Growing Up Sexually

M’WEMBA (NORTHERN RHODESIA, Zambia)

Index → Africa→ Zambia → Bemba

Featured: Kaonde, Nkoya, Tonga, Ila, Bemba, M’wemba, Ndembu, Mambwe / Amambwe, Luvale, Lozi

Clarke (1931:p274)[1] states on the M’wemba of Rhodesia that

“[g]irls when they have their first menstruation are taken to a hut in the village, where they are instructed as to how to best please their husbands, and they are told all about childbirth, which is demonstrated to them by old women. Their sexual organ is enlarged either with an artificial penis cut from the Mulombwa tree or from a tree called Mutimbwambusa, or with an artificial penis made from the leaves of Itchifumbi”.

Marital sexarche is preceded by ritual.

Janssen, D. F., Growing Up Sexually. VolumeI. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin: Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology

Last revised: Sept 2004