Meet The Smartest Kid on Earth!

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The Royalty Spiritual Experience

Anthony Quinn had been complaining to the producers of Across 110th Street about the billing they saw fit to give me above the title, equal with his. “Ralph.” I overheard Tony saying in Dino DE Laurentis’s office, not realizing I was in the next room overhearing..”How does the spade rate billing with me over the title, The guys a rookie, I have two academy awards”

“Dino ( De Laurentis) wants black people to come to see the movie, to do that Kotto gets star billing, not co-star, I agree with Dino. We just can’t have a white star leading the pack and the African American tagging behind. Besides, he’s a good looking guy, big talent, I saw him on Broadway in the Great White Hope..

“I still don’t like it. I’m a bigger name than he is. People are going to flock to see me, not him!” he grumbled. “He’s a rookie!” he thundered..

From that moment on Tony Quinn made my life sort of miserable in a humorous kind of way. Wherever we went he made sure he got the better of me. As we walked though an Italian neighborhood doing exterior shots for the movie. I made the mistake of saying, my neighbors in the Sound view projects were Sicilians, I learned a lot from them about Italy and the language, Fred Constantino taught me how to speak and understand Sicilian.

“I speak fluent, Sicilian, Napolitan, Latin, French, German, and Russian.

“I speak Spanish. It was my first language because my Mother is from Panama and my Father is from Cameroon..He spoke Hebrew, German, French and English.”

“Hm..My father spoke more languages then your father will ever speak in his life.”

“My father was a prince and his father, Manga Bell was King of Cameroon.”
“King, eh? So what? That’s nothing, My father was the son of a Mongolian lord of the Great Khan and Yuan Dynasty.!”

I was not completely sure if Tony was deliberately exaggerating his background, but as he walked up the street and I pointed out a block where one Christmas eve coming from the subway and walking home I was jumped by several gang members and robbed of my pitiful earnings from Alexander’s department store where I worked as a stock-boy, beaten and bleeding I stumbled to the police station and reported it.

He quickly told me how he was hung by the neck on the Steppes of Russia by Cosacks and left for dead, townspeople cut him down and took his half dead body to the Danube river where he escaped by boat.

Conscious of the great lie Anthony Quinn was pouring over me. I felt an overwhelming passion to compete in this childish gave I was being forced to play, I could no longer fight the urge and felt the need to boast when I said..

“Ah..Lennox Avenue..We’re coming into my people’s neighborhood now, brother.” I boasted as we went past the scores of black people on the street.

“Your people!” Tony Quinn thundered...”You mean our people...My grandmother was an African slave, she was the first cousin of Harriet Tubman on my mother’s side!” he said with a sense of pride.

That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to grasp at something, hold something over his head…

“Tony..one day when I win the academy award..” I started to say and he cut me off with...”

“Don’t bother winning, I’ve got two, I’ll loan you one of mine..”

He had me. I hadn’t won anything all I could do was find a way to bug him the way he was bugging me. Instinctively I knew what to do. 

“Well, if I can one day be as good as Brando was in the Godfather,,I might win an academy award.” That did it. That got him. He exploded.

“BRANDO??? all that mumbling and whispering. He played Don Corleone like a girl.” He thundered and then proceeded to give a yelling speech from the Godfather that he seem to know word for word.” “Bonasera. Bonasera>If you had come to me in friendship1” he roared “Then the scum who ruined your daughter would be punished this very day and then they would fear you...etcetera, etcetera”

When Quinn stopped performing, he was shaking as if some inner tidal horrendous wave of passion ha d engulfed him. He turned and stormed away from me just as a younger man, in a wrinkled suit approached him and asked. “Mr. Quinn. The Daily News would like to interview you.”

“Call my secretary for an audience.” He said as he stalked into the wind without turning back to the voice that had called out to him.

I had four or five days off on the shooting schedule so I decided to return to Los Angeles so that I could spend sometime with my young children, I was impressed with the area, my home in Pacific Palisaides was right across the street from Ronald Regan. The Pacific Ocean sparkles in the distance, and at night the million twinkling lights of Los Angeles and distant cities may be seen below, a veritable fairyland. 

