The plates are worn, rather like a veil in Islamic societies, in the presence of men. At home and in the company of other women, they tend to take the plates out and let the stretched lower lip dangle down below the chin in picturesque fashion. Older women eventually abandon their plates, while fashion-conscious young wives don’t like to be seen without them.
One theory is that the plate was an anti-slaving
device: a way of making your tribe unappealing to Arab slave traders from the
coast; another is that it is a protection against evil spirits, which are said
to enter the body through the mouth. But the girl herself, working on her own
lip in the dusk, said that it was chiefly a question of goats.
Stanley Stewart (to
be continued)
