- My grandfather told me this when I was young
- It was the way he grew up; full of adventures and missions, living in nature and learning from the world
- His was a tough childhood, but an honorable one
- In the village he grew up in there were men, women boys and girls
- The head of the family was the father
- At the head of the village was the chief
- In order to become a man, and start a family, boys had to pass through an initation, a rite of passage into manhood
- It was an hornorable and distinguished rite and all the young boys of the village had to pass through it
- Do you know any other cultures/countries where rites of passage were Important?
- At the age of 15, fathers and mothers would let their sons join other young boys on a journey through the region, discovering their surroundings and the wolrd.
- They would meet with the chief , and his strongest and bravest warriors
- They would be given objectives; things to discover and bring back to the village
- SO, they would embark on an adventure to accomplish a number of tasks
- The village chief asked them to find out what different kinds of animals looked like
- And to make it tougher, he would ask that they bring back something from their adventure, like the tusk of an elephant, volcanic rock and cotton
- He asked them to find the tallest animal in the wild; since none knew what the tallest animal was, this was really tough. What do you think is the tallest animal in the wild in africa?
- He asked to find ond of the strongest animals in the wild, as well as one of the most numerous, like the rhino and leopard.
- As my grandfather tells it to me, the young boys who returned would be initiated as men into the village, and became warrios, and could start families of their own.