ABSTRACT
The kekpopam rite performed before pregnancy, is regarded as the standard and desirable preliminary to marriage and betrothed girls are frequently urged by their mothers to avoid intercourse in order that they may have kekpopam. Parents have direct personal preference since, as has been seen, the marriage ceremonies are more elaborate, and so redound to their prestige, while the gifts that they then receive are more substantial than after likpokot. It is clear that in the period from the 1870s premarital intercourse was sufficiently general to result in pregnancy before marriage in about half the instances. Since that time, however, there has been a sharp increase in the incidence of pregnancy before the clitoridectomy rite is held, with the result that the orthodox marriage procedure is generally honoured in the breach. This change is no doubt due to a number of factors, the relative force of which it was not possible to determine.
