Nightly Counseling in a Nampula Backyard

An Ethnographic Narrative from a Female Initiation Rite in Mozambique

Abstract

Archaeologists dig through layers, looking for fragments that make it possible to retell a story. Observing the archaeologists’ work technique, I think of this work with Makua dances as a search for stratigraphy, for tracing the trajectory of the dance through its vestiges and different levels of depth: movements, narratives and relationships between people and objects. In this excavation, I found fragments of narratives, images, videos, texts and sounds that led me to reconstruct meanings, describe and trace movements. I seek to understand female initiation rites through the intersection between the experience lived by my body as a black diasporic woman, guided by the hands of Makua women and the narratives of Makua women and men.