WEST AFRICA REVIEW ISSN: 1525-4488

Tshikala Kayembe Biaya

In 1994, [...] one of the wealthiest female traders in Dakar 'baptised' her daughter [...]. Brocades from Switzerland, hand-dyed damasks from Mali, Pakistani gold and floral embroidery formed a dazzling ocean of colour. Gold necklaces hung heavily around necks and shoulders, both luxury and chains. The universal wearing of elaborate headscarves declared that this was an important event. To arrive to such a sea of elegance required aplomb. The wealthiest arrived in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes flanked by an entourage of outriders. The first few younger women cleared a path through the guests as the driankhes followed, grasping the train of their robes. Walking at a cultivated stride, they slowly crossed the central area on their high-heeled slippers with lengths of luxury cloth tracing the movements of their portly bodies. Whilst remaining keenly aware of other people's gazes, they deliberately acted as nonchalantly as possible, desperate as they were to create an impression that they were not actually looking at anyone at all (Mustafa 1999:39-40).

Beauty is a quality on the definition of which there rarely is agreement. Is this because the aesthetic canons of yesterday appear anachronistic when compared with those of today? Or do concepts of beauty vary intrinsically from one society to another or even from one race to another, so that there is no such thing as universal beauty? There is no obvious answer to these questions. Despite appearances, neither beauty contests nor fashion parades have succeeded in solving the problem in any definitive way (Barnard 2000). On the contrary, as has been shown recently, such events have been the target of strong opposition. What is considered beautiful in one culture may easily be perceived as pure ugliness in another, especially when relations between the two cultures are marked by violence and domination. So Immanuel Kant, in his well-known “observations on the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime”, found only foolishness and vanity in birds’ feathers, cows’ horns, shells and other everyday objects with which some black people like to adorn themselves (Kant 1990).

There is therefore no point in trying to study beauty in general and endeavouring to define, in the abstract, what might distinguish it from ugliness. Moreover, the assertion that both beauty and ugliness are social, or even political, constructions, gives rise to more problems than it resolves. There are dimensions of aesthetic life which elude determination. It follows that a sociological-anthropological reading gives us only partial information about the practices of beauty. Nor can beauty be analysed in purely literary and aesthetic terms. Such analyses would neglect the relationships of power and inequality that always structure the field of taste and distaste, of pleasure and sensation, of the beautiful and the ugly.

Having rejected these two forms of reductionism, the essay which follows is based on two central ideas. Firstly, I set out from the premise that the aesthetic work in general always originates at the point of confluence between appearance and imagination. To experience feelings of pleasure or displeasure is not a spontaneous act. At the same time, to be excited by the beauty of a gesture, a face, or a form always engages our poetic faculties. For this reason, beauty is both a practice and an anti-practice, or even an imaginary. It has both a material nature and a nature which exists on the other side of materiality. It is this dual dimension (material and ideal) which makes it so difficult to grasp in a single language. The beautiful object is therefore that object which is intrinsically endowed with this dual nature. This is why it can be grasped and expressed simultaneously in several languages, arousing in each one a range of often contradictory sensations.

Secondly, beauty (like ugliness) belongs to the world of sensations. From this point of view, it is not without reason that Kant recorded them as “maladies of the head”. It is well known that classical philosophy views sensation as deception and a weakness of the spirit. This weakness of the spirit may produce a world of fantasy and a propensity for phantasmagoria, adds Kant. This is one reason that a major trend in Western thought has always shied away from interpreting beauty within the framework of an anthropology of sensations. In its eyes, it is in the world of sensations that the failure of the ‘ability to know’ is most clearly manifested. The world of sensations, from this point of view, is a world of delirium and aberration, of “reason in disorder”, prophecies, dementia and fury. This is why this particular Western tradition has inscribed beauty in the register of the sublime, even if, elsewhere, it has emphasised that the objects of the beautiful and the sublime are distinct. I start from the premise, on the contrary, that it is in the nature of what we consider to be a beautiful object or a beautiful person to arouse sensations, and the attributes of “refinement”, of “order”, or even of the “sublime” (elements of the classic definitions of the beautiful) are entirely secondary. And in terms of sensations, there can be no canon.

