I'm no wiz with the pictures, but I'll give it a shot without any. Of course the swords are side arms, with lances, javelins, bows, throwing weapons, and guns to keep the enemy dying further from you before you have to resort to a sword or dagger or club or axe, etc. Frankly, I think the African swords are way under-studied, and it may be way too late to study most of them as weapons and/or tools within their native cultures, as they often are not much used anymore as weapons (because of the modern army abolishing the self arming militia system, and because spring tempered machetes offer an often superior using value to forged iron, or even steel, as many of the African smiths, if they are forging springs as I'm told, are not tempering them to a spring temper; I don't know that this means they don't know how, but on the other hand, the popularity of foreign made machetes says something, dunnit? ), so much about their use and making is lost, but IMHO a lot of them are a lot more effective than modern "westerners" (ie. Northerners
) typically think. The sickle/mambele sword of the 'Zande, 'Gombe, etc. is a nasty nasty fighting piece, for instance, and while I've encountered pieces that seemed like clearly effigy/symbolic/money/etc. pieces, by no means all the odd seeming African arms are at all impractical. I also think that, just because an ancestor worshipper uses great grand dad's sword as a "dance wand" in religious ceremonies now, is not any reason to think that's what it was back in the day, and I think this ideation occurs a lot in the "fine art scene" where African swords are as popular as they are to ethno collectors, and usually moreso than with modern N American martial artists, and where there is often an exaggerated horror of violence......