Essay On Rite Of Passage

It was the last day of school and my friends and I were talking about how each of us would spend his holiday. My parents hadn’t yet told me where the family was going to spend our holiday but I assumed we were going to London due to the Olympic Games which was to occur that year. I boasted to my friends about how my parents had already bought plane tickets as well as tickets to view some of the events in the Olympics.

When I got home that holiday, I had the biggest shock of my life. My parents told me that we were going to our village, Nnewi North in Anambra State to celebrate my rite of passage, commonly known as “Iba Ekpe” in my language. I was to turn 13 that year and being the first male child in the family, I had to partake in this traditional rite. I felt so ashamed and sad when I heard the news. Not only will I not watch the Olympic Games, but my friends in school would see me as a liar and ridicule me when I get back to school.

Growing up in the city, I imagined that all those “rite of passage” …show more content…
We were taken away from our parents, into a big forest where we were meant to survive on our own. We had a tutor with us in case of emergencies but besides that, we were meant to hunt for food and find shelter for ourselves. Because most of us lived in the city, we did not know how to hunt for animals. On the first night of the competition, we watched our instructor kill a chicken, roast it and eat it all by himself. He told us that if we wanted to eat, we had to provide the food for ourselves. That night, I was so hungry that I could not sleep. When we saw a goat the next day, no one had to remind us that if we did not kill it, we’d starve. A group of people killed the goat while the other group roasted it. This was our first step towards developing the spirit of team work. During the course of our training, we also engaged in other activities such as mountain climbing and map