The front hallway was large, with a vaulted ceiling. A large, framed picture of the whole family hung over an antique Chippendale table. My then wife, Rita had put fresh flowers in a vase on that table that morning. That’s when I saw the framed photo of my neighbors, Frank and Marilyn Roh. I stared at the photo as if seeing it for the first time, it was a gift given to me by Frank and somehow it was in the entry hall..I couldn’t stop staring at it there seem to be a light forming around the couple, but mostly on the woman I felt that in some deep psychological way, a prelude to something that was about to take place and it did,stunning me and sending me staggering backward. A vision of the star of David appeared in the forehead of the red headed woman, who was my assistant’s wife. I was somehow unable to breathe, I did’t shout, I didn’t run from the room, I did not panic. I backed up from the table until my back hit the foyer wall.

The flood-gates of emotions broke in my soul; I was inundated with waves of indescribable ecstasy. Words that had been merely words to me before, bliss, immortality, infinity, reality, worship, my Hebrew trainuing became clear in a flash of insight, the heart of my existence, the essence of my life, the only possible reality.

The realization that those words held a deep eternal meaning that led to the door of bliss was apparent to me. The knowledge that they were the road signs to a secret place within all of us filled me with joy! Knowing that hidden within this mortal body was the devotion of humanity, that this eternal, all-inclusive love enveloped and supported and guided every particle, every atom of creation, burst upon me with a guarantee, a divine assurance that caused my whole spirit and body to tremble in a flood of praise and gratitude.

I could discern, without using my mind, but with my mysterious intuition. I was aware of every cell and molecule of my body. The inspirational grandeur and ecstasy of this breakthrough was so enormous, so cosmic, that I felt that centuries, millenniums, countless eons of African suffering flashed before my inner sight, with no meaning at all, if by such means bliss beyond human suffering could be obtained. Racism, bigotry, prejudice—these were but terms now, words without meaning, expressions swallowed up with the fire of joy eating them up like dried kindling.

I was aware, during this super conscious experience it was a first period of illumination and during the months that followed, of a number of evil events that were to take place from a professional black thespian who would like to destroy my body and career. I felt as if there was a rearrangement of the molecular structure of my brain, or the unlocking of a closed safe that held new brain cells. It was as if worms were crawling through my head, day and night, I was conscious of this crawling taking place. It felt as if the worms owned their own private electrical drills and were boring new cellular thought-channels on both side of my head. This experience was strong proof that my Father’s African Prophets idea that Cosmic Consciousness is a natural function of man, because what was happening to me was flat out evidence that the brain cells, which are connected with an internal system that already exist in each one of us, though inactive or non-functioning in the majority of human beings it just needs to be turned on. Suddenly the Star of David in the woman’s forehead was gone…...this was just the beginning...

My spinal column had gone through the most important change of all. The whole spine seemed turned into iron for several weeks, so that, when I sat to meditate, I felt anchored down, able to sit in one place for hours and hours without motion or consciousness of any bodily function. Unusual visions sprang before my eyes, at one point upon opening my eyes, I saw a huge grey curtain extending down from above and stretching to the left and right of me toward and endless vantage point. When I questioned one of the SRF monks about this phenomenon, he said to me secretively. “The Chinese call it the veil.” At times, an incursion of human voices invaded my hearing, and I realize that I could hear every single conversation going on in the avenue where I live, from every house and backyard, even the conversations of passing motorist. 

I was confused and amaze, sometimes overwhelmed. I begged God to remove this experience, this nectar of super consciousness from me, It was too much, I had no center, I was everywhere at once and the bliss of incredible joy that bubbled through my veins was an actual, living force, that was as slippery as mercury, or a sort of electrical, fluid light that poured from head to toe of my body.

When I found my center, the voices receded and faded away and I had time to adjust to this illumination, I lost my appetite for food and I had no need to sleep. I could read people’s mind with ease, see them at great distances and walk among them unseen, but they never knew it. I forced myself to fit into my family’s living habits, meaning I ate and slept, or pretended to sleep when they went to sleep. When I thought they were safely in the “refreshing arms," of Morpheus, the god of sleep. I would prop my pillow under me and meditate until dawn, awakening to a joy past all words, past all powers of description.

