Figurally carved staff
Heinz Kolerski, Fellbach, Germany
Description
wood, matt blackish brown patina, the whole staff sewn in animal skin, adorned with four cuffs from leather strips, crowned by a standing female figure, slightly dam., abrasion of paint, cracks, leather strips missing in parts.
A very similar staff was acquired by Hans Himmelheber in southern Bamana land in 1956. He assumed that this type of staff was associated with fertility, and reported that they belonged to young girls and that they were employed as a sort of badge to demonstrate their status to the young men as being newly circumcised and untouchable. The girls would have kept these staffs for all their lives without using them, and without leaving them to the younger sister for their circumcision. In recent literature, the same staff is assigned as being a type of “tefalipitya,” which, however, usually shows a sitting female figure (Homberger/Förster, 1988, p. 21, ill.3). “Tefalipitya” were employed in young men’s work competitions on the yam fields. They were placed in mounds of earth, and moved again and again until at the end of the day the whole field had been worked, and the staff was awarded to the best worker (“sambali”).