The drums had barely stopped beating through the night. But now, they spoke louder, with a more urgent frequency, inviting men, women and children alike to watch the parade that would determine the most beautiful man in the gathering.
Tall, lean figures draped in colourful attires walk towards a large clear space in the middle of numerous camp tents, their faces, ochre stained, already transformed into works of art. Hands locked side by side, these men have mastered the art of display. They have framed their eyes and lips with black kohl, and adorned their dresses with colourful feathers, all to achieve one goal: showcase their beauty. And of course, there is a price to be won: the admiration of the women watching and even maybe the opportunity to be chosen as a spouse.
In unison, the men begin to dance. Stretched out necks, dramatically rolled eyes, wide smiles that revealed almost every tooth. They dance rhythmically to the same beats that have echoed across the Sahel for generations.
Welcome to the Gerewol Festival, where, among the Wodaabe people of West Africa, men compete to be crowned the most beautiful.
The Wodaabe Tribe
The Wodaabe, also known as Mbororo or Bororo, are a subgroup of the vast Fula/Fulani ethnic group found in the Sahel region of Africa. This fascinating group of nomads, ranging in number between 100,000 to perhaps 200,000, can be found covering the large arid expanse of Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Central African Republic and are often considered, ‘wild,’ ‘uncultured,’ uncivilised,’ and in local terms, ‘the cattle Fulani.’ They speak the Fula language from which their name, “Woda” loosely translates as “people of the taboo", a name which reflects the community’s intentional separation from other Fulani tribes as well as their preservation of generational customs.
For centuries, the Wodaabe people have lived as nomads, moving across regions with their long-horned Zebu cattle in search of fresh grazing lands and water. Their love for freedom, livestock, open skies and tradition necessitates that these men live in total harmony with their environment. Their migration often follows the rhythm of the seasons, travelling northwards with the rains and southwards during the long dry months. For the Wodaabe, cattle is life itself, representing the foundation of their economy and culture.
Upon the incursion of Islam into Africa, the Wodaabes were the first Fulanis to embrace the religion. Today, they are primarily muslims albeit many of their traditional customs continue to shape their daily life. Their code of conduct primarily thrives on the social ideologies of modesty, patience, care and loyalty.
The Gerewol Festival
The Wodaabe are known to place high emphasis on beauty, considering themselves the most beautiful people on earth. Despite this, socialisation and courtship does not come easily for them due to their nomadic nature and the Gerewol festival is one of very few opportunities to achieve these. However, when it comes to courting, the conventional rules of courtship are flipped. Traditionally, it is known that women adorn themselves to attract men. For the Wodaabes, it’s an altogether different story as men have the responsibility of attracting the attention of women. This culture is so deeply ingrained that once a year, at the end of the rainy season in September, they gather for a festival known as the Gerewol. While the exact location of the festival varies from year to year, widely known locations include Chad and Niger, particularly around the Sahel and Lake Chad areas.
The festival is an important one where men formally compete to be selected by young women of marriageable age, in hopes of being crowned the most beautiful and being chosen as a potential husband. As a result, men often invest large amounts of resources and effort into beautifying themselves. As a polygamous and polygynous society, men who are already married still have the opportunity of presenting themselves at the festival, especially if they hope for better marriage partners than they already have. For the women, picking a young man doesn’t necessarily foretell a marriage settlement, it may be as simple as having a night’s fling with her chosen partner.
These outcomes boost the tenacity of the men even further to adorn themselves in the most beautiful and colorful attires, hoping to get partners for themselves. The entire parade can be likened to the peacock’s mating dance but with very specific requirements. The beauty standards for the Wodaabe are well defined, characterised by white eyes and teeth and tallness. These ideals also influence the performance of the men during the festival.
As they dance, they deliberately roll their eyes to expose as much of the white as possible and stretch their lips into broad smiles to display every tooth. These, combined with rhythmic movements, elaborate and intricately patterned face paint and ornate adornments transform the dance into a carefully choreographed display created to convince the women that each man present is an absolute embodiment of Wodaabe beauty.
The dancing itself is the most demanding part of the festival. From morning till night, the men repeat the same ancient rhythms over and over again, swaying in unison as songs that have echoed through generations fill the air. Occasionally, when the heat becomes unbearable, they pause to drink tea, eat, and regain their strength before returning to the dance. On the final night, however, there are no such breaks. The contestants dance continuously until dawn, many relying on a fermented bark concoction believed to provide the energy needed to withstand the physical exertion caused by the performance. The drink is also reputed to have hallucinogenic effects, helping the dancers push through fatigue.
