Under the Red Blanket

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After the wounds had healed, the boys undertook excursions into the bush where they hunted. A small boy from their village accompanied each.

Sometimes they would be joined by one of the senior and respected men from the village, who would teach them how to behave like responsible adults. This teaching included the rules of etiquette, the laws of respect and how to honour the ancestral spirits. At intervals, the young men staged dances, called Amakwetha, showing off their dancingskills while they proceeded from home to home. They disguised themselves in headdresses, wore heavy skirts of palm leaves and painted their bodies with white clay.

English Whippet. Two puppies under a red blanket. Germany

At the end of the isolation period, the initiates were marched down to the river to wash themselves. Upon returning, their guide then placed a piece of fat on their heads and smeared it straight down their bodies and across their shoulders, in the form of a cross. After this ritual, the boys wrapped themselves in brand new blankets and turned away from the hut, covering their faces.

All their possessions were thrown into the hut and then set alight, to prevent witches from taking possession of these things. They were also forbidden to look back. The amakrwala, as these boy-men were called, were then marched back to their parental homes where they were showered with gifts and a feast was prepared in their honour. After the feast was over, the young men went indoors where girls of their own age helped them to smear themselves from top to bottom with a mixture of oil and red ochre.

Every day, for the following year, the boy had to refresh his red ochre. He also had to walk slowly to demonstrate his humility and to signify that he was still a "small', unimportant man. While the males of the tribe underwent their initiation, girls of the same age had their heads shaven and were dressed in a specific manner for a few weeks. When the male initiates emerged from their isolation, the girls were recognised as being of marriageable age. Courtship and marriage The traditional Xhosa was allowed to have more than one wife.

Xhosa tradition made provision for a certain degree of contact and courtship between sweethearts but proper form demanded that girls remain virgins until they married. If a girl was not a virgin, her father would automatically receive less lobola bride price for her. Traditionally, the groom-to-be would abduct the bride, with the approval of her family, and then marry her. Today, marriage only involves the exchange of valuables.

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The bride's father pays a dowry to his daughter's future in-laws and the bridegroom has to pay lobola for the bride. This was because of their custom of wearing red blankets dyed with red ochre, the intensity of the colour varying from tribe to tribe.

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The different ways in which clothes and other accessories were worn signalled the status of the wearer. Unmarried women wore wraps tied around their shoulders, leaving their breasts exposed. Xhosa females always wore some form of headdress, as a sign of respect to the head of the family, either their father or husband.

Older Xhosa women were allowed to wear more elaborate headpieces because of their seniority. The various tribes had their own different forms of traditional dress and the colour of their garments and the adornments they wore denoted their tribal origins.

The Xhosa tribe itself consisted of two major clans that could be distinguished from one another bytheir different styles of dress. The Gcaleka women, for example, encased their arms and legs in beads and brass bangles and some also wore neck beads. Men often wore goatskin bags in which to carry essentials such as homegrown tobacco and a knife. Making the bag required great skill and patience as it had to be made from skin that had been removed in one piece, cured without removing the hair, and turned inside out.

Art and Crafts Other than the beadwork used for their traditional dress and their pipes made of clay, the Xhosa people were not really known for any other arts and crafts. The girls of the family usually produced the beadwork, helping their mothers to make articles for themselves, their fathers, brothers and boyfriends. From time to time they were permitted to borrow these pieces and to wear them themselves. Music and Dance Dancing formed an integral part of the Xhosa culture and was part and parcel of most of the rituals.

Dancing was, for example, used in the "fattening of the maize" ceremony and as part of the ritual to ensure the fertility of a friend before she married or to restore her fertility if she had trouble bearing children after the marriage. Also, although from the blur it looked like a sontaran, it actually seemed taller and its head was smaller under the blanket..

If the sontarans are involved, why not come out guns blazing with death or glory as they are built to do, unless this is the only sontaran who doesn't. Maybe it's a cowardly sontaran on the run? Plus, we now have the Toy Soldier sub plot, the fact that Rupert and Clara obviously get together and the end of all things in the universe I think, even though it was not said, that it was ME. Why she would be watching Danny Pink and then be under the blanket, I don't know, but that was her knocking on the spaceship door at the end of the universe.

In "Hell Bent", the Doctor met her at the end of the universe when everything else was dead and she was the only living thing left sitting in her chair watching the stars go out. By clicking "Post Your Answer", you acknowledge that you have read our updated terms of service , privacy policy and cookie policy , and that your continued use of the website is subject to these policies. Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered. So, if there was nothing there but fear, who or what was under the blanket? Doctor Who, 13th September S8E4: So the Doctor was fixated on his own fear of the dark in the end, and Clara was the one under the bed in his dream.

But who was it under the blanket on Rupert's bed?

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Another child, or something else? Baldrickk 1 3 7. Man I loved this episode. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. He later moved to Minnesota where he met and married Edna Michaelson. Soon after, they left the US to spend twenty-nine years living in India. The story relates the trials and tribulations of life in the jungle.

The book also describes the horrors witnessed during the separation of India and Pakistan in Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Under the Red Blanket , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Under the Red Blanket.

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