ABSTRACT
I t is impossible to map the distribution of girls' initiation ceremonies in Central Africa completely, since there are so many areas for which we have no information. Nevertheless
they seem to be widely practised. A number of tribes in Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, the Congo and Angola hold puberty rites for girls which are called by the same term as that used by the Bemba-chisungu. Other tribes hold ceremonies which seem to be very similar in that they are individual rites organized on a family basis and related to the institution of marriage, and that they consist of the seclusion of the candidates, mimes, singing and dancing, and they exclude any physical mutilation such as clitoridectomy, which is practised among some of the Eastern and Southern Bantu. These ceremonies are however called by different names. In yet a third group of peoples, mainly Nyasaland, and Tanganyika, girls' initiation schools are held, either instead of individual ceremonies, or concurrently with them. In some tribes these schools occur side by side with circumcision schools for boys, and in the case of the Yao, a final ceremony is held jointly for boys and girls.
