Malidoma Patrice Some has to undergo initiation when he returns home to his birth village because they believe that he has to be purified. His elders believe that he has to be cleansed because they believe that being in the West can be toxic to him. Malidoma agrees with his elders, he states that “Without this periodic checkup, I will lose my ability to function”. But when he returns home, he has to complete another ritual so that he can be home again spiritually and physically. Even though Malidoma was physically home, spiritually he “had not arrived home yet”. His elders believed that he had to be cured by his ancestors. In Dagara culture, they believe that when children reach the stage of adolescent, they have to be initiated to become an adult in adulthood. Malidoma’s elders believe that he has already been initiated by being forced to grow up in the west. They believe that he needs to undergo …show more content…
Salvation rituals are used to save and transform a spiritually corrupted identity and set them free again. Revitalization rituals are used to save a culture and or religion from becoming endangered or extinct. This initiation is both types of rituals because they are trying to save Malidoma from the corrupted spirit that he inherited from being in the west, and they are trying to bring back his native culture and religion back into his soul. Like stated in question number one, initiation has three stages, separation, transition, and re-incorporation. In the first stage of separation, Maldoma is singled out separated from the members of his village. He is taken away from his birth village and home and isolate him so that he can solely reach out to his ancestors spiritually. The second stage is transition and liminality, in this stage, like in Grandfather Bakhye’s mortuary death ritual, he is neither there or gone. He is not living or dead, he exists between the living and the after life.