ABSTRACT
The initiation ritual is said to be ‘the most important part of custom’ and ‘the most exalted exchange, since pigs are slaughtered on the platform’. The ritual unfolds in three principal stages and affects the society as a whole, while at the same time settling the fate of children and pigs. The constitutive distinctions of human society, among villages and among the inhabitants of a single village, are dissolved; only the distinction between men and spirits survives. Village society is gradually reestablished in a reconstructed space, as women resume their pig raising and men and women go back to work in their gardens. The initiation renews the order of the world, capacitates children to participate in exchanges with spirits and men, and provides the society with the pigs it needs to continue its exchanges and to renew its relations. This chapter describes a specific but highly characteristic exchange, the pondo which concludes the initiation ritual.
