Инициация

Just yesterday boys chased red-headed lizards and were involved in noisy games, and today a scary mask came from the sacred forest and led them away. Childhood is over, the time of initiation has come. In the sacred forest, the children are swallowed by a beast, they die and regenerate as completely different people. In memory of this symbolic death their bodies will preserve patterns made of scars. This is a difficult ordeal: if you want to become a man, you have to endure pain, hunger and fatigue. No girl would ever set her eye on a guy who had not passed the initiation ordeal, at forty he would still be considered a child, he would never be invited to an important meeting or admitted into a secret society.

Girls also have to pass through their initiation rituals, as an adult woman must also possess a special knowledge, and women’s secret societies are sometimes even more powerful than those of men.

While the scars heal, the newly-born adults are taught the rules of their new life: how to trace an animal, how to clear a field, how to treat a woman, how to express yourself so that the lay people understand nothing. And when they return to their village after several months, or, sometimes, several years, there will be a big celebration: girls will paint their faces with white clay; mothers will cook plenty of simple dishes, which, after a hungry life in the forest, will be eaten up by the newly initiated boys or girls as the most exquisite delicacie

Procession of newly circumcised boys.  Mali. The Boso. E. den Otter. 2005.		The elder of the Karabenta family sews protective amulets into the sleeves of newly circumcised boys. Kirango, E. den Otter, 2005.		Among the Boso, initiation takes place every ten years, for which reason the age of its participants ranges between 4 and 14 years. Kirango, E. den Otter, 2005