It is in this context that I would now like to turn my attention to the ‘arts of being beautiful’ in certain African contexts in the era of globalization. By taking examples from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Dakar (Senegal) and focusing in particular on the practices of feminine beauty, I will argue not in any sense for the existence of ‘African beauty’ but of a practice which I am calling ‘the arts of being beautiful’ in these contexts. The latter are, in reality, ‘tactics’ which individuals use as they negotiate everyday life. In the two cities which are the focus of the essay, this negotiation frequently takes the form of physical and psychological therapy. First, I will comment, however, on the tricky terrain of undertaking a critique of beauty in an African context, and on how, in an era of globalization, the arts of being beautiful are closely linked to transformations of sexuality, as well as notions of pleasure, luxury and the care of the self.

African Beauty

The African critique of beauty (at least in French) largely emerged during the second half of the twentieth century. This critique was basically a response to three systems of discourse, which for a long time dominated thinking on the status of beauty in Africa. The first was the old racist account, long accepted in colonial circles, which presented the African continent as the metaphor par excellence of physical ugliness and of moral human decay. According to this account, ugliness and decay were particularly visible in the black body, which was nothing more than a mass of organs without form or self-awareness (Mbembe 2001).

The beauty of the ‘savage’ did not exist in itself, but was conferred by the white slave trader, colonial, soldier or merchant. In commercial ports and major sites of colonization such as towns, the mulatto became the perfect example of such a bestowed beauty. One way of taking revenge on high bourgeois society was by marrying—or having an affair with—a mulatto woman in Paris, or marrying a negress in the colonies. The “beauty” of the negress and of the mulatto was at that time part of the grammar of the exotic. Race and beauty were thus brought together, and then articulated in a hierarchical manner, especially in travel accounts. Within this hierarchy, the mulatto woman was placed at the top. Then there was the “petite and beautiful Abyssinian”, a nymphomaniac with skin of honey. The “negress”, as such, black as the colour of night, was on the bottom rung of the ladder and, in the eyes of the white, represented both absolute taboo and maximum transgression.

The second system of discourse was the work of negrophile movements. These movements emerged in Paris between the wars, and seized the signs and objects of “primitivism” and of “fetishism” in order to make them into the very symbols of the ideal of modernity in avant-garde culture. In this context, “blackness” benefited from a double valuation. Firstly, the black body became the emblem of insurrection against bourgeois values. It was an inexhaustible pool of significations (for example, the mulatto star Josephine Baker) and a favoured site for the expression of exotic and sexual fantasies. Subsequently, these negrophile movements appended the domains of music, art and dance. Little by little, these cultural forms became commoditised, so that they moved beyond avant-garde circles and became elements of mass consumption.

The third system of discourse within which a discussion of African beauty can be located could be called ethnological production. Ethnology studies the fundamental elements of African cultures, and ethnological discourse is, in several ways, the origin of the idea of a form of beauty which would be authentically ‘African’. Like both of the systems of discourse discussed above, this ethnological system of thought displays a mix of aesthetic and political registers. Coinciding as it did with the rise of post-war anti-colonial nationalism it makes use of historical and ethnological data in order to develop an aesthetic discourse aiming to rehabilitate black cultures for the purpose of political liberation.

In terms of genre, poetry has been the preferred choice of some Negritude writers, like Senghor. Moreover, the most complete subject of this discourse has been woman, whose body has encapsulated the supreme example of the erotic, as well as the dilemmas of desire and of sensation. Sexual desire and erotic impulses became, in return, the object of sublimation. Beauty, in its canonical sense, was the language of this process of sublimation. Strictly speaking, beauty within this kind of signifying and generic trajectory represented the cult of, or the masculine devotion to, the feminine sign. It is this sign which is at the centre of the enterprise of charm and seduction. Senghor sang his devotion in the language of Western pastoral aesthetics.

Ugliness is seldom seen as the opposite of beauty. It is often symbolized by excrement, but is seen to play a strategic role in the acquisition of beauty. In fact, everything undergoes a process of initiation. A process of initiation occurs in which one is initiated into the beautiful (via a series of practices) and this initiation is the final practice of the transformation of the natural human body—therefore ugly—into a beautiful and sexual body.

