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Letter from the Past: Attending a Circumcision Ceremony
Corrine and Ted Heaton
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[Excerpted from a letter to Ted's mother, dated August 13, 1964, posted in Bungoma, Kenya. The letter begins with a description of a safari to Queen Elizabeth Park in Uganda. They were barely home from several days of travel when the student who had invited them to a circumcision ceremony came and said that the ceremony was to begin that evening. We pick up the account there. -- ed.] We left here at 3:30 and got to the home in time for supper (very good posho and chicken). We got to the ceremony at 8 p.m. and people were already dancing around the boys who were to be circumcised -- 6 of them. The boys have to do a lot of preparation before the ceremony -- they have to run along the road, all the time ringing bells in each hand, they run to relatives' homes inviting them to the ceremony. On the day before they are to be circumcised, they go to their maternal uncle and when he accepts, he kills a cow and the boys wear a huge piece of meat around their necks as they go back home. About 7 p.m. they are placed in the center of dancing people and they have to ring their bells and keep making rhythmic movements all night until dawn! If they stop then people will think they are weak and are not fully determined to be circumcised. We were taken right up to the boys so we could see, and it is so interesting -- they keep up their movements and bell ringing, with sweat pouring down their faces, and they look like they are in a trance or are hypnotized! Their face is expressionless, they don't smile, and if they show one bit of fear, they will not be circumcised. All the time people are dancing (doing any kind of movement as long as they keep the time), singing, whistling, shouting around them. We watched this for a while, and then decided to go to bed at 11. (We slept in our car.) We were going to get up at 4, but it was really raining and the boys and dancers were moved inside a house. About 7 the boys were given some roast meat to eat and then they were taken to the river. At this time an interesting thing happened -- a father took his boy away -- by force, he refused to have him circumcised, because this boy's oldest brother wasn't circumcised, so therefore, he couldn't. They locked this boy in a hut, and a little later he broke out and ran to the river, he was fully determined to be circumcised (gosh, after dancing all night). So, they let him go, they didn't deny him. At the river, they were stripped naked, then the head and nose were covered with mud. We were put right in the very front of them, enabling us to see everything. They were in a standing position, in a row, and all the time expressionless. The actual operation was over in a flash and was very gruesome! There were three circumcisers, the first put on some medicine, and pulled the skin way down over the head of the penis, the 2nd did the cutting, and the 3rd did the trimming! As I say it is all done in a flash, thank heavens, or I couldn't have lasted through too much more! I just don't see how the boys stood all of it, it must have been very painful! And since none of them even winced or blinked, they were all given money by the people -- coins were stuck in the mud on their heads! It was a most interesting ceremony, very much the custom of this tribe, and all I can say is I'm glad our son won't be confronted with it! |