Producer unknown to us
Toothbrush
Africa, Mauritania, Nouakchott
Before 1984
Wood, decorated
Wolf-Dieter Seiwert (ethnologist) acquired this toothbrush during a research trip to Mauritania in 1984
Purchased by the museum from Seiwert in 1985
NAf 5792
Before use, a few centimeters of bark were removed from the tip of these tooth-cleaning sticks. The bark was then chewed. The emerging plant fibers then served as a toothbrush. The merchant who sold these sticks probably decorated them with ring-shaped and oblique-diagonal bark peeling ornaments to pass the time (as the collector frequently observed at markets).
Since 1973, Wolf-Dieter Seiwert (*1945) had worked as a curator for the Maghreb and the Sahara at the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig and was part of a research focus group on pastoral nomadism in the deserts between West Africa and Central Asia. Together with Lothar Stein, he visited Libya in 1981 and returned in 1988 for field research in Berber communities in western Libya. In 1984, he received an invitation for a month-long research stay in Mauritania. There, he pursued literary studies in Nouakchott and visited nomadic communities such as the Tandġa aš-Šarg in the southwest of the country.
Frank Usbeck