Having cut out their rough shapes, Nakiru finishes crafting a pair of cow hide shoes for her daughter.
Funding
Endangered Material Knowledge Programme
History
Session
C005
Rights owner
Samuel Frederick Derbyshire
Cultural group
Turkana
Participants
Margaret Nakiru Lopwenya
Country
Kenya
Place
Morusipo, Turkana
Item/object
Cow skin shoes (ngamuk)
Techniques of production
Knotted, Tied, Cut-cut
Materials
Skin-cow skin
Materials alt
Eleu a aite
Cultural context/event
General production
Social group setting
Craftsperson at work alone
Location
Home
Temporality
Although once ubiquitous throughout Turkana, animal skin shoes are no longer worn by the vast majority of the population in Turkana, having disappeared from daily use throughout the second half of the 20th century when hard strips of old rubber tyre came to be regularly repurposed and crafted into shoes. Nevertheless, cow skin shoes remain a fundamental component of the asapan initiation ceremony, in which a pair are crafted when the initiate reaches the home of his asapan father and gives away all of his clothes and possessions. Similarly, cow skin shoes continue to play a central role in the akinyonyo ceremony (a female rite of passage performed shortly before marriage), where the natal and the marital homestead each provide a single cow skin shoe for the soon-to-be bride. Thus, in the present day those with the knowledge and ability to craft cow skin shoes tend only to deploy this particular skill in ritual/ceremonial contexts.