During their weeks of recovery, novices are hazed by older circumcised youths or by elders. They fast and observe numerous prohibitions, as may also their kin, in order to ensure recovery. In their isolated quarters, the novices - vulnerable and impressionable because of the wounds, fasting, and exposure that they have suffered are subjected to intensive instructions about sexual behavior, moral attitudes, and proper conduct. Toward the end of their confinement, the novices may don strange garb and tour nearby villages representing their status of being nameless, nonsocial creatures. Upon recovery, they return to their homes and enjoy the company of women at dances and feasts that celebrate their new adulthood.
Circumcision marks their ritual death as minors and their rebirth as responsible adults.
In other East African societies, especially Para-Nilotest such as the Maasai, rites of circumcision are not held every year. Through circumcision men enter named tribal age groups whose members provide mutual aid and hospitality and, when young, form fighting units. Where such initiation occurs we find the belief that society improves upon nature by transforming the male body into a more proper vehicle for a moral person to inhabit. The social person and the natural body are brought into closer conjunction. The endurance of pain and the observance of ritual restrictions express both a willingness and a capacity to subject personal appetites and feelings to collective ends.