I had previously suffered from asthma and was way overweight; now my body was flushed out of all toxins, and desire for fried food was wiped completely from my consciousness. My family and friends were aware of a great change in my appearance and manner; my face shone with a radiant light, my eyes were pools of joy. Strangers spoke to me, irresistibly drawn by a strange sympathy; at airports and other public places, children would run over to me and take my hand, asking me to visit them.

The principle of our existence is spiritual. The direction of our energies, the promulgation of our thought, the inspiration of our lives, is the soul. I knew within myself the rest is subsidiary and transitory. In the spiritual ...rests our greatness. And it is a poor economy that gives time and effort to the lesser at the expense and to the detriment of the greater. The experienced made me pause to think there always cling the elements of undesirability; the difficulty of their acquisition, the uncertainty of their possession. My mind began to increase and realize that spiritual growth is superior to material delinquencies. Its existence is above and beyond the material, and truth is eternal. I was beginning to see through the veil. The spiritual man is reading in the trees and flowers, in the mountains and sky, new lessons of truth whose beauty charms. He is creating in all who know his conduct a belief in spiritual values and he is finding in his own being, in his own life, a peace ineffable.

Fatigue was unknown to me; reading scripts seemed like child’s play, I could memorize long speech with just one glance. Conversing in person or over the telephone with directors or producers, my inward joy covered every action and circumstances with a cosmic significance, for to me these men, this telephone, this table.

The air that I breathed seemed super charged with energy. I felt that all the world was "home" to me, that I could never feel strange or alien in any place again; that the city, the countryside, the distant south which I knew was filled with bigoted whites, would be as much my own as the home I was living in when I was a child. The golden flies sparkling before mu eyes I assumed to be an "atom-dance”. Men and women throughout the ages and in every land ...have left their homes, their possessions, their families, all the allurements and hopeful possibilities of their world to see the air filled with myriad moving pin-pricks of light. Rather than lose the new consciousness of inner light and beauty; rather than relinquish their hold upon the dazzling, thrilling power of divinity; rather than give up possession of the new-found soul. During these weeks, I went about the motion picture business as usual, but with a hitherto unknown efficiency and speed. I could run for hours with resting, when I typed papers, the papers rocketed from ff my machine, without making a single typo.

In the midst of my work, I would suddenly be freshly overwhelmed by the goodness of sister Roh who had given me this incredible, unspeakable happiness. She touched my forehead once in a friend of her husband’s home, when an unner voice spoke to me saying “Magdalena, raises his consciousness.”

My breath quickly stopped completely at that moment; the awe that I felt would be accompanied by an absolute stillness within and without. Underlying all my consciousness was a sense of immeasurable and unutterable gratitude; a longing for others to know the joy that lay within them; but most of all, a divine knowledge, past all human comprehension, that all was well with the world that everything was leading to the goal of Cosmic Consciousness immortal bliss.

This state of illumination was present with me for a year, and then gradually I learned how to tone it down. Knowing that with deep meditation it would return with all its pristine force, though certain features, especially the sense of divine peace and joy, return whenever practices the praceptum meditation or my secret exercises.

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Animals in Africa

Rhinoceros

Scientific name

Black: Diceros bicornis
White: Ceratotherium simum

Weight

Black: 1 to 1.5 tn. (2,000 to 3,000 lb.)
White: More than 2 tn. (4,000+ lb.)

Size

About 60 in. at the shoulder

Life span

35 to 40 years

Habitat

Grassland and open savanna

Diet

Herbivorous

Gestation

16 months

Predators

Humans

CONSERVATION STATUS:

Critically Endangered

There are 2 species of African rhino

Rhinos can gallop up to 30 miles per hour

Black rhino population down 97.6% since 1960

Habitat

Where do rhinos live?

