Here's my contribution to the blacked-up faces part of this thread.......

Twice in recent years, whilst we were organising British tours for our great friend, the Gambian kora player and singer, Jali Sherrifo Konteh, we have managed to get him booked at the Tenterden Folk Festival. This was great for Sherrifo because he loves all aspects of traditional culture wherever they are from. At one of these we were watching the Saturday afternoon procession and a blacked-up border morris team danced by.

"Why do they put black on their faces?" Sherrifo asked.
My reply was that it was to help to disguise their faces.

"Oh yes. Like the Fula dancers that I took you to see in Busara." he replied.

That reminded me that on one of our trips to The Gambia, Sherrifo had taken us to a boys' circumcision/coming-of-age ceremony in a village in the south of the country and the Fulas in that village - it was a predominately Mandinka village - that were going to be dancing covered their faces with a sort of white chalky mud.