After dark she
returns to her home and is secluded" in a hut for some time. With
the Awa-nkonde, a tribe at the northern end of Lake Nyassa, it is a
rule that after her first menstruation a girl must be kept apart,
with a few companions of her own sex, in a darkened house. The floor
is covered with dry banana leaves, but no fire may be lit in the
house, which is called "the house of the Awasungu," that is, "of
maidens who have no hearts."
In New Ireland girls are confined for four or five years in small
cages, being kept in the dark and not allowed to set foot on the
ground. The custom has been thus described by an eye-witness. "I
heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected with some
of the young girls here, so I asked the chief to take me to the
house where they were. The house was about twenty-five feet in
length, and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the
entrance to which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that
it was strictly '_tabu._' Inside the house were three conical
structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or
twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet
from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the
top.
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