The African rhino is divided into two species, the black rhino and the white rhino. White rhinos mainly live in South Africa, but they have also been reintroduced to Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. Southern white rhinos have been introduced to Kenya, Zambia, and Cote d’Ivoire. The majority of the black rhino population—98%—is concentrated in four countries: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. South Africa houses 40% of the total black rhino population. There are some black rhinos in the region spread between Cameroon and Kenya. (Source)

African Elephant

Scientific Name
Loxodonta africana, Loxodonta cylotis

Common Names
African Bush Elephant, African Forest Elephant

Classification
Mammal

Close Relatives

Elephants are the largest land animals living in the world today, their great stature and thick grey skin gives them an overpowering presence. Africa is home for two of the three living elephant species: the African bush elephant and the African forest elephant. Select a link to access specific information, or continue reading for an overview of African elephants.

Both the African bush elephant and African forest elephant were once considered the same species, known simply as the African elephant. Their classification is still under debate which is a very common occurrence. Traditionally, a species is one that may interbreed with another; therefore it requires proof that African bush elephants may not breed with African forest elephants. Today, a more common approach is sequencing specific parts of the elephant's DNA and comparing the differences (phylogenetics); this may also serve as proof for a new classification. The exact requirements are 'fuzzy' at best, and therefore it is perhaps a decision left up to the reader. Differences in appearance (morphogenetics) are sometimes valid and helpful, but the variance between species can sometimes be misleading, even the variance between in-species males and females is often extreme.

Due to their size, elephants do not have any predators in the wild; even a keen hunter such as a lion may try, but is not able to overpower these creatures. Elephant calves however may be preyed upon particularly if the mother is not nearby, otherwise the mother will often assist in protecting the calf.

Continue on reading about their description

Giraffe

Scientific Name
Giraffa Camelopardalis

Common Names
See overview, below

Classification
Mammal

Close Relatives
Okapi

The giraffe is from the Giraffidae family which has only one other member, the Okapi. The giraffe has a very long list of common names to account for the high number of subspecies. There is only one accepted species of the giraffe, but many subspecies that may one day prove to be a new species. The scientific name Giraffidae camelopardalis represents the family (Giraffidae) and species (camelopardalis). To represent subspecies by their scientific name the species name is abbreviated, followed by the sub species scientific name. The following lists the large number of subspecies with their scientific names: Nubian Giraffe (G. c. camelopardalis), Somali or Reticulated Giraffe (G. c. reticulata), Smoky or Angolan Giraffe (G. c. angolensis), Kordofan Giraffe (G. c. antiquorum), Maasai or Kilimanjaro Giraffe (G. c. tippelskirchi), Rothschild, Baringo or Ugandan Giraffe (G. c. rothschildi), South African Giraffe (G. c. giraffa), Thornicroft or Rhodesian Giraffe (G. c. thornicrofti), and the West African or Nigerian Giraffe (G. c. peralta).

Giraffes move in loose herds on the open woodlands and grasslands of the African Savannah. Eating mostly at dusk and dawn on leaves and fruit, the Giraffe's main food source is the acacia tree. They will drink where possible, but can survive where it is in short supply. To drink, a Giraffe must spread its front legs so its head can reach the water. It has a distinctive walking style as it moves both legs on the same side forward at the same time. At a gallop, the Giraffe can reach speeds of up to 55 km/hour and rhythmically moves its head backwards and forwards to pull forward its weight. Even though the Giraffe is a quiet animal, it does make a distinctive flute-like noise as well as grunts and moans. It has a sharp sense of hearing and can alert animals of nearby predators. Giraffe are not territorial; however they will stay within a certain area and have a male hierarchy. Mating can occur at any time of the year and calves are born after a gestation of 16 months. When caring for their young, the female Giraffe will leave their calves together during the day to feed. A calf will grow very fast when young, even up to an inch per day. By two months, the calf will be feeding on leaves and by six months, it will be quite independent of its mother. Full grown, a Giraffe will grow up to four to six meters and live up to 28 years (in captivity, not as long in the wild). The Giraffe does not have many predators, but if threatened, the Giraffe has two defence methods, it will kick its aggressor with its front legs or it will use its long neck and densely boned skull as a mallet against another Giraffe. The main predator of the Giraffe is the human. Not many African animals will attack a full grown Giraffe, but a calf will be attacked, usually by a Hyena. 