It is ignorance, in its capacity as a synonym for ugliness, that must at all costs be avoided. The human body becomes the object of a labour which seeks to perfect it (good teeth, perfect figure, elegant walk, etc.). There is however a clear opposition between beauty and luxury. Thus a beautiful woman (that is, a woman whose body is the object of labour) is contrasted with a woman with a clear complexion and a beautiful body, who has no need of artificial means to achieve her full aesthetic potential. In her freedom of movement and the free expression of her desires, she represents only a sexually desired object. Ultimately, she is the symbolization of ugliness since she has no other mark of a labour of socialization on her body: she is the embodiment of the Freudian principle of pleasure.

Indeed, in the majority of autochthonous representations of beauty, the Western Callipygian Venus is not regarded as beautiful. Many prefer instead the Hottentot Venus characterised by her plump flesh, her pendulous breasts and protruding buttocks. In the towns, the Hottentot Venus is adulated under the expressive names of Djongoma, Awoulaba or Mwasi Ya Kilo. This kind of representation tends to imply that beauty consists above all in the power to provoke sensations. From this perspective, what is beautiful is that which, in its forms and reflections, expresses the power and the abundance of life without mediation, while simultaneously activating the five senses, imagination and desire.

Arts of the Self in an Age of Globalisation

Having made these comments, I would now like to dwell in more detail on the examples of Ethiopia and Senegal. In contrast with general opinion, as far as the practices of feminine beauty are concerned, the encounter between Ethiopian societies and Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries or between Senegal and Islam in the eleventh century in no way destroyed local cultures. On the contrary, these local cultures have been enriched by the contribution of these two monotheistic civilizations. One might even go further, and assert that two convergent concepts have emerged in the history of the practices of feminine beauty in the African world.

The first is experienced by its own adherents as an aesthetic, an “art of the feminine body”. This comes into effect at the age of maturity, with the birth of the first child. In direct contrast with the mystical theory of Saint-Ambroise who made the virgin girl into a blossoming garden which is destroyed by motherhood, the pubescent girl in this view is “waiting to become beautiful”. Beauty is enriched by sexual experience which climaxes in giving birth: the stage of coming into flower. Beauty is thus regarded as an attribute of the female individual. The art of being beautiful is internalized, cultivated, and then displayed to the public during festivals, ceremonies and important gatherings of the female sex. It is in these spaces of festival and ceremony that the game of seduction takes place.

As long as seduction remains a game, there is no danger to be feared. Everyone knows the boundary between the game and the act. The essence of the game often lies in pushing the limits of that boundary to breaking point. This is what mischievous young girls and boys do: a furtive or a direct glance, a smile or a game of words, a compliment or a saying, a fleeting touch, and, especially, ways of dancing, cooking, dressing and using perfume. Beauty, then, emerges first from the domain of play and the ability to seduce. This original concept of the practices of beauty and their forms of display strengthened over time and took on diverse forms in different societies. The new visual technologies, with cinema the most prominent, played a determining role in this process, especially during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Cinema, and especially fashion, has resulted in the globalization of practices of beauty. The “beautiful woman” is becoming, not so much the object mediated by male fantasies as the medium of healing practices. One of the main objectives of these practices is the care of the self (Foucault).

Let us take the case of Ethiopia. Historically, the “arts of being beautiful” include a range of features borrowed from Islam, Christianity, and modernity. This is especially the case as far as the sexuality of women is concerned. The dominant religion, Christianity, has neither been able to restrict nor overturn the canons of traditional beauty. Under cover of modernity, Christianity or Islam, particular events and ideas have been ‘colonized’ and rewritten by women. For instance, the Ethiopian Christian empire of the sixth to tenth centuries imported incense and fabrics from the East, Mecca, and Yemen, for the Amharic/Tigrean aristocracy (Simon 1989). These goods were intended for the church and the noble and military classes, but women also appropriated them; although excluded from the ecclesiastical and military orders, they used them in their practices of beauty and sexual interaction.

Secondly, the consumption of coffee was prohibited by the Orthodox Church until 1921, and any offender was excommunicated. Ethiopian women reinterpreted the ceremony into a ritual for welcoming strangers, and then integrated it into their domestic religious ceremonies (New Year, Christmas etc.). In order to do this, they adopted once again the ritual of cooking and the consumption of Arabian tea. This ritual also became eroticized, in particular through the hostess’ Ethiopian costume, imprinted with motifs of multicoloured crosses which cover crosses already adorning the breast. The coffee ceremony takes place in an atmosphere heavy with the perfume of incense. The influence of the erotic Arabian nights was thus grafted onto local customs just when the church was imposing a calendar of fasts, advocating self-restraint and letting loose a band of priests on the towns and villages, who, during the course of numerous visits to families on each religious occasion, were dispensing blessings, favours and pardons.

