Kenya— Tattoo scenes & cities

According to the National Museums of Kenya, body marks told, in each community, a person's gender, rank, family and clan. Some were temporary: the ochre of Maa-speaking communities, applied to the body and to warriors' hair, and the henna of Swahili women on the coast, still used for weddings and the Maulidi festival.

Other marks were permanent. Scarification means cutting the skin to shape raised scars; they were seen as attractive, and as proof that a woman could endure childbirth. A photograph taken around 1894-1921, held at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, shows Luo women with scarification, one of them with large keloids.