As if puberty in itself wasn’t traumatic enough, certain puberty rituals for boys from across the world are pretty bizarre and weird. Stepping into manhood can involve the removal of one’s foreskin and eating it afterwards, to jumping from a 20-30 metre rickety structure. We bring you a list of such shock-inducing rituals from across the globe.
Jumping Bulls
The Hamers Tribe of Ethiopia has been practising this ritual since thousands of years. It involves a teenager jumping over a row of 7-10 bulls four times, with the women from the tribe rooting for him. While that may not sound terrible, what is rather unsettling is that the cheering involves these women dancing and blowing horns, all the time asking to be whipped. The whipping can get quite bad, but is never performed if the woman is not willing.
The Croc-men
The Chambri tribe from Papua New Guinea has a bloody ritual of cutting the skin of boys to make it resemble a crocodile’s. The ancient story of the tribe narrates how reptiles arrived from the Sepik River and transformed into humans. So to honour them, the hunter tribe slits through the skin of young boys and later insert clay and tree oil so that the skin remains raised and looks like that of a crocodile.
The Circumcision Chronicles
The Xhosa Tribe lives in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. A boy steps into manhood after his foreskin is cut off by an untrained surgeon, and without any anaesthetics. After the circumcision, the boy is packed off to a tiny thatched area where he is prevented from having water because that might lead to infection. He lives there alone and after a week, if he recovers, his return is celebrated.
Ant Attack
In a remote Amazonian village, an 11-hour ritual is followed, where young boys wear gloves and get stung by ants. The specially made gloves contain bullet ants whose sting lasts for more than a day and is 30 times worse than a bee sting. The boys who participate in this ritual are not more than 12 years old. It is an extremely odd ritual where the tropical carnivorous ants are made to soak in a sedative-type solution. After they wake up from their stupor, in less than an hour, they start stinging crazily, all angry and aggressive.
Whipped Up
Fulani’s belong to West Africa and are nomads. They lead a difficult life, and to make their boys hardy, they make them undergo an excruciating whipping dual to mark their stepping into manhood. Clans gather to watch whether a certain teenager has the bravery and guts to withstand the lash of a whip made from a branch, made to break the skin of the opponent. Young boys lash at each other three times and whoever does not flinch or appears to be the least hurt is declared the winner.
Free Falling
The Ni-Vanuatu, or people of Melanesian descent from Vanuatu, in the South pacific make their boys take a leap into manhood, quite literally. To test their faith, young boys are made to jump some 30 meters from a rickety structure, , with their legs wrapped in vines.
Agoge
This ritual might have become obsolete, but it still makes the cut because of the culture it was associated with: Spartan! Fearless, and touted to be bravest of the warriors, they made their children starve, get whipped till their skin bled, boxed, and beaten — all to make them ace warriors. Spartan children were separated from their mothers at age of 7 and spent their entire childhood in a military boot camp.