Pokot Coming of Age
Pokot Coming of Age
THE VEILED BOYS
Pokot Coming of Age
In a secret place far from the village, there is a sacred forest where Pokot boys disappear to emerge as men—and where women are forbidden to enter. Here, scores of young boys sit under branch awnings, holding bows and arrows. These newly circumcised boys are covered in ochered skins, their faces completely hidden with long sisal veils.
This is the beginning of the Pokot boys’ passage into manhood. The initiates will live in the forest for two to three months, during which time everything that had been familiar in their lives as boys would be erased. Instead, they will be imprinted with the new knowledge of their future lives as young men. The boys wear hand-twisted fiber veils that indicate their state of limbo, no longer boys but also not yet men. For a month, they will learn the discipline of silence and the activities expected of boys: constructing fires, making bows and arrows, traditional Pokot codes of behavior and ways to protect the community. The older youths will learn how to be an adult, how to marry, and how to defend the tribe against cattle raids. Only when the boy completes his training can he leave the sacred forest, part his veil, and look onto the world as a young man.
For his full passage to manhood, a boy will go through two more initiation ceremonies, the first called Ngetenogh and second, Sapana. The Ngetenogh recognizes the importance of both the male and female sides of his mature personality. When a boy reaches the age of twenty, the Sapana - the final stage of his passage into manhood - takes place. In the sacred forest, a bull is slaughtered and the intestines read by a diviner to determine the initiates’ future. Chyme from the stomach of the sacrificed bull is smeared over the boys’ bodies as a blessing. The mother of each initiate delivers a calabash of sour milk, to be mixed with blood and drunk by the initiates for strength and to unify the generation.
Carrying spears and shouting and stamping in mock battle attacks, warriors of the previously initiated generation charge in among the new initiates, simulating the skills that Pokot men employ to raid cattle and to protect the community. These raids sometimes result in violence, particularly among the neighboring enemies of the Pokot. If a man kills an enemy during a cattle raid, he must undergo a ritual during which he must be purified before he may reenter Pokot society.
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