The highlight of the festival is the Yaake dance. It is here that the men line up shoulder to shoulder, with the youngest positioned at the extreme ends, dressed in their finest attire, singing, swaying, smiling broadly and rolling their eyes in exaggerated fashion as they put on one final display of beauty. The judges of the Yaake dance are three women specially selected by the male elders and chosen for their patience and impartiality. Sometimes, they may even be the daughters of past winners. The judging criteria are explicit: height, a long narrow face, bright white eyes and even white teeth, and above all grace and stamina. These women carefully observe every contestant before selecting the man they consider the most beautiful. They appraise the line, and each may step forward to tap her choice.
Unlike beauty pageants in many parts of the world where the reward is little more than a crown, the stakes at the Gerewol are much higher. Only women who have reached puberty are permitted to make a choice, and when a man accepts a woman's selection, the two are expected to spend the night together. For some, the relationship ends there. For others, it marks the beginning of a relationship that eventually leads to marriage.
Preparations for the Festival
The most famous gathering point for the Gerewolf festival is In-Gall, an oasis town in northern Niger that swells with herders for a few weeks each year. There, the Wodaabe overlap with the Tuareg at the Cure Salée, the “salt cure,” when animals are driven to mineral-rich pastures and wells. The Niger government began formally sponsoring the Cure Salée in the 1990s, fixing its dates and inviting dignitaries and tourists, a move that has drawn complaints from Wodaabe who feel the state has turned a herders’ reunion into a managed show. Even so, the heart of it survives. The week brings camel races, cattle trading, the settling of disputes, news swapped between families who have not met in months, and at its centre the dances.
Once the various families gather, the men spend the majority of the time thoroughly preparing their attires and practicing dance routines. With attention rapt on individual mirrors, these men make up their faces, sometimes alone, sometimes helping each other, painting their faces red (Gerewol) or yellow (Yaake) and accentuating their eyes and lips with black and red kohl which helps the whites of their eyes and teeth stand out. They also add ostrich plumes to gain height, and cowrie shells and beads for wealth and fertility. The Danish anthropologist Mette Bovin, who has worked with the Wodaabe since the 1970s, has recorded the symbolism of the colours: red ochre tied to blood and force, yellow to magic and transformation. The American photographer Carol Beckwith brought the spectacle to a wide audience with her work for National Geographic in 1983. Neither the colours nor the contest are arbitrary. They are a grammar the Wodaabe have spoken for generations.
While the men prepare, the older women clear the chosen arena of weeds while the younger ones fetch water.
The Dance as a Means to an End
A tap from a judge is a public verdict of beauty, but the festival’s deeper business is courtship, and Wodaabe marriage has its own logic. A first marriage, koobgal, is arranged by parents while the partners are children, and it ties together people of the same lineage. A second kind, teegal, is a love match chosen freely, and it can cross clan lines. Gerewol is where teegal begins. The festival opens a window in which a woman may leave with a man she has chosen, sometimes a man already married to someone else, and the ordinary rules relax for the occasion. A winning dancer is, very literally, marriageable. As one contestant told the BBC, “you dance Gerewol to win a lover, even if it means taking someone’s wife”.
That makes the contest more than a spectacle. It is more of a structured societal engine that keeps a dispersed people connected, refreshing bloodlines, sealing new bonds, and binding clans that spend most of the year out of each other’s sight.
A Tradition Under Pressure
For centuries, the Gerewol festival has survived changing times, allowing the Wodaabe to preserve one of their most treasured traditions. Today, however, the festival faces challenges unlike any it has encountered before.
The Sahel region, where the Gerewol is held, has become increasingly affected by insecurity. Niger, alongside neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, continues to battle insurgent activities that have made many rural communities unsafe. As a result, the number of visitors travelling from around the world to witness the festival has declined significantly, reducing an important source of income for many Wodaabe communities.
Climate change has also presented another challenge. As nomadic pastoralists, the Wodaabe depend almost entirely on their cattle for survival, moving from one grazing land to another in search of pasture and water. However, rising temperatures, prolonged droughts and increasing desertification across the Sahel have made this traditional way of life much more difficult to sustain. The routes their ancestors followed for generations are becoming less reliable as grazing lands continue to shrink.
Despite these challenges, the Gerewol festival remains an important part of Wodaabe identity. Every year, the makeup still goes on for hours, the line still forms, the women still choose. The Wodaabe write their identity onto their own faces, much as the weavers in Africa’s great textile traditions write theirs into cloth. Like the royal craft preserved at Uganda’s Kasubi Tombs, Gerewol is a living tradition rather than a museum piece, and its survival is not guaranteed. For now, at the edge of the desert each September, the men still dance, and that is reason enough to pay attention.
