Mask; Loma; Liberia; H. 111/2"
Wood, iron, aluminum, copper, brass, beads, fiber
Long ago a group of elders met in
a village. The smith told the assembly of his disappointment
in the harvest and of how the young men were not
working as hard as they could. It was as if the
young men wanted to remain children for too long
and not assume the work and responsibility of adulthood.
This was blamed on the women, who had kept the boys
sheltered. But what were they to do? The smith instructed
each of the men to carve ugly, frightening faces
out of wood. The next day, each man showed his carving,
and the faces made of wood were terrifying, or at
least they would be to the women and youths. It
was decided that the faces would be made into the
masks of the Poro society and that the Poro
would control the initiation of boys into manhood
by frightening the women. The masks, hidden in the
bush camp, would be the secret of the elder men;
the uninitiated would fear the "demons"
that came from the bush (after Dendel, 1995.65).
Though the Poro society was in reality born
long before this folk tale, the narrative conveys
the basic nature of the institution: to initiate
youths into manhood and to utilize masks to frighten
the uninitiated as a means of societal control.
Though not all of the masks here were necessarily
used by the Poro society, analogues would
have been. Additionally, though from several diverse
though related ethnic groups, the context of usage
is related as well. The Loma examples show a clearly
geometricized concept of the human face, while the
more naturalistic Mano and Gio masks almost approach
portraiture. Though some feel that the Mano and
Gio of Liberia do not practice Poro per se,
there is new evidence that Poro is indeed
the overarching initiatory society for youths in
northeastern Liberia with additional grades reaching
into adulthood. Future fieldwork and reassessment
of known carvings may lead to a radically different
view than is currently held (Aboudoulaye, 2001).
