vengeful spirits of children who died in infancy.
Common throughout West Africa is the use of a
string of beads around the waist of a child, which
is said to promote good health. Among the
Bakongo, a similar practice exists using a single
bead made from a wooden disk or seed. This
bead is tied and hung around the child’s neck,
waist, or ankle and serves to guide the child’s soul
so that it reaches old age safely. Sometimes the
beads would be fashioned into a net that would
be worn like a shirt or the child’s head would be
adorned with shells that would prevent the Devil
from carrying the child away.
Pregnant women in Ghana and among the
Mende wear beads to ensure protection of the
baby. The use of beads as amulets of protection
stems from the perception that objects are
infused with a spiritual power or force. Some
objects, such as beads, have more power than
others. Specific beads, such as the akori bead,
were highly valued. This bead was used in ritu-
als, burials, and jewelry. In Ghana, this bead was
once equal to gold in value.
Not all beads are used strictly as a form of
protection. Among the Yoruba, beads are an
important artifact in the relationship between a
person and an orisha. When a person receives
theilekes, a beaded necklace of specific colors,
he or she receives not only the protection of the
orisha, but the orisha’s spiritual force. Beads
were also used to decorate ritual objects such as
calabashes that hold ceremonial palm wine in
Cameroon. The material from which beads are
made varies with the region, but the most popu-
lar materials are glass, wood, shells, and seeds.
The choice and meaning of colors also vary
from culture to culture.
Denise MartinSee alsoAmulet; Blessing
Further Readings
Stine, L. F., Cabak, M. A., & Groover, M. D. (1996).
Blue Beads as African American Cultural Symbols.
Historical Archeology, 31 , 49–75.
Stokes, D. (1999, Autumn). Rediscovered Treasures:
African Beadwork at the Field Museum, Chicago.
African Arts, 25 , 18–31.
BEJA
The Beja are a seminomadic group of peoples
united by the common language of TuBedawiye,
who live mainly in Southern Sudan. They are
composed of the subgroups of Ababda,
Bishariyyn, Amar’ar/Atmaan, and Hadendowa.
The Beni Amer are at times also described as Beja,
but they speak Arabic or Tigre.
They have predominantly African ancestry,
unlike the northern Sudanese, who are mainly
either of Arab descent or have developed through
intermarriage with Arab immigrants. The scholar-
ship on the Beja religion suggests that it is largely
Islamic, but an Islam that is often interpreted in
relation to pre-Islamic practices and beliefs.
The development of their dominant religious
beliefs has been shaped by a number of factors.
The first is the emergence of a social and material
culture from their life as nomads. The second is the
influence of Islam, spread through trade and con-
quest. The third is the dislocation of their nomadic
lives when they were forced to settle in one place
because of shifts in their relationship to dominant
centers of economic and political power in Sudan.
Within these historical developments, there
now coexist a cluster of pre-Islamic and Islamic
beliefs and practices. The pre-Islamic beliefs are
constituted by both systematic aspects of their
social institutions and a structure of informal
beliefs and practices.
One aspect of the systematic, formal social
institutions is the possible development of a hori-
zontal sacredness, in which the material details of
physical and social life take on sacred value. This
could be understood to have developed through
the experience of constant mobility, which led to
the creation of a ritual built around the process of
dismantling and moving the tent.
The tent is the central architectural form of
many nomadic societies, and ritual forms have
developed around it in relation to rites of passage
such as marriage. The culture of the tent is not uni-
form to all Beja groups, however, because the pre-
dominant architectural form of the northern Beja
is not the tent, but makeshift huts made of wood.
The structured form of pre-Islamic traditions
includes the Silif, one of the aspects of which is the
managed exploitation of natural resources. ThisBeja 117