Tags
20 times, Amazon, boys, Bullet Ant Gloves, dance, drugged to sleep, festival, jungle, Medicine Man, most painful sting, ritual, Satere-Mawe, sexually mature, ten minutes
Bullet Ant Gloves (Satere-Mawe tribe, Amazon)
When young boys of the Satere-Mawe tribe become sexually mature they must perform the Bullet Ant Glove ritual. The boys, a Medicine Man and other boys his age go into the jungle to gather bullet ants. Bullet Ants have the most painful sting in the