Vervet Monkey

Scientific Name

Chlorocebus pygerythrus            

Common Names

Vervet 

Classification

Mammal             

Close Relatives

The vervet monkey (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), or simply vervet, is an Old World monkey of the family Cercopithecidae native to Africa. The term "vervet" is also used to refer to all the members of the genus Chlorocebus. The five distinct subspecies can be found mostly throughout Southern Africa, as well as some of the eastern countries. Vervets were transported to the islands of Barbados, Saint Kitts, and Nevis in conjunction with the African slave trade.  They inhabit East Africa near a source of water, these mostly vegetarian monkeys have black faces and grey body hair color, ranging in length from about 19 in (50 cm) for males to about 16 in (40 cm) for females.

In addition to very interesting behavioral research on natural populations, vervet monkeys serve as a nonhuman primate model for understanding genetic and social behaviors of humans. They have been noted for having human-like characteristics, such as hypertension, anxiety, and social and dependent alcohol use. Vervets live in social groups ranging from 10 to 70 individuals, with males changing groups at the time of sexual maturity. The most significant studies done on vervet monkeys involve their communication and alarm calls, specifically in regard to kin and group recognition and particular predator sightings.  Read more >>

Source: http://www.africanfauna.com/

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AFRICAN TRIBES

Afar

The Afar people live primarily in Ethiopia and the areas of Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia in the Horn of Africa.

The Afar are also known as the Danakil, an ethnic group in the Horn of Africa. They primarily live in the Afar Region of Ethiopia and in northern Djibouti, although some also inhabit the southern point of Eritrea. Afars speak the Afar language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family.

  

 Anlo-Ewe

The Anlo-Ewe people are today in the southeastern corner of the Republic of Ghana. They settled here around 1474 after escaping from their past home of Notsie.

The Anlo Ewe are a sub-group of the Ewe people of approximately 6 million people, inhabiting southern Togo, southern Benin, southwest Nigeria, and south-eastern parts of the Volta Region of Ghana; meanwhile, a majority of Ewe are located in the entire southern half of Togo and southwest Benin. They are a patrilineal society governed by a hierarchal, centralized authority. Their language (self-name Anlogbe) is a dialect of the Ewe language, itself part of the Gbe language cluster. The Ewe religion is centered on a supreme god Mawu and several intermediate divinities.

Amhara

The Amhara are the politically and culturally dominant ethnic group of Ethiopia. They are located primarily in the central highland plateau of Ethiopia and comprise the major population element in the provinces of Begemder and Gojjam and in parts of Shoa and Wallo. The Amhara (Amharic: አማራ?, Āmara; Ge'ez: አምሐራ,ʾÄməḥära) are an ethnic group inhabiting the central highlands of Ethiopia. According to the 2007 national census, they numbered 30,870,651 individuals, comprising 30.89% of the country's population. They speak Amharic, an Afro-Asiatic language of the Semitic branch, and are one of the Habesha peoples.

  

Ashanti
The Ashanti live in central Ghana in western Africa approximately 300km. away from the coast. The Ashanti are a major ethnic group of the Akans in Ghana, a fairly new nation, barely more than 50 years old. Ashanti, or Asante (pronunciation: /ˈæʃɑːnˈtiː/ a-shahn-tee), are a nation and Akan people who live predominantly in, and native to Ashanti, Asanteman, and in Ghana and Ivory Coast. They speak the Akan language and the Asante dialect, and are of Akan origin. Prior to European colonization, the Ashanti people developed a large and influential empire in West Africa. The Ashanti later developed the powerful Ashanti Confederacy or Asanteman and became the dominant presence in the region. The Asantehene is the political and spiritual head of the Asantes.

                                                         


Bakongo

The Bakongo people (aka. the Kongo) dwell along the Atlantic coast of Africa from Pointe-Noire, Congo (Brazzaville) to Luanda, Angola.

The Bakongo, or the Kongo people (Kongo: “hunters”), also referred to as the Congolese, are a Bantu ethnic group who live along the Atlantic coast of Africa from Pointe-Noire(Republic of Congo) to Luanda, Angola. They are primarily defined by the speaking of Kikongo, a common language. They are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of Congo.

