Sand drawings

Drawing on the beach; who can resist mOhanaji? I think we have all tried to draw different things during our visits to beaches. I'll be honest here, I've also used sticks mostly (and let my kids use only sticks on beaches), only because it sort of stinks (you know; marine life). From your writings, it was interesting to note that only African men/boys practiced this art in Africa. I also spent some time reading other sources from the internet, and came to know that the advanced designs are taught to boys later on in their lives. There is no mention of women/girls drawing sona. Interesting indeed! :) There is a Japanese professor, Mr. Nagata who is interested in Kolams and did some research on it a while back. He gave us a visit in San Jose a couple of years back, and spent a day with us in our house, during his trip to the US. It was nice to discuss some things about kolams, and he shared his ideas with us while he was here. When the time came for him to take leave, he popped an interesting question to us (to me and Mani). He wanted to know if we could accompany him to Africa to do some study about "African kolams". What he told us was similar to the information you've posted. I really wanted to, but then I had the presence of mind to think about my younger kids, and with a disappointing look, expressed my inability to go on that special "field trip". :) I see that the dotted patterns are similar to our dotted kolams, except for the tiny extensions at the appropriate places to give shape as needed to transform the patterns into other animals/characters. I think some of our dotted kolam patterns have those type of extensions too. As for the stories, I haven't heard of them (if there are any indian ones). But, we can make up our own stories, and make up our patterns too, accordingly, can't we? :) I would like to get my hands on P.Gerdes book on Geometric patterns of Africa, to know more. In the following examples, I've taken out a dot from the typical 3x3 dotted kolam, and the pattern now looks more like a frog (to me atleast), and at the bottom we can see how Sumathi.V has added extensions to a dotted kolam to make it look like a bird (there are more in her gallery).