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Initiations |
Children begin to acquire knowledge of their ancestral ties to Fulani family when they accompany and assist their parents in work and social interaction. They travel to the farm, to market and to the compounds of friends and relatives. They are sent running on errands to deliver yams, to fetch water, to bid a neighbor visit, to perform countless tasks assisting in the progress of daily life and sociality. Through this participation in quotidian existence they gain an emerging sense of the cultural environment. They learn also about friendship and the importance of cousinhood(link to Cousinhood )Simple as it is, this rite embodies a fundamental relationship between individual, family, cattle and land which is the crux of personhood in Fulani society.
As children grow up they learn to have a particular kind of relationship with their bodies, one which links their sense of their own masculinity with the ancestral traditions of Fulani. They will wait until the auspicious moment to perform important initiations such as circumcision, sharo, and cattle herding. Various rites and performances are specifically aimed at somatically transmitting the knowledge of the Fulani person. Whether this knowledge is embodied in aesthetically structured performance, such as the guerewol dance of the Wodhaabe, or in a more arduous task such as the cattle crossing of the Jafurabe of Mali,the performed aspects of ancestral practices are considered crucial to the preservation of Fulani identity, and the Pulaaku. | |
| Circumcision |
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When a child reaches the age between 8 and 15, he goes trough the special ritual of circumcision. In the Fulani society, the traditional ritual of circumcision is a big event that required the participation |
| of all the segments of the society; each social class, and each member of the family has a specific role according to his relationship with the candidate to the circumcision .[more...] | |
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Sharo |
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his Fulani culture presents a complex system. The most important is the sharo or shadi (flogging meeting). |
| The During this festival, bare-chested contestants, usually unmarried men, come to the center ring accompanied by beautiful girls. After some time, a challenger also bare-chested comes out brandishing a whip. The challenger raises his whip and flogs his opponent. He must endure this without showing pain lest he be branded a coward.[more...] | | |
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