They All Learn,
To A Certain Extent, A New Language, A Secret Language Only
Understood By The Initiated.
The same removal from home and instruction from initiated members is
also observed with the girls.
However, in their case, it is not
always a forest-grove they are secluded in, sometimes it is done in
huts. Among the Grain Coast tribes however, the girls go into a
magic wood until they are married. Should they have to leave the
wood for any temporary reason, they must smear themselves with white
clay. A similar custom holds good in Okyon, Calabar district,
where, should a girl have to leave the fattening-house, she must be
covered with white clay. I believe this fattening-house custom in
Calabar is not only for fattening up the women to improve their
appearance, but an initiatory custom as well, although the main
intention is now, undoubtedly, fattening, and the girl is constantly
fed with fat-producing foods, such as fou-fou soaked in palm oil. I
am told, but I think wrongly, that the white clay with which a
Calabar girl is kept covered while in the fattening-house, putting
on an extra coating of it should she come outside, is to assist in
the fattening process by preventing perspiration.
The duration of the period of seclusion varies somewhat. San
Salvador boys are six months in the wood. Cameroon boys are twelve
months. In most districts the girls are betrothed in infancy, and
they go into the wood or initiatory hut for a few months before
marriage.
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