adults of the Sande secured the support and protection of their society (Richards, 2016: 81). The cutting of the genitals created the gender of the initiates, allowing them access to proper knowledge. The knowledge provided explicit social rules as to the proper performance of their allotted gender. Implicit and important to Mende gender ideology is also heteronormativity and reproduction, both of which are expected of, and celebrated by, the Mende (Ferme, 2001: 61–79; Kalous, 1995: 318; Cosentino, 1982: 22–4).
The rite of circumcision for Mende preteens and teens requires that they be removed from their families to the “bush school,” with “bush” marking off a space wherein the Sande and Poro conduct their induction of young Mende folk into their respective societies. This marked off space, on the boundary between the town and bush, is only open to the members and initiates of either the Sande or Poro. Entering this space without proper permission may well mean severe retribution. For example, in the past girls or women who trespassed into the Poro bush were killed. This practice, however, has changed and such girls/women are ritually brought into the Poro to serve the needs of the society. This person is known as the Mabɔle and she is considered as sharing equally in the masculine and feminine, thus challenging, while reaffirming, Mende gender ideology (Ferme, 2001: 74–76). Sande members who take up chieftain roles are also initiated into the Poro society (Pemunta and Tabenyang, 2017: 9; Phillips, 1995).
Paul Richards writes of the Mende bush school that:
Specifically in Poro and Sande, the sodalities protect the knowledge that includes how to ensure correct management of the spirits of the bush, upon which so many vital resources depend. Initiation and associated ordeals are two key means through which sodality members are bonded, emotionally, to maintain these secrets.
(2016: 81)
Sande and Poro initiates return to their homes and work during the day, but in the evening they go back to the bush school until they are “pulled out”: that is, they have completed their rite of passage into gendered adulthood (Ferme, 2001: 76–9; Phillips, 1995: 85). During this phase of the rite they are in both liminal space and liminal time, being neither child nor fully adult. Bodily marked by circumcision, a mark that is required but properly unseen, young girls’ bodies, including the head, are covered with white clay, while white head ties bind their heads. Both signifiers are used to represent the girls’ state of liminality and their journey into knowledge acquisition – a knowledge accessible only through the endurance of the pain of circumcision. Male initiates, whose bodily cut of the genitals is also necessary but unseen, have their heads shaved to mark their liminal status (Ferme, 2001). For both female and male initiates the head becomes the site of the representation of the unseen cut, a not uncommon homology (see, for example, Eilberg‐Schwartz and Doniger (1995), wherein the head and genitals are seen to be stand‐ins for each other). Upon the completion of the rite of passage, both male and female initiates “sit in state” at a very public meeting place where they are given gifts and recognized by their new name, conferred upon them during their rite of passage. Newly made women sit in their best clothes for three days, while newly made men, with head now covered, sit for four days (Ferme, 2001: 75–7; Ahmadu, 2000; Phillips, 1995: 76–95; Phillips, 1978: 269–71). Completing the rite, they rejoin the larger social body as gendered adults ready to take up their assigned roles.
Circumcision, the cut of the flesh, opened the way for children to learn Mende knowledge related to Mende ontology, or bodily being, which included gender, marriage, and reproduction; philosophy which introduced abstract knowledge; sociology, which directed behavioral norms in all things; psychology, which spoke to the correct gendered mindset and ritual; and mythology, which legitimated and reinforced all forms of knowledge. In the bush school, initiates, female, male and female‐male, learned to be proper Mende folk (see also Little, 1965: 356). Female‐males included female husbands or powerful women who are positioned to take wives, wives who increase their wealth, as well as male daughters who can assume power and act on behalf of their family. These are similar to the female husbands and male daughters among the Igbo of Nigeria, as studied by Ifa Amadiume (1987).
Without circumcision there was and is no entrance into either the Sande or the Poro and without the Sande and Poro those who remained uninitiated cannot enter Mende society as an adult, and certainly cannot take up any significant social, political, or economic role, because they did not have the proper education by which to succeed in Mende life. Mariane Ferme wrote that: “In Mende, uninitiated children are referred to as kpowanga (pl.), a term that also means “mad” and “mentally deficient.” She further comments that “two processes overlap in initiation: one assumes the moral and ideal attributes of Mende men and women at the same time as one learns how to interpret the surrounding world” ((2001: 210). Ruth Phillips, following Carol MacCormack (1979), also wrote that “the Mende regard circumcision as necessary in order to change children, whose sexuality is regarded as ambiguous or neutral, into heterosexual, gendered adults” (1995: 78).
Maintaining Gender in and through Mythology
If the ritual cutting of genitals marked the gender and heteronormativity of the body of initiates, mythology abstracts the material practices of ritual. There are no direct myths among the Mende concerning the foundation of circumcision or the necessity to circumcise children, as one finds in the Tanakh and the commandment of deity to Abram that he circumcise himself and all those males associated with him as part of his covenant with deity. In order to walk before YHWH and “be perfect,” Abram must circumcise himself after which deity gives him a new name, Abraham. Having performed his own circumcision, Abraham was then able to impregnate Sarai, whose name was changed to Sarah (Genesis 17). That said, the conceptualization of perfection and the promise of reproduction in light of male circumcision proposed in the narrative is quite similar to the Mende conceptualization of circumcision. Among the Mende there is an understanding that there was/is a need to bring that which is taken to be in a state of nature, children, and move them into a state of culture, so that they can join Mende society. This shift from a state of nature to a state of culture, from the raw to the cooked (Lévi‐Strauss, 1970), acts in concert with the Mende mythology of the bush as nature par excellence that must be clear cut in order to produce rice, a Mende staple, and other crops such as beans and cassava (Ferme, 2001: 40–47). Like the clearing of the chaotic bush so that it may properly produce, children’s genitals were also clear cut ensuring they might properly produce. As Donald Cosentino wrote: “The worlds of the town and the bush define the limits of the Mende Cosmos. They exist as two poles in absolute opposition – town : bush :: nature : culture :: known : unknown :: human : unhuman” (1982: 25). Fuambai Ahmadu, following Carol MacCormack (1979), also writes that:
Like other areas that fall into the category of “nature,” such as the “bush” or forest before being cleared to be “tamed” and “made” into productive farmland, children must be “made” into either “male” or “female” depending on the appearance of their genitalia at birth, in order for them to be able to reproduce and become part of the world of culture.
(2000: 296–7)
Among the Mende the “bush” is a site of power, and the location of the spirits whose powers can help or hinder Mende folk. Cosentino writes that the bush is the “home of the unhuman and anti‐human” made up of ancestors called ndebla and bush spirits or genii called jinanga (1982: 25). In the bush can be found powerful medicines, called hale, that are used by the Poro and Sande as part of their ritual and medicinal practices. In the Mende system of belief and practice, hale is medicine derived from residual power imbued into existence by the creator deity Ngewo, also called Leve. As Kenneth Little wrote, “He [Ngewo] invested the whole universe with a certain non‐material kind of power or influence, which manifests itself in various ways and on specific occasions in human beings and animals and even in natural phenomena such as lightning, waterfalls and mountains” (Little, 1967: 218).
