DINEMBO: FORBIDDEN TATTOOS OF THE MAKONDE OF MOZAMBIQUE

Article © 2009 Lars Krutak

Heading up to the Mueda plateau from the coastal port of Pemba.

AMONG THE BANTU-SPEAKING Makonde of Cabo Delgado province, tattoos were and continue to be far more elaborate than those of other indigenous peoples living in Mozambique. The resonance of tribal tattooing tradition here can partly be attributed to the landscape in which the Makonde inhabit, a place characterized by relatively inaccessible high plateaus that deterred European and Western contact until the turn of the 20th century. And also to Makonde myth which to this day praises the deeds, knowledge, and superior physical attributes of the tattooed ancestors of the past.

Traditionally, Makonde tattoos were considered to be regional indicators and each tribe preferred specific motifs that were laid down in a variety of set patterns. The face and other parts of the body contained chevrons, angles, zigzag and straight lines with an occasional circle, diamond, dot, or animal figure. Today these patterns have remained largely intact, but they only appear on men and women over sixty years of age. Sadly, the Makonde tattoo artists of the Mueda plateau stopped inking their clients in the early 1960s, and today only a handful of elderly tattoo masters remain in northern Mozambique.

Spanning the facial area above the mouth and across the cheeks and nose, lichumba (‘deep angles’) marked nearly all Makonde men and women in the past. These markings also extended to the body. Photographs ca. 1960.

DINEMBO: THE FORBIDDEN TATTOO

Like many African nations, Mozambique has been ravaged by decades of war since the 1960s. Thankfully, the country is on the rebound and its economy is booming due to foreign investment and tourism which attracts intrepid travelers to its incredibly beautiful beaches, pristine national parks, and wildlife reserves.

In the northern province of Cabo Delgado, however, the legacy of the country’s long war for independence is still evident: unexploded landmines, abandoned buildings, and numerous monuments to fallen heroes dot the landscape. In fact, it was here that the struggle of independence from Portugal was born, and it was the Makonde who were the spark that kindled the revolution.

Traditionally, Makonde tattooing was completed just before or after a boy’s or girl’s initiation ceremony. Today, young boys and girls sometimes have their faces painted with traditional dinembo designs, instead of receiving the more permanent tattooing. Although they are proud of their tattooing heritage, they fear that they will not find work outside of the Makonde community if they wear the bold facial tattoos of their ancestors.

In June 1960, large numbers of Makonde men and women were massacred by Portuguese troops at the town of Mueda. Their bodies were dumped off an imposing cliff near the abandoned airstrip on the outskirts of town. From this point forward, FRELIMO, or the Mozambican Liberation Front, began to grow as Makonde and other men filled its ranks. After ten-years of brutal war, Mozambique finally became independent.

FRELIMO (1964-1989) was not only a liberation movement, it was an official program of political socialism aimed at integrating all Mozambican peoples under its banner through communism. Tribal customs, such as tattooing, were basically outlawed because they were a form of “primitive individual expression” and not conducive to the homogenizing forces of FRELIMO Marxist ideology. In turn, tattoo masters stopped apprenticing their disciples, and Makonde tattooing, or dinembo, became the “forbidden” tattoo. One Makonde man told me that under FRELIMO, there was “No God, and no tattoos. Because God was the Gun.” He continued, “if the Portuguese troops saw your facial tattoos, they knew you were Makonde and they would kill you!”

MAKONDE TATTOOISTS AND THEIR CLIENTS

Generally speaking, men tattooed boys and women the girls although overlap between the sexes did occur to some degree. Makonde tattoo artists were “professionals” who learned their skills usually from their parents or from other family members. Sometimes tattoo artists doubled as traditional healers (curandeiros) who specialized in treating particular medical disorders. Today, many Mozambicans are cut by such healers with two small marks on various parts of their bodies. Medicinal plants are then rubbed into these wounds to relieve such ailments as head pain, respiratory complaints, arthritis, boils, and eye problems. Occasionally, these linear cuts resemble tiny scarifications or even pigmented tattoos.

