Elephant Mask

Small ethnic group with only 30.000 persons along the Cameroonian border with Nigeria, occupying the Donga. Apparently the current ones Mambila They descend from the people who two thousand years ago gave rise to the birth of the Bantu language.

The cult of the ancestors that occupies the center of their religion gives origin to the production of various sculptures of wood and terracotta and masks. They practice agrarian rites to promote the fertility of crops, in which the masks of secret societies participate. The mambila art focuses on a secret society called Suaga. Their masks reflect power and strength and are mostly zoomorphs, giving priority to dog heads. They have a large production of terracotta objects that has received the influence of the Sao, located further north and also in the Tchad. This mask represents the rather heteroclite head of an elephant with its trunk raised and white eyes jumping. And the bird called "picabueyes" on the head. This bird eats the flies and parasites that bite the big mammifers in the African sheets.