According to legend, his horse left a hoof print that is still visible in the courtyard of the church. Indigenous African religions have had a greater influence on art objects than they have had on architecture, since most of these religions do not require buildings for prayer. Instead, they require statues, masks, or other objects for use in rituals of initiation, marriage, and death. The Chewa of Malawi, for example, developed a large repertoire of masks, many associated with male initiation. In many towns and villages, governing associations or councils were responsible for maintaining social order and a good relationship with ancestor spirits; they used art to help achieve these goals. The Mijikenda of Kenya carved wooden posts called vigangu in honor of the dead. The posts were erected to keep important men of the past in continual contact with current male elders. Groups in Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Madagascar created similar post-shaped funerary sculpture in a variety of styles. In some cases these sculptures were erected on the graves of important people; in others they served as memorials, standing in groups away from the graveyard itself. Madagascar's rich and varied culture bears traces of the Indonesian ancestry of the Malagasy people, some of the island's earliest inhabitants.
These influences appear most notably in the Malagasy's rectangular wooden huts thatched with palm leaves. These huts resemble Indonesian buildings rather than the round huts native to most of eastern Africa. A large number of peoples in eastern Africa have a seminomadic way of life, dependent on herding but with some reliance on settled farming villages. Among them are the Somali of Somalia, the Turkana of Tanzania, and the Masai of Kenya and Tanzania. Poetry is often said to be the primary art form of the northern Somali nomads, but the visual arts are represented by a number of items that can be easily transported, including finely carved wooden headrests, baskets, and a variety of decorated wooden vessels. The Turkana are noted for their headrests, wooden drinking vessels, and beadwork. Beads play a major role in elaborate systems of body art among the Turkana, Masai, and other nomadic groups. Specific beadwork patterns combine with aspects of dress, hairstyle, jewelry, and in some cases body paints to distinguish ethnic groups from one another. More significantly, these adornments mark differences in gender, age, and status within each group. Male dress and hairstyles may mark progress from uninitiated youth to warrior to elder; they also indicate specific successes in war or hunting. Women's styles may indicate stages of initiation, marriage, number and status of children, or widowhood. Southern Africa encompasses Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho, and South Africa.
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