87-year-old Pius [pee·yosh] is one of the last Makonde tattoo masters. He is also known as Nãuka or ‘Switchblade’ for the tattooing tool he used to ply in his younger days. He learned his skills from his father and was heavily marked by him. But Pius is not only a tattooist. He is also a traditional healer and is sought after for his medicine to treat eye problems.

The general Makonde term for tattoo is dinembo (“design” or “decoration”) and the tattooing process usually required one to three sessions with the mpundi wa dinembo (“tattoo design artist”) to produce the desired result. If a client’s skin was light, one meeting with the tattooist was usually enough, but those clients with darker complexions paid their tattoo masters several visits. Some boys and girls with darker complexions lost their courage if they had to be tattooed a second or third time and they never completed their tattooing. Those who ran away were ridiculed and even threatened by the woman who acted as their “godmother” during the dinembo rite, because for the Makonde the tattoo ritual was a sign of courage and “to show I am a Makonde.” One Makonde woman told me that “men would not be interested in a woman without her markings, and it was obligatory to get the tattoos for this reason or else you could not be married.”

At one time, women’s facial tattoos were almost as common as the ndona, or upper lip labret. Makonde labrets are made of black ebony and an upright needle passing close to the nose is usually inserted in its center. This was a sign that the woman had achieved marriageable age. Labret holes were first pierced through the upper lip during a girl’s initiation and enlarged over time.

Makonde tattooing practice was a form of skin-cut tattooing. After the cuts were made with traditional knife-like tattoo implements called chipopo, vegetable carbon from the castor bean plant was rubbed into the incisions producing a dark blue color. The tattoos were then washed with water and then oil prepared from castor beans was applied with a feather for healing purposes.

Today, the custom of Makonde labretifery has vanished among men and can only be seen on the faces of elderly women. Photograph ca. 1955.

Tattoo clients usually paid a nominal fee and were held down in a spread-eagle fashion by relatives or the tattoo artist’s assistant. When the painful facial tattooing was executed, the client was sometimes buried up to their neck in the ground so that they would not flinch during the skin-cutting.

Just before the tattoo artist began to ply the cutting tool, he mentally recorded which designs he would mark upon the skin. Moving carefully over the epidermis, the tattooist cut then rubbed the tattoo pigment into the wound, leaving the client to dry it in the afternoon sun.

Occasionally, young Makonde men who did not live a “respectable” life were only given a few tattoos on the forehead. The tattoo master Pius told me that, “everyone in the village would joke about you because you were not considered to be full Makonde after that.”

Pius received his facial tattoos from his father in 1936. By 1940, his body was covered with various designs of palm trees (nadi). He became a tattoo master when he was twenty years old after apprenticing with his father for several years. At the urging of the socialist FRELIMO revolutionaries, he gave up tattooing in 1962.

Two Makonde ‘best friends’ who were initiated at the same time and tattooed by the same artist. They told me that: “These tattoos gave us great pride in ourselves. The pain was worth it. You couldn’t get out of it, and we were worried and nervous, but they were completed quickly.”

TATTOO MOTIFS

Common decorative motifs such as spiders (lidangadanga), sacred antelope (nandolo), and even yucca root bundles (nkaña) may have had magical associations in the past. And today Makonde women continue to believe that the tattoos placed on their abdomen (mankani) and inner thighs (nchika) are erotic and also have the supernatural power to attract a husband. Of course, the motifs used to decorate these areas, usually palm trees (nadi) or their fruit, and especially the lizard (ligwañula) or a group of lizards (nantchiwane) are believed to enhance fertility.

Makonde facial tattoos always cost more than body tattoos. And around 1940, a completed facial tattoo cost seven times more than body work.

However, the Makonde practice of tattooing the navel and pubic areas was perhaps related to the long-standing tradition of prophylactic “magic” aimed at warding off penetration or possession by evil forces that targeted vulnerable body passageways, namely the natural openings of the body. Armitage (1924) cites several instances of navel scarification among Bantu-speaking Gonja and Dagomba women in Ghana “put on to ward off or prevent sickness” while the anthropologists Nevadomsky and Aisien (1995) described five tattoos stemming from the navel (“the center of life”) among the Bini women of Benin. Not surprisingly, the Bini prepared their tattoo pigments from leaves and lampblack (soot), and at funerals mourners “rub a line of lamp-black on their foreheads to scare away the spirit of the deceased who tries to drag his relatives with him to the world of the dead.” The Makonde do not practice this ritual, but they do place lumps of charcoal on the woven mats they use for drying their crops to keep evil sorcerers away.

SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE MAKONDE

The Makonde adhere to a cosmology dominated by a powerful impersonal force (ntela), the propitiation of ancestral spirits (mahoka) who are sometimes good or evil, and a concept of pervasive bush spirits (nnandenga) and sorcerers who are believed to be a form of malevolence.

Mahoka are often called upon to send cures for sickness, and to ensure success in the harvest or in hunting. The spirits of ancestors also served as intermediaries between the living and Nnungu, a powerful deity who was invoked during major droughts when the Makonde collectively prayed for rain.

Above, the “magical” mankani tattoo ensured fertility and perhaps provided protection against evil spirits.

‘Magical’ lizard tattoos were sometimes worn on the chests and backs of Makonde men and women. They were believed to enhance virility for men and fertility for women. Photographs and drawings ca. 1955.

On the malevolent order, spirits of the dead called mapiko only terrorized women and the non-initiated, while sorcerers created invisible slaves from humans called lindandosa that were sent to the agricultural fields to work their evil magic.

Makonde sculptor Reinata Sadimba with intricate facial tattooing. She said, “I only had one-half of my face tattooed before my initiation, because it hurt too much. I waited another day and then had the other side done. After my facial tattoos were completed, I washed my face and it felt like it was cooking!”

Because excessive fear of death pervaded Makonde belief, its stigma had to be controlled or preempted because it threatened the basic assumptions of cosmic order on which society rested. Thus, every woman understood that her participation in society could provoke the negative intervention of powerful spiritual forces made manifest as mahoka, nnandenga, lindandosa, or mapiko who were the ultimate guarantors of social, physical, and economic survival. In this sense, Makonde tattoo arts were an important tool for fostering productive interaction between human beings and spirits, because it is clear that the designs repeatedly tattooed on women helped to secure their commitment to the potencies that bring forth life and to the socialization process of initiation itself. Tattoos also constructed a common visual language through which these relationships could be tangibly expressed and mediated to provide the individual wearer with a means to control her surrounding world.

Similarly, Makonde sculpture and more utilitarian objects like gourds (situmba) and water pots, which embody feminine and reproductive qualities, symbolically reinforced this commitment to order and stability because they were often decorated with tattoo designs. As “ancestral implements” used for carrying water, beer, honey, and seeds for planting, gourds were considered to be female symbols par excellence. And like the tattooed bodies of Makonde women, they acted as conduits through which symbolic meaning poured; meaning that connected the human, spiritual, and ancestral communities of the Makonde of Mozambique.

Marimba music on the xylophone, Muidumbe village. Pius tattooing a local boy named Anselmo. This is the first tattoo the master has given since 1962.

Local color, elaborate palm frond tattoos, and ebony labrets at every turn!

Sharing a happy moment with the last Makonde tattoo master of Muidumbe ‘Pius the Switchblade.’ But the author couldn’t leave the Makonde plateau without a souvenir from his travels. And because Pius’ eyesight is fading and he will only tattoo Makonde men, I asked renowned Makonde sculptor Reinata Sadimba to give me a razor-cut nadi or palm tree tattoo near my navel – her first! I felt safe in her hands because she adorns most of her figurative sculptures with traditional Makonde tattoo designs. My guide and translator Castro (in blue) accompanied me throughout the cutting. Reinata was quick, but it still hurt!!

LITERATURE

Armitage, C.H. (1924). The Tribal Markings and Marks of Adornment of the Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast Colony. London: Harrison and Sons, Ltd.

Dias, Jorge and Margot Dias (1964). Os Macondes de Moçambique. 4 vols. Lisboa: Centro de Estudios de Antropologia Cultural.

Nevadomsky, Joseph and Ekhaguosa Aisien (1995). “The Clothing of Political Identity: Costume and Scarification of the Benin Kingdom.” African Arts 28(1): 62-73, 100.

Schneider, Betty (1973). “Body Decoration in Mozambique.” African Arts 6(2): 26-31, 88, 92.