Negotiating gender: Initiation arts of 'Mwadi' and 'Mukanda' among the Lunda and Luvale, Kabompo District, North-Western Province, Zambia

Initiation arts reinforce, negotiate and celebrate women's societal gender roles among the Lunda and Luvale in Kabompo District, Zambia. Women's initiations (mwadi) celebrate the potential motherhood of initiates, making women's creative power available to individuals. Adults, through initiation arts, reinforce the importance of agriculture and respectful kinship relationships to fertility. During men's initiations (mukanda), the entire community honors the successful woman as fulfilled mother because she has successfully raised her son. Both mother and son transform during the initiation process. The son dies to childhood, undergoes time in the male womb of mukanda, and emerges as a potential man. Initiation transforms the mother's relationship with her son from non-gendered to a restricted association based on gender. Both mother and son display their transformations through elaborate body paint.;Negotiations of gender expectations occur in both initiations. During mukanda, masked figures come to the village to honor the mothers. Through medicine, ritual, costume and mask resulting in secrecy of identity, male performers transform into male or female makishi. As female makishi, men present their gender expectations to a female audience that judges them and their performance, accepting what they like and mocking or physically rejecting the unacceptable performance or ideal. Men, as critical audience and consumers of mwadi's product, accept or reject women's presentation of the ideal feminine physical form.;Outside influences cause changes in the rituals themselves. As a direct reflection of women's inborn power, women's masquerades do not depend on medicine or secrecy of costume and mask. Men, on the other hand, create power through gender boundaries created by the masquerade's secrets and by usurping women's power in the form of stolen menstrual blood. Women willingly act as "unknowing" foils for men's power. Although counterparts, the West only recognizes men's masking. Researchers, textbooks on "traditional culture." and the blending of cultures promoted by Zambian politics has presented this Western model to the women of Kabompo District. Many of them no longer recognize women's makishi as a counterpart to men's and the practice itself is slowly dying.