CIRCUMCISION CEREMONY IN VANUATU
This year the Yakel Festival is an opportunity to organize the circumcision ceremony. This festival beyond the circumcision of children between 5 and 7 years allows men and women from different villages to meet and for young people (between 18 and 20 years) to talk about marriage.
At each festival in Vanuatu men and women gather on the Nakamal, an outdoor area surrounded by banyan trees, place of festivities. The inhabitants of the three surrounding villages are invited and all wear makeup, dress with maximum colours and eat. The village that hosts the party must prepare lap-lap and kill pigs for all guests. The cooking starts the day before, the meat and lap-lap are wrapped in banana leaves and cooked on the ground with lava stones. The inhabitants of the organizing village give gifts to the inhabitants of the invited villages: sugar cane stalks, cassava and kava roots but also mats and bags woven from tree bark. And when the sky gets dark, begins the dance that lasts until the next sunrise.
+ photographs of the Circumcision ceremony in Vanuatu