Wooden mask

We fed the cows in the pouring rain this monring. We got soaked but they kept dry. Over the last few years we have put rooves our loafing areas so that there is no risk of the dirty water running off into the watercourses. So the cows can wander round outside of the barns, but in the dry.

I tried to take some photos outside, but it was so grey and miserable, I decided to play with my new flash gun indoors. This mask comes from Cameroon in west Africa. It would have been worn on the head by an important man in tribal ceremonies. It now lives in our conservatory with an ecelctic mixture of Oceanic and African carvings. Most of the carvings we collected ourselves - two are from Borneo, where my husband worked for a while, and several from Zimbabwe, whcih we loved to visit before it became too dangerous. We bought this mask from a German enthusiast who travels around west Africa looking for carvings that are no longer used in tirbal ceremonies and are in danger of rotting away. He's currently in Mali, somewhere near Timbuktu. I hope he is being very careful!