CHAPTER XXIX 



SOCIAL LIFE 



IT may be convenient to commence an account of the social 

 life of the Liberian Negroes by describing the initiation cere- 

 monies for boys and girls which prevail amongst nearly all 

 the tribes except the very few individuals who have adopted 

 Christianity. Even Muhammadanism has not led to their 

 abolition. The men's school of initiation is known among 

 the Vai as Beri and among the Kru and Grebo as Kedibi. 

 The women's school is called by the Vai Sande. The institu- 

 tion, however, seems to have fallen out of use to some extent 

 amongst the Kru peoples in the coast region. 



It is scarcely necessary to point out to students of 

 Africa that this institution of initiation schools for boys and 

 girls is not only widely spread throughout Negroland but 

 is characteristic of most savage nations, reappearing in much 

 the same form amongst the blacks of Australia. The " Grigri 

 Bush " (as it is called in the pidgin English of the coast) 

 appears in almost exactly the same form not only in Western 

 Liberia, but in the interior of Sierra Leone, in the Congo 

 Basin, and right away down to the Zulus and Basuto of South 

 Africa. It has died out to some extent amongst the eastern 

 Nilotic Negroes, and when Muhammadanism (still more Chris- 

 tianity) gets hold thoroughly of an African country, this institu- 

 tion disappears more or less completely ; though of course it is 

 so fundamental an institution in the growth of human civilisation 



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