For a long time studies of initiation rites focused on boys: circumcisions, tests of courage, male secret societies. One of the books that changed this perspective is Chisungu, published in 1956 by the British anthropologist Audrey Richards. It describes in detail the initiation ceremony of girls among the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia, today's Zambia.
The author and the context
Audrey Richards (1899-1984) was a student of Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics and one of the most important figures of British anthropology of her generation. She carried out long research among the Bemba in the 1930s, studying in particular their diet, agriculture and social organisation.
The Bemba were a matrilineal society: descent and many rights passed through the female line. In such a society, a girl's passage to the condition of woman and future mother had enormous social importance, because the continuity of the clan depended on her.
The 1931 ceremony
In 1931 Richards witnessed a complete chisungu, which lasted about a month. The book was published only twenty-five years later, and the author herself warned that it described a single ceremony, observed at a precise moment, in a society already changing under colonial and missionary influence.
The chisungu was held for girls who had reached puberty, generally in view of marriage. It was directed by an elderly woman expert in ritual, the nacimbusa, the "mother of the emblems", who guided the initiates through a long series of ritual actions.
The elements of the rite
Richards described dozens of distinct ritual episodes. Among the most characteristic elements:
- the seclusion of the girls in a hut and in a space in the bush, away from the daily life of the village;
- the songs, a great many, each linked to a teaching or a symbol;
- the dances of initiated women, who accompanied the girls through the various phases;
- the ordeals, physical tests and small humiliations that the initiates had to bear patiently;
- the sacred emblems, called mbusa, figures modelled in clay or designs representing duties, virtues and aspects of married and domestic life.
The mbusa were the symbolic heart of the ceremony. They were shown to the girls accompanied by songs: each figure condensed a precept, about the respect owed to the husband and in-laws, agricultural work, care of the fire and the home, motherhood.
A methodological discovery
The most innovative aspect of the book is its reflection on what the rite actually did. Richards noticed that the girls in fact already knew almost all the practical skills referred to: they knew how to farm, cook and look after a household. The chisungu, therefore, did not mainly serve to teach something new.
Its function was rather to transform the girl's status in the eyes of the community and in her own: to make her, socially and ritually, a woman. The rite also protected against dangers the Bemba associated with the passages of sexual life and fertility, and reaffirmed the values of matrilineal society.
Richards also stressed that the meanings of the symbols were not univocal. The older women themselves gave different, sometimes vague, explanations of the same emblem. The value of the rite did not depend on a single interpretation, but on its correct and shared performance.
The value of the book
Chisungu is considered a classic for several reasons:
- it is one of the most detailed descriptions ever published of an African female initiation;
- it honestly shows the limits of the observer, who did not understand everything she saw;
- it proposes reading the rite as an action that transforms, rather than a lesson that instructs.
A new edition in 1982 was introduced by the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine, a sign of the work's lasting vitality.
The passage
The three-stage pattern is clearly recognisable: separation of the girls from ordinary life, a long margin of seclusion, ordeals, songs and emblems, and finally aggregation with the public presentation and the preparation for marriage.
In short
- Audrey Richards' Chisungu, published in 1956, describes the female initiation of the Bemba of Zambia.
- The ceremony observed in 1931 lasted about a month and was led by an expert woman, the nacimbusa.
- Songs, dances, ordeals and the clay emblems called mbusa were its central elements.
- Richards observed that the rite did not teach new skills, but transformed the girl's status.
- The book remains a classic on female initiation and on how to interpret ritual symbols.