In the late 20th century, they numbered about 10,220,000.

Bambara

The Bambara are a large Mande racial group located mostly in the country of Mali but also in Guinea, Burkina Faso and Senegal, west Africa.  They are considered to be amongst the largest Mandé ethnic groups, and are the dominant Mandé group in Mali, with 80% of the population speaking the Bambara language, regardless of ethnicity.

Bemba

The Bemba are located in the northeastern part of Zambia and are the largest ethnic group in the Northern Province of Zambia.

The Bemba (or 'BaBemba' using the Ba- prefix to mean 'people of', and also called 'Awemba' or 'BaWemba' in the past) belong to a large group of Bantu peoples mainly in the Northern, Luapula and Copperbelt Provinces of Zambia who trace their origins to the Luba and Lunda states of the upper Congo basin, in what became Katanga Province in southern Congo-Kinshasa (DRC). They are the largest ethnic group in Zambia. Bemba history is a major historical phenomenon in the development of chieftainship in a large and culturally homogeneous region of central Africa.

Berber

Berbers have lived in Africa since the earliest recorded time. References date back to 3000 BC. There are many scattered tribes of Berber across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.
The Berbers (Berber: Imazighen/Imaziyenin plural, and Amazigh in singular) are the ethnicity indigenous to North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are distributed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Niger River. Historically they spoke Berber languages, which together form the "Berber branch" of the Afro-Asiatic language family.  Since the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the seventh century, a large portion of Berbers have spoken varieties of Maghrebi Arabic, either by choice or obligation.  Foreign languages like French and Spanish, inherited from former European colonial powers, are used by most educated Berbers in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in some formal contexts such as higher education or business.

Bobo

The Bobo people have lived in western Burkina Faso and Mali for centuries although the area occupied by the Bobo extends north into Mali. They are known for their masks which are worn with elaborate outfits for celebrations. Primarily agricultral people they also cultivate cotton which they use to trade with others. 

In much of the literature on African art the group that lives in the area of Bobo-Dioulasso is called area of Bobo-Dioulasso is called Bobo-Fing, literally 'black Bob.' These people call themselves Bobo and they speak the Bobo language, a Mande Language.

Bushmen/San

The 'Bushmen' are the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, where they have lived for at least 20,000 years. Their home is in the vast expanse of the Kalahari desert.

The San people (or Saan), also known as Bushmen, or Basarwa – all considered pejorative to some degree – are members of various indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples of Southern Africa, whose territory spans Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. There is a significant linguistic difference between the northern people living between the Okavango River in Botswana and Etosha National Park in northwestern Namibia, extending up into southern Angola; the central people of most of Namibia and Botswana, extending into Zambia and Zimbabwe; and the southern people in the central Kalahari towards the Molopo River, who are the last remnant of the previously extensive indigenous San of South Africa.

Chewa

The Chewa, also known as the Cewa or Chichewa is an African culture that has existed since the beginning of the first millennium, A.D. They are primarily located in Zambia, Zimbabwe, with the bulk of the population in Malawi.

There are two large Chewa clans, the Phiri and the Banda, with a population of 1.5 million people. The Phiri are associated with the kings and aristocracy, the Banda with healers and mystics.

Dogon  The Dogon are a cliff-dwelling people who live in Southeastern Mali and Burkina Faso. Among the people groups in Africa they are unique in that they have kept and continued to develop their own culture even in the midst of Islamic invasions which have conquered and adapted many of the current people groups

Fang

The Fang are especially known for their guardian figures which they attached to wooden boxes containing bones of the ancestors. The bones, by tradition, are said to contain the power of the dead person, in fact, the same amount of power that the person had while still alive.

Fon

The Fon of Benin, originally called Dahomey until 1975, are from West Africa. The Fon are said to have originated in the area of Tado, a town in Tago, at approximately the same latitude as Abomey, Benin.

Most Fon today live in villages and small towns in mud houses with corrugated iron gable roofs. Cities built by the Fon include Abomey, the historical capital city of Dahomey, and Ouidah on the Slave Coast. These cities were major commercial centres for the slave trade.

