SOME AFRICAN TRADITION YOU NEED TO KNOW

In the Sudanese Latuka tribe, when a man wants to marry a woman,
he kidnaps her. Elderly members of his family go and ask the girl’s
father for her hand in marriage, and if dad agrees, he beats the suitor
as a sign of his acceptance of the union. If the father disagrees,
however, the man might forcefully marry the woman anyway.

This Southern African ceremony is practiced by several tribes and is
how a young boy proves his manhood. When they are of age, boys are
sent to spend several days or weeks in a circumcision lodge during
winter, where they’re put through rigorous and often dangerous tests
and rituals such as continuous dancing until exhaustion, and
circumcision.
Members of the Maasai tribe in Kenya and Tanzania spit as a way of
blessing. Men spit on newborns and say they are bad in the belief that if
they praise a baby, it will be cursed. Maasai warriors will also spit in
their hands before shaking the hand of an elder.

In order to prove their manhood in the Ethiopian Hamer tribe, young
boys must run, jump and land on the back of a bull before then
attempting to run across the backs of several bulls. They do this multiple
times, and usually in the nude.

In the Southwestern Congo, the Suku tribe honors ancestors and
elders, when they die, with a ceremony held in the clearing of a forest.
Here, gifts and offerings are brought, but outsiders and all women are
forbidden to attend.

In the Pokot tribe in Kenya, wealth is measured by how many cows a
family has. Most Pokot people are either “corn people” or “cow
people”— meaning that’s what they cultivate on their land — but all
Pokot people measure their wealth by cows. The number of women a
man can marry is determined by how many cows he has.