The Gebusi Culture

The world is full of diverse cultures. They used to be separated in a world without the ability to quickly travel vast distances. With the creation of more and more advanced technologies, the airplane opened the doors for fairly convenient world exploration. Now cultures weave in and out of each other, delicately or violently mixing. Bruce Knauft shares his discoveries and challenges with the Gebusi culture in his book, The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World. One intriguing discovery Knauft conveys is the Gebusi way of handling infant deaths. Since “a third of them die during their first year,” (39) the Gebusi concocted a way to make the mass deaths of babies less painful. “The Gebusi don’t think of infants as fully human until they are about seven months old, when their first teeth emerge...a human spirit is not thought to be completely rooted” (39). The soul concept aided them in coping with the death of their young by making babies less human, and in turn their deaths less painful. While the community as a whole could distance itself from the pain, mothers still experienced grief over the loss of a child. They wept even though they believed the children had yet to receive a soul. The father could not be as distant as the rest of the …show more content…
The Gebusi have an extremely patriarchal way of life, but their initiation ceremony transcended gender stereotypes. The males were painted red, which was a symbol for menstrual blood, as they transitioned from boy to manhood. “The initiation costume was a pure expression of the beauty, allure, and sexuality of the red bird of paradise--a spirit woman” (87). The Gebusi used femininity to outline masculinity, even though they more highly value men. They both informed the young boys of feminine foods that they cannot eat and made them the very symbol of femininity. The Gebusi culture simultaneously exalted the female being and shamed