All The Bechuana And Caffre Tribes South Of The Zambesi
Practice Circumcision (`Boguera'), But The Rites Observed
Are Carefully Concealed.
The initiated alone can approach, but in this town
I was once a spectator of the second part of the ceremony of the circumcision,
called "sechu".
Just at the dawn of day, a row of boys of nearly
fourteen years of age stood naked in the kotla, each having a pair of sandals
as a shield on his hands. Facing them stood the men of the town
in a similar state of nudity, all armed with long thin wands,
of a tough, strong, supple bush called moretloa (`Grewia flava'),
and engaged in a dance named "koha", in which questions are put to the boys,
as "Will you guard the chief well?" "Will you herd the cattle well?" and,
while the latter give an affirmative response, the men rush forward to them,
and each aims a full-weight blow at the back of one of the boys.
Shielding himself with the sandals above his head, he causes the supple wand
to descend and bend into his back, and every stroke inflicted thus
makes the blood squirt out of a wound a foot or eighteen inches long.
At the end of the dance, the boys' backs are seamed with wounds and weals,
the scars of which remain through life. This is intended
to harden the young soldiers, and prepare them for the rank of men.
After this ceremony, and after killing a rhinoceros, they may marry a wife.
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