DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49271#0211
The Kababish, a Sudan Arab tribe
149
The Kababish have no organised games for children or adults, no dolls were seen,
and the children generally seemed to amuse themselves by imitating their elders. Groups
of children mimicking the dances of adults were occasionally noticed.
IX. Circumcision and infibulation. Circumcision is performed before puberty.
As no opportunity of witnessing the operation occurred during our stay at Showa, we give
the following description of the circumcision of two boys among the sedentary Arabs of
Hellet Nurayn, where the folk were said to use the same methods as those in vogue
among the Kababish, and where the village, on the western edge of the Kaja massif, lay
well within the Kababish country. The stoicism of the boys was wonderful. All allowance
being made for training, it is clear that quantitatively pain is not the same to them as it is
to us; certainly its reflex effects on the organism are not comparable. The small size of
children here being taken into account, the boys seemed perhaps seven and nine. The
elder was lame from hip disease.
The operation took place just outside the door of a tukl. A rough shield was con-
trived, by drilling a hole in a piece of old gourd picked up out of the sand by the house
fence. Through this the foreskin was pulled, repeated efforts being made to drag it
through, without the least regard to the patient even when the hole was obviously too
small. At last after a number of attempts, in which the gourd was pushed very far back,
and which it may be assumed tore through the mucosa reflected on to the glands, the
operator was satisfied. After each essay he registered progress by marking the skin with
a straw moistened in his mouth. The child went through all this without a muscle twitch-
ing, nor did his hands tighten on the camel whip he was given to hold. Then with the
shield thrust well home towards the body, the foreskin was pulled forwards and tightly
tied with thread, a loop being left hanging between the legs. Thus prepared the two
boys led a procession of singing and drumming women for 100 or 150 yards out from the
house and back again. One woman danced along with a clay pot on her head full of a
lighted mixture of some sweet-scented stuff. All the time the boys waved the whips,
making as though to crack them. Their faces and hair had previously been smeared with
dihn and they each had on a clean white robe. When they got back to the house, one
was seated on inverted wooden bowl and told to look up, being supported by a man behind
him. He himself held up his robe; the operator pulled hard on the thread loop and push-
ing the shield back, made a minute nick in the skin with a razor, and then, feeling satis-
fied that he was in the right place, he cut through, but the razor being blunt his movements
were rather those of a man sawing. No notice was taken of the blood, the skin was pushed
back towards the body leaving bare for a moment the whitish aponeurosis of the penis;
then this, and the whole organ were powdered with the black powder produced by car-
bonizing goat’s hair, of which a plate full was at the side of the operator. The organ was
149
The Kababish have no organised games for children or adults, no dolls were seen,
and the children generally seemed to amuse themselves by imitating their elders. Groups
of children mimicking the dances of adults were occasionally noticed.
IX. Circumcision and infibulation. Circumcision is performed before puberty.
As no opportunity of witnessing the operation occurred during our stay at Showa, we give
the following description of the circumcision of two boys among the sedentary Arabs of
Hellet Nurayn, where the folk were said to use the same methods as those in vogue
among the Kababish, and where the village, on the western edge of the Kaja massif, lay
well within the Kababish country. The stoicism of the boys was wonderful. All allowance
being made for training, it is clear that quantitatively pain is not the same to them as it is
to us; certainly its reflex effects on the organism are not comparable. The small size of
children here being taken into account, the boys seemed perhaps seven and nine. The
elder was lame from hip disease.
The operation took place just outside the door of a tukl. A rough shield was con-
trived, by drilling a hole in a piece of old gourd picked up out of the sand by the house
fence. Through this the foreskin was pulled, repeated efforts being made to drag it
through, without the least regard to the patient even when the hole was obviously too
small. At last after a number of attempts, in which the gourd was pushed very far back,
and which it may be assumed tore through the mucosa reflected on to the glands, the
operator was satisfied. After each essay he registered progress by marking the skin with
a straw moistened in his mouth. The child went through all this without a muscle twitch-
ing, nor did his hands tighten on the camel whip he was given to hold. Then with the
shield thrust well home towards the body, the foreskin was pulled forwards and tightly
tied with thread, a loop being left hanging between the legs. Thus prepared the two
boys led a procession of singing and drumming women for 100 or 150 yards out from the
house and back again. One woman danced along with a clay pot on her head full of a
lighted mixture of some sweet-scented stuff. All the time the boys waved the whips,
making as though to crack them. Their faces and hair had previously been smeared with
dihn and they each had on a clean white robe. When they got back to the house, one
was seated on inverted wooden bowl and told to look up, being supported by a man behind
him. He himself held up his robe; the operator pulled hard on the thread loop and push-
ing the shield back, made a minute nick in the skin with a razor, and then, feeling satis-
fied that he was in the right place, he cut through, but the razor being blunt his movements
were rather those of a man sawing. No notice was taken of the blood, the skin was pushed
back towards the body leaving bare for a moment the whitish aponeurosis of the penis;
then this, and the whole organ were powdered with the black powder produced by car-
bonizing goat’s hair, of which a plate full was at the side of the operator. The organ was