Coming of Age in Old Calabar

From an article about a practice found in some areas of Eastern Nigeria.

A time comes in the life of every village girl when she is no longer a girl and yet not quite a grown-up. It
is at this stage that her parents prepare her for the ceremony of ‘Coming of age'. In the former Calabar
and Rivers Provinces of Eastern Nigeria, these ceremonies are performed in Fattening Rooms.

Fattening Rooms are, as the name suggests, places where girls are deliberately over-fed to make
them grow fat. But a Fattening Room is more than that. It is the place where what the tribe considers to
be the ideal woman is artistically produced. For the people of Calabar, the ideal woman must be plump;
a plump girl is considered beautiful and healthy, and obviously of wealthy parentage. The girl is
therefore over-fed by professional elderly women, her food consisting mainly of pounded yam,
cocoyam, plantain, vegetables and fresh fish. She is not allowed to do any hard work. She does not even
bathe herself in the stream. The elderly women either bathe her or else supervise her bathing.
Sometimes she is fed like a child. She is not allowed to play games which involve running and jumping,
or to have any excitement.

However, beauty is believed to consist of not only of a plump body, but also a smooth skin and a
graceful movement. So body of the girl in the Fattening Room is regularly rubbed with cam-wood (a red
bark) and a special white chalk and even sometimes cold ashes. These give her body a smoothness and a
glow which most modern cosmetics cannot give. She is also taught the activities which give grace to the
body, like balancing a pot of water on her head while walking uphill. She also has to learn how to walk
gracefully. Calabar people say walking is not just a question of lifting one foot and then the other;
soldiers do that and camels too; but when the girl in the Fattening Room walks across the yard or
compound, she should make spectators sit up and watch, spell-bound.

The girl is taught the dances and culture of her people as well as the history of her family and tribe.
The elderly women also teach her to cook all the various delicious dishes for which her people are
famous. In fact, the girls in the Fattening Room are given such extraordinary care that the early
missionaries suspected that the girls were being worshipped as goddesses, and that the Fattening
Rooms were places where a peculiar pagan rite was practised. But the rooms did produce and still
produce some of the most beautiful women in the world.

How do the girls themselves see this fattening-room ceremonies today? Girls like to go through the
ceremonies provided they are not kept on longer than six weeks instead of the traditional two years.
And the modern girl is prepared to go through the six weeks over-feeding, because at the end of the
ceremonies she receives many costly gifts from her parents, relatives and friends. However, the girls
usually collect their rich gifts and, once out of the Fattening Room, the first thing they do is to start
slimming.

Answer the comprehension question below using full sentences.

1. Why are girls put into Fattening Rooms, according to the passage?
2. Why is plumpness generally admired in Calabar, apart from being considered attractive in itself?
 3. What word in the second paragraph tells us that the women in charge of the Fattening Rooms
are experts who receive payment for their work?
4. In what two different ways are the girls helped to grow fat?
5. The third paragraph is about two other ways of making the girls look beautiful. What are they?
6. ‘…..walking is not just a question of lifting one foot and then the other' what does this imply?
7. If the Fattening Room is regarded as a sort of school, which of the following are taught in it?
a) Local history b) current affairs c) speech d) deportment( the art of moving and standing
attractively. E) physical fitness
8. What made the early missionaries think the girls in the Fattening Rooms were being worshipped
as goddesses?
9. Do modern girls really like to be fattened? Give a reason, from the passage.
10. Provide a word or a phrase that can replace each of the following words as used in the passage.
a) Deliberately b) ideal. C) spectators d) pagan e) professional

Writing
Instructions: Answer any two questions of your choice. Credit will be awarded for
clarity of expression and orderly presentation of material.
Q1. Write an article to be published in your school magazine on the topic: English
club activities are an effective way of learning the English language.
Q2. Write an application to the Scholarship Secretariat of your country requesting
a scholarship for your Master’s Degree program.
Q3. You just got admission into a foreign university, write a visa application to the
Embassy of the concerned country for a study visa.
Q4. As the newly elected head of the Student Representative Council, write a
speech to be delivered at your induction ceremony.
Q5. You recently finished you English Language training at TAS and desire to do
your internship. Write a letter for internship in any institution of your choice.