The Fon founded the Kingdom of Dahomey around 1600. During the early 17th century, the King of Dahomey, Agaja (reigned 1708-1732), conquered most of the current area of southern Benin (except Porto-Novo), to establish direct contact with European traders.

Fulani The Fulani people of West Africa are the largest nomadic group in the world, primarily nomadic herders and traders. Through their nomadic lifestyle, they established numerous trade routes in West Africa. They played a significant role in the rise and fall of the Mossi states in Burkina and also contributed to the migratory movements of people southward through Niger and Nigeria into Cameroon.

Ibos (Igbo) from Nigerian the Ibos live in villages that have anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand people comprised of numerous extended families.

The Ibos do not wear any clothing until they reach puberty and adults begin to wear pieces of cloth and loose cotton shirts.  Women often wear cloth wrapped around their heads as well.

In rural areas of Nigeria, Igbo people are mostly craftsmen, farmers and traders. The most important crop is the yam; celebrations are held annually to celebrate its harvesting. Other staple crops include cassava and taro.

Kikuyu (Gikuyu)

Having migrated to their current location about four centuries ago, the Kikuyu now make up Kenya’s largest ethnic group.

The Kikuyu are of Bantu origin inhabiting Southeast Africa.  They constitute the single largest ethnic group in Kenya, and are concentrated in the vicinity of Mount Kenya.  The exact place that the Kikuyu's ancestors migrated from after the initial Bantu expansion from West Africa is uncertain.

Credit: wikipedia(Maasai warriors jumping)

Maasai

The Maasai, famous as herders and warriors, once dominated the plains of East Africa. Now however they are confined to a fraction of their former range.

The Maasai (sometimes spelled "Masai") are a Nilotic ethnic group of semi-nomadic people inhabiting southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are among the best known local populations due to their residence near the many game parks of Southeast Africa, and their distinctive customs and dress.

Mandinka

The Mandinka (also known as Mandinko or Mandingo) are an ethnic group that live in West Africa, primarily Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau, but some also live in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Cote d'Ivoire.

They are the descendants of the Mali Empire, which rose to power under the rule of the great Mandinka king Sundiata Keita. The Mandinka in turn belong to West Africa's largest ethnolinguistic group, the Mandé, who account for more than twenty million people (including the Dyula, Bozo, Bissa and Bambara). Today, over 99% of Mandinka in Africa are Muslim.

Pygmies

There are many different 'Pygmy' peoples – for example, the Bambuti, the Batwa, the Bayaka and the Bagyeli ('Ba -' means 'people') – who live scattered over a huge area in central and western Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Congo (Brazzaville), Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.

A pygmy is a member  of an ethnic group whose average height is unusually short; many anthropologists define pygmy as a memeber of any group where adult men are on average less than 150 cm (4 feet 11 inches) tall.

Credit: flickr.com

Samburu
The Samburu are related to the Masai although they live just above the equator where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the northern desert and slightly south of Lake Turkana in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya.

Senufo

The Senufo are a group of people living in northern Cote d'Ivoire and Mali. They are known as excellent farmers and are made up of a number of different groups who moved south to Mali and Cote d'Ivoire in the 15 and 16th centuries.

Tuareg The Tuareg people are predominently nomadic people of the sahara desert, mostly in the Northern reaches of Mali near Timbuktu and Kidal.

Wolof

Credit: forumbiodiversity.com

The Wolof are one of the largest people groups that inhabit modern-day Senegal. They live anywhere from the desert area of the Sahara to the rain forests. Traditionally many Wolof lived in small villages governed by an extended family unit but now most Wolof move to cities where they are able to get jobs.

Credit: nairaland.com

Yoruba

The Yoruba people live in Southwest Nigeria and Benin. They have developed a variety of different artistic forms including pottery, weaving, beadwork, metalwork, and mask making.

Zulu children Source: africaguide.com

Zulu children

Source: africaguide.com

Zulu

The Zulu are the largest ethnic group in South Africa. They are well known for their beautiful brightly colored beads and baskets as well as other small carvings.

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