Preparation of a Tuareg Bride

In the privacy of her mother’s tent, a 15-year-old bride prepares for her wedding. The wife of the blacksmith plaits her hair: the Tuareg insist that a bride’s hair must be dressed by a woman of the smith’s family or else the girl’s hair will fall out during the first two years of marriage. Her grooming completed, the bride begins a week of ritual seclusion before the wedding.