BY BEATRICE PORBENI


Africa is known for its rich culture, heritage, and love for customary traditions. Some African tribal traditions are quite mysterious and tend to fascinate people within and outside the continent. For many years, these tribal communities have lived without many modern comforts and their traditions may live on for decades to come. Here are some captivating traditions from several tribes in Africa.

The Khweta Ceremony

Southern African tribes such as the Zulus and Xhosas are known to have practiced their “manhood” ceremony for years. The ceremony involves a young boy leaving his family home to prove his manhood. When the boys are of age, they are sent to spend several days or weeks in a lodge during winter, where they are often put through rigorous and often time, dangerous rituals such as continuous dancing until exhaustion, and non-medical circumcision.

Kidnap your bride

In Sudan, the Latuka tribe, has a custom where a man kidnaps the woman he wants to marry. Elderly members of his family go and ask the girl’s father for her hand in marriage, and if her dad agrees, he beats the suitor as a sign of his acceptance of the marriage. However, if the father refuses, the man might forcefully marry the woman.

The spitting blessings

The spitting blessing is an unusual tradition, practiced by the members of the Maasai tribe in Kenya and Tanzania. They spit on the newborn babies as a way of blessing the baby. They believe that if they praise a baby, it will be cursed. Maasai warriors will also spit on their hands before shaking the hand of elders in the village.

Measuring wealth with cows

The Kenyan Pokot tribe measures its wealth by how many cows a family has. The people of Pokot are either “corn people” or “cow people”, essentially what they cultivate on their land, but almost all Pokot people measure their wealth by cows because the number of women a man can marry is predominantly determined by the number of cows he has.

Beating the suitor

The Sharo tradition is practiced by the Fulani tribe, particularly those in West Africa. Sharo occurs when two young men want to marry the same woman. To compete for her hand in marriage, they must beat one another up. The men must quash the signs of pain during their fight. The winner is the man who takes the beating without showing signs of pain and his reward is the woman as his wife.

Women can’t grieve elders

The Suku tribe, In Southwestern Congo, pay homage to their elders and ancestors when they die, by holding a ceremony in the clearing of a forest. In the event, gifts and offerings are presented, but according to the tradition, outsiders and all the women are banned from attending the event.

Bull jumping

The Ethiopian Hamers’ have practiced bull jumping tradition for many years; it allows the involvement and participation of the whole community. During the ceremony, young boys are expected to run, jump and land on the back of a bull before then try to run past the backs of numerous bulls. The young men do this several times, and usually naked in order to prove their manhood. While the women of the tribe dance, blow brass horns and scream as the men perform.

http://guardian.ng/life/culture-lifestyle/fascinating-african-traditions/

Lalasticlacla Mynd44

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See as I miss FTC with this useless Airtel!

Anyways, have you heard Cockroach milk has a lot of protein and it's good for human consumption?

To every aboki his kettle

K

mama Africa

Interesting

You are missing the most recent African trend.


Impregnating the bride before seeking her parents blessing as per marriage to beat down the bride price

African

Mm

Apologies to my Benue friends.

But is it true, that there is a tribe in Benue that offer their wive's to strangers as a welcome thing? i have heard people whisper this a lot.

Weird. Especially the tradition of spitting on new born babies.

Africa! home sweet home, but ur mata dey taya pesin at times

The "bull jumping" like seriously?

HungerBAD:
Apologies to my Benue friends.

But is it true, that there is a tribe in Benue that offer their wive's to strangers as a welcome thing? i have heard people whisper this a lot.

so u can go & befriend a benue man with pretty wife & be paying him visit on a daily basis

Where there is no law, there is no sin.

Africans have the best culture and traditions. You need to the Northern traditions, those people are really backward.

hmmm
meanwhile

welcome to Africa

Ok

IamLEGEND1:
You forgot the igbo tribe's consumption of the water used in bathing a corpse as a means to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused, who is usually the deceased's widow.

uselessuvbjseless

Nice and interesting topic

Proudly African.

Edit:All those fools up there shouting "barbaric or primitive",you pple fail to understand how rich and ancient African culture is.
Even the whites and asians you people worship,hold their languages and whatever cultures they have in high esteem and attach so much importance to it But we are the first to emulate anything western to the detriment of our culture.
Colonialism really Fvcked us up.

IamLEGEND1:
You forgot the igbo tribe's consumption of the water used in bathing a corpse as a means to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused, who is usually the deceased's widow.

You are not Igbo so I'll appreciate it if you don't talk on issues you know nothing about.
Igbos don't practice such and even if they did it is still what it is-Culture.
Some people use human head to bury their kings but they will still justify it under the guise of "culture" and nobody insults them.
Learn to respect pples culture and stop propagating lies or stuffs you see in Nigerian films.

HungerBAD:
Apologies to my Benue friends.

But is it true, that there is a tribe in Benue that offer their wive's to strangers as a welcome thing? i have heard people whisper this a lot.

I heard that too among the tiv people of that state.

Please STOP PROLIFERATING BACKWARD, ILLITERATE AND PRIMITIVE TRADITION BY CALLING THEM "rich culture"

These are repugnant behaviors that should be abolished and removed from the psyche of Africans, they have no place in modern societies!

[quote author=driand post=61877118][/quote] Guilty conscience is real

Interesting! Trying to imagine the origin and thinking behind these traditions. Anyway, some of these things make us who we are, Africans!