You will not be in The Gambia for very long before someone gives you a juju for good luck and health: no charge just a sign of friendship and maybe a way back into conversation with you during your stay.

Beads are not particularly a Gambian tradition or culture, they are made for tourists. Some are just beads, some use cowrie shells some are incorporated with plaiting, but I have yet to come across any in the tourist area that are more than tourist trinkets.

The art of beading is most certainly African, where it has developed for thousands of years, first using shells, seeds, tusks, bones, clay, wood, stones and more recently glass and metal.

The very earliest examples to be found are from North Africa, made from Ostrich shells and dating back to 10,000 BC.

Glass beads were first made in South Africa around 600AD and there was a large bead making industry in Nigeria by 1000AD. In middle age Europe, Italy dominated the trade, particularly Venice, but as trade grew so other European countries made beads.

Their value to African cultures was exploited in return for Gold, Ivory and Slaves. African slaves took the art around the world and particularly to America where it is almost a traditional art form. Today African artists still use bead work to decorate utility objects as well as pure works of art.

The British Museum in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art have published a very imformative and practical book by Elizabeth Bigham called Fun with African Beads - ISBN 0-7141-2730-2

Some of the pictures here are from this book which would make an excellent present as it has with it craft projects and all the beading bits needed along with 11,000 beads in 8 different colours to start you off.

Beads have become a fashion accessory in the west and these elaborate examples have a western flavour, used as neck, ankle and waist bands. Each one has hundreds of beads, their origin is definitely African.

For more beading information on beading particularly in Ghana

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