Later, under the reign of the Emperor Haile Selasie (1920-1975), Ethiopia endeavoured to modernize itself. From the point of view of the state, modernity had to distinguish itself from traditional or popular culture (abesha culture). This state-controlled version of modernization gave priority to those places of pleasure and cultural activities such as theatre, music, painting, and cinema, where the role of traditional aesthetics was reduced to a minimum. These attempts by the state were aimed at regulating popular cultural practices. Paradoxically, they produced very different results from those anticipated at the time. In Addis Ababa, the decline of modern restaurants with “traditional music and cuisine” which were the preserve of tourists (Crown Hotel) was at variance with the views of the Emperor. In their place flourished restaurants where Ethiopian cuisine reigned supreme. Examples include the Karamera, Ibex or Abesha Restaurant. Aimed primarily at Ethiopians, these restaurants are the pride of their national culture. Clothed in modern or local dress, Ethiopians enjoy local dishes. Artists, men and women dressed in Ethiopian costume (yabashalebs), sing and dance to the rhythm of ethnic music which has become the most visible pleasure of the urban bourgeoisie. During such evenings, the coffee ceremony never stops.

Globalisation and Commoditisation of Black Beauty

If we move into the global arena, we can analyze the arts of being a beautiful black in the new urban civilizations of Africa. These arts of being beautiful draw their basic referents from a black culture that is now global and cosmopolitan. This culture is displayed in popular music (of which Afro-American forms in particular have become trans-national), sporting personalities, fashion and tourism. This culture is also rapidly being turned into merchandise (Dirasse 1991). Under the effect of such commoditisation, there is an endeavour to market the whole of Africa as the last example of beauty in its pure form. The elements of this purity are its wilderness, its mysterious nature, and its ability to reproduce in the tropics cultural forms liberated from the prison of their origins. But this primitiveness, this innocence and this richness is increasingly articulated by elements of modernity. Thus, a metropolis like Johannesburg is described as follows in the tourist brochure of a major African airline: “Johannesburg’s all time best feature is undoubtedly its weather. It rains in short bursts and only in summer when one appreciates the relief. The sun shines endlessly. The wind never blows harshly and the only time it’s cold is at night in the winter. At noon on a winter’s day with the sun out, you’ll cook in nothing more than a T-shirt. Better yet, Johannesburg is value for money thanks to our crestfallen currency. International travellers can enjoy state-of-the-art facilities, hotel rooms, shopping and excursions at a fraction of the price they’ll pay anywhere else.” (Sawubona 94, 2002).

In the context of these kinds of transformations, women have deftly developed aesthetic strategies, the most obvious of which are clearly affirmed in public space. The art of hairdressing has been the subject of numerous studies, and will not be considered here (Biaya 1999). Two other registers are discussed. Each has as its object work on the body which involves sculpting and shaping on the one hand, and adornment on the other. When looking at sculpting, one example immediately comes to mind: the practice of depigmentation. To a certain extent, there is a relatively constant relationship between modern forms of depigmentation and the traditional practice of tattooing.

But skin care is becoming more and more sophisticated. Beauty salons, both formal and informal, are in evidence in the two cities of Dakar and Addis Ababa. They are responding to a range of concerns which are not unlike those found in the rest of the world: well-being, health, appropriate appearance. The signification of current practices of beauty varies according to age and social class. Three practices in particular have arisen among women of the middle and well-to-do classes.

The first is pampering. Pampering treatments include pedicures, facials and massages. Other practices, such as waxing or electrolysis are scarcely known: if they are known, they are little more than an excessive fancy. Pedicures, facials and massages reflect certain ingredients of the postcolonial culture of hedonism and luxury. This culture is not only masculine. The majority of well-to-do women justify their practices by citing stress and the many demands placed upon them both in the workplace and at home. Women use the time spent in the salon for themselves. They seek above all to satisfy their desires there, while very often their own desires occupy second place. As a result, the practice of beauty is here identified with therapy. Just like the practice of healing, the process of aestheticization is part of the care of the self.

