Rituals ...cont'd

A similar dance takes place further south in Swaziland. Every year during the months of August and September, every eligible maiden from the Kingdom of Swaziland attends the Reed Dance, locally known as the Umhlanga. This eight-day ceremony marks the beginning of adulthood for Swazi girls, and also announces to Kingdom that they are ready for marriage. The ceremony, which is restricted to unmarried and childless girls, starts when the girls arrive at the royal home of the mother of the King of Swaziland. To protect the girls on their journey, reputable men from their home villages accompany them to the dance. Once they arrived at the royal compound, the girls are separated into younger and older age groups.

Within their groups they march to the nearby reed beds with long knives, cutting ten to twenty reeds a piece. Using plaited wild grass, they tie up the bundle of reeds and head back to the royal village by nightfall. The next day the reeds are presented to the King's mother as a sign of respect. For the next several days, the girls perform a series of songs and dances, in hopes of attracting the eye of a suitor. On the seventh day of the ceremony the King arrives to watch the girls dance. If he so desires, he will choose one girl from the crowd to be his wife. The King orders several cattle to be slaughtered from which everyone shares in the feast. On the eight day, the ceremony is complete and the girls return to their villages ready for marriage.

Some women initiation ceremonies are slowly disappearing. In Nigeria, young girls would be cloistered for weeks in an effort to learn the nuances of being a good wife. During this time, the girl would be fattened so as to add several dimensions to her frame. Many ethnic groups in Africa find heavy women attractive. Their corpulence provides a public statement of a man's wealth in that his wife has plenty of food and servants to do her bidding. Although a heavy frame is still admired among the Nigerian, and several girls will take great pains to increase their weight, the ritual fattening ceremony rarely takes place.

Another ritual that is fading, to the approval of many women's rights groups, is that of female circumcision. This practice is still quite common among the Masaai and Himba people of southern Africa. As in most African societies, a young girl is considered an adult once she is eligible to marry. For the Masaai and Himba, a young girl will not be suitable for marriage unless she undergoes the circumcision ceremony. Usually the ceremony is attended by the females of the girl's family. In a private room in their home or out in the countryside, an elderly matron cuts out the girl's clitoris with a razor blade. The procedure is also called female genital mutilation and has been condemned worldwide for its potential danger to young girls. African tribes still practicing female circumcision insist that the ceremony enforces chastity among females and is central to the initiation rights of girls entering adulthood. Supporters also cite that circumcision ceremonies continue to exist among males with little condemnation from human rights organizations. Himba males, for example, are forced to undergo a painful circumcision. They are absolutely forbidden to cry out in pain for fear of shaming their family, whereas females are encouraged to release their pain vocally.

Female African initiation ceremonies, much like their male counterparts, provide instructions to females on what society will expect of them as adults. Having imitated their mothers from birth, most girls are already fully aware of what will be expected of them as women. The ceremony, however, is the public expression of this expectation by the society - a positive form of peer pressure. In most cultures, the initiation ceremony is something a young girl eagerly looks forward to, prepares for, and honorably takes part in. In essence, the ceremony is the ultimate expression of her flowering womanhood.



Sources: www.thebeadsite.com, Swaziland National Trust Commission at www.sntc.org.sc/cultural