Interesting stick Freddy. It could be a weapon, it could be a walking stick. My impression is the point is off another item added to a staff. The truth, who knows. It's neat, and African. I like it!
All the sticks came out of Zululand except the Central African tourist stick. I'm still snickering over that one. But my wife doesn't appreciate my humor and didn't like it when I told her it probably came from the Tourist shop in Nigerian or Ghana
The telephone wire decoration is a modern day Zulu art form. Some of it quite beautiful.
I was told a story that there was a movement at one time in the near past to prevent the Zulu's from carrying weapons. The Zulu's resisted the prohibition and said that the carrying of weapon was strictly ceremononial and symbolic-part of their culture and not offensive. They started carrying decorated light clubs and sticks, saying see--just for dancing and ceremonies. The decorated sticks are indeed light weight. But some of the heavy sticks were also decorated for "ceremonial" use. The two wire decorated sticks are substantially heavier than the run of the mill tourist stick. Those sticks may not be old left overs from the the Battle at Isandlwana but they aren't tourist items either.
I saw several like them last week being carried in Zululand. That includes one of the Mushroom shaped ones.
Tim, that Baboon stick nearly didn't make it out of Africa. She liked it. The Baboon Mafia huh, cool.
VANDOO I like the shirt off your back story. You can relate to the stick 5th from the right. It's as much as two months old and I got it from a very old frail looking wrinkled bent crone of a Zulu women.
I was up at Ladysmith, KZN in November. This old lady worked for the Gentlemen we were statying with. This Gentleman is my age Mid to late 50's. He told me that this woman worked as house keeper for his Mother and she was an adult woman then.
Early one morning I was watching the sunrise and saw this old woman walking up the hill to the house to come to work. She had a walking stick with her. Instead of walking over about 30 yards and going through the gate the Old Lady walked a striaght line to the livestock fence and started climing through. I went over and held the fence wire apart and helped her through. I admired her stick. It was a partially carved stick, not really very fancy. She chattered away at me in a mix of Zulu, Afrikaans and English, very little to none of which I understood. Then she took her stick and proceed on her way to the house.
The next morning I was talking to our Hostess when the old Zulu woman approached with a stick held out in both hands. She started a long dissertation in Zulu-Africaans-English. The hostess smiled and gave a small laugh and started translatiing.
The Old lady said I was a wise and noble man who had shown great respect and kindness to a tired old woman. I was a person who recognized good things when I saw them. She said her brother was a great carver of sticks and made them to sell to the tourists so that they could have a few extra Rand for food. She said the round top on the stick was for the hand when walking. The knob below the top was to give a better grip when walking up a hill. The spiral was so the tourists would buy them because the didn't like them with out. She said she had this stick specially made by her brother for me to honor me for the kindness I has shown her the previous day. Twenty Rand.
I thought her speech was one of the best sales pitches I had heard for a long time, gave a good laugh and got my 20 Rand out. My hostess said oh you don't understand. The old women is really showing you honor. She has never sold one of these sticks for less than 50 Rand.
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