-- - [Interviewer] Did you ask
them what the purpose of it was? - Yes, so having conversations with them
it was mostly for, people had this for as means
to appease the spirit for protection, to help them
in their harvest, for instance if you have your rice field
putting this there basically, they believe will enable
the land to be more fertile and in such be able to have more
yield and also putting it in the house against evil spirit.