The second practice is that of grooming. Grooming includes manicures, eyebrow shaping and eyelash tinting. Well-to-do women explain that grooming is similar to routine maintenance. Just like a car, the body needs to be regularly restored to shape so that too rapid a loss in value is avoided. In contrast with the practice of pampering, where feelings are at stake, the practice of grooming has the preservation of a look as its function. To these two practices can be added a third: aromatherapy and reflexology. This practice links beauty and health. The same can be said for physical exercise in the gym. All the disciplines of the body are also arts of beauty. The relationship of women to these arts is often ambiguous. The beauty salon offers them a place of escapism, sensuality and pleasure.

Practices of adorning or decorating the body are the most numerous and no doubt the most apparent. Let us take the case of dress first. In the town of Dakar, young girls love to wear clothes that allow the most sensitive parts of the body to be seen. Skirts, which reveal the thighs at the slightest movement, compete with traditional dress. Open and tight-fitting tops offer the bosom graciously to the glance of passers-by. Bras are worn to show off the bust to its greatest advantage. In great demand are midriff-tops with thin straps, and low-cut hipsters. Both have the feature of revealing the navel, particularly when covered by a fine layer of downy hair. It is the hipsters, especially those that let the style of the thongs show through, that are the most sought-after. In their dress, the majority of young women are inspired directly by stars such as Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera or Britney Spears, whose round breasts are renowned. They are also sensitive to the changes taking place in the world of fashion as reflected by models. A firm body and smooth stomach constitute aspects of the contemporary canon of beauty. In the craze for figure-hugging clothes, young African women seek above all to combine beauty, sensuality and femininity.

Lingerie is central to the feminine art of dressing. Here too, age and class have a profound influence on the practices of beauty. Lingerie in itself constitutes a specific position on fashion and on beauty. Two items are particularly important: panties and bras. Attitudes to these two items vary. There are those women who systematically refuse to wear panties or a bra. There are others who wear them as a form of decoration. The wearing or the non-wearing of panties or a bra is directly related to sexuality, beauty and pleasure. Panties in particular, or their absence, have a great deal to do with the dialectic of concealment and display. They govern the relationship between seductiveness and respectability, eroticism and luxury, femininity and practicalities. Thongs are one of the types of panty in fashion. Their distinctive feature is to leave revealed the whole of the bottom and the thighs with the aid of a thin strip of fabric, which, disappearing into the slit between the buttocks, barely covers the labial and pubic areas of the female sexual organ. African women are particularly fond of thongs because they show off the magic of their buttocks, as seen for example in the performances of the dancers of Mapouka Serré in the Ivory Coast.

The third domain is that of jewellery. Here, the return to jewellery combining African forms with modern motifs is important. Under the pressure of Afrocentrist theories, Egyptian motifs are appearing in well-to-do circles, and are used for necklaces. Hand-made, they are the expression of a feminine beauty which plays on the time of immortality represented by Pharaonic civilization. Ear-rings are also increasingly characterised by their semi-Creole form, while many so-called ethnic bracelets and all kinds of pendants are again using African artistic motifs or images of fauna (elephants, leopards, lions) combined with gold or silver.

The last domain is that of perfumes and eaux de toilette. The following brands are particularly common in Dakar: Jean Paul Gautier, Christian Dior, Lancome, Givenchy, Kenzo and Dunhill. The use of foreign fragrances goes along with a strong revival of native perfumes. The latter play a decisive role in spheres of intimacy, during private encounters between men and women. Whether they use foreign or local brands, the feminine practices of wearing perfume are directly linked to sensuality, desire and femininity. In the absence of a genuine culture of flowers, the perfumes convey the dual nature of the new African femininities, both powerful and vulnerable. There is the power of provocation and seduction, the power of arrogance and elegance, but there is also the fragility of emotions hidden in the face of masculine roughness.

Finally, there is no art of the beautiful in African cities which does not go together with the practices of the visual. The body of the beautiful woman must be exposed, seen, admired and praised. For this to happen, it must be clothed in a manner which suggests its most erotic forms. It is not so much a question of exposing it semi-nude as in the West, as invoking the craving and the desire to experience the depths that the surface suggests. Thus, the hair should shine in the chosen hairstyle. The clarity of features, especially the eyelashes and eyebrows, must be accompanied by a brilliance of colours, whether lipstick, nail varnish, or simply extravagant dress. Certain parts of the body must literally “speak”, especially the breasts, legs and buttocks.

The most dramatic moment of this visualisation is the beauty contest. This contest operates in several ways. In Cameroon for example, contestants begin by wearing a short dress, then a swimming costume and finally an evening dress, according to the Western and bourgeois criteria of beauty. The change into a swimming costume aims to reveal the lithe body, the long legs, and the tantalising walk. In other countries, the first change is into traditional dress. This may be a cascade of ceremonial shells, or clothing made from hand-crafted fibres and materials. Elsewhere, a competitor may choose to wear a skin called “Obom” and cut in the shape of a skirt. Or it could be a canary on the head and a sombrero on the back.[1]

But there are innumerable places and moments of visibility in daily life (festivals, baptisms and weddings, marches etc.), or during important religious events. For example, both Addis Ababa and Dakar are dotted with places of worship. Every day, at regular intervals from dawn onwards, the calls of the muezzin bear witness to the presence of a God of purity and of prohibition in the city. The paradox is that here, piety goes hand in hand with beauty even though women are excluded from the priesthood and from officiating at ceremonies. In contrast with Dakar, where women do not attend mosque, Ethiopian women assiduously attend church. It is not unusual to see them covered from head to toe, richly adorned with gold and jewels. Going to church is a way of participating in a fashion parade. Each of them is therefore a kind of mannequin in a parade in which, by means of an act of piety, elegance competes. The same is true at the time of the Grand Magal of Touba. For the three days of this religious event, Senegalese women engage whole-heartedly in rivalling each other in terms of dress, elegance and beauty, whilst maintaining an appearance of discretion. They are not uncovered. Indeed they all wear a veil hiding their faces. Alongside these gestures of piety, however, other scenarios unfold. There is a flourishing business in the materials and paraphernalia of sexuality.

Conclusion

In the two cities I have observed, the modern young African woman (diskette in Dakar) seems to be distancing herself from ancient African philosophies of beauty. In reality, however, her practices remain inscribed in the paradigm of beauty in terms of the practice of therapy and work on the body. This work and therapy make use of the signs and symbols of globalization, but these are not consumed in a passive manner. They are re-appropriated selectively. As a result, if the urban African woman is trying to be like all the women of the world, and she wears platform shoes, she always manages to add a local touch. In Dakar, this often means wearing an erotic belt of fine, shimmering pearls (bine bine) around the waist, while in Addis Ababa it is most popular to wear a local, multicoloured head-scarf in the madras fashion (shash). For the time being, there is no indication that the modern young African girl will follow in the path of the drianke or the women’s coffee ceremony even if she lives in an environment where these practices and discourses of the beautiful and elegant woman are part of everyday life.

As I have indicated, these two categories of beautiful women (the drianke and the diskette) frequently visit the hairdressing salon, a necessary stage in the ritual of the urban aesthetic. They hum the refrains of Whitney Houston or Brandy and dream of future glory in the next Miss Dakar or Miss Addis Ababa competition, or better still, Miss World. But at the same time, they are past mistresses of the art of dancing Brenda Fassie’s kwaito, the mbalax of Youssou N’dour, the entrancing ndombolo of Koffi Olomide or, better still, the very erotic and violently obscene mapouka serre—all dances whose rhythm beats through the nights of the continent’s cities. It is this mixture of rhythms, this ability to express sensations while playing with artifice that makes an entire therapeutic art out of the practices of beauty.

Similar discord can be found in Senegal. In her relationship with Islam, the Senegalese woman (drianke) is once again adopting the loose-fitting dress which best covers her plump body, and where she hides the signs and the devices of sexuality. She thus diverts this loose-fitting dress from its original purpose to instill in her a new sense of culture. She practises the art of cleansing the body with incense perfumes: thiouraye. The perfume is absorbed by her spacious boubou while the loincloth with erotic motifs is adorned with pearl belts enveloped in perfume. As a result, like her Ethiopian sister, she leaves a trail of erotic perfume wherever she goes, witness to her mastery of the art of sexuality and of seduction.

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References

[1] Alain Tchakounte, «Miss Cameroun 2002. La plus belle fille du pays», in Website www.wagne.net/messager/messager/1400/miss_cameroun.htm

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

West Africa Review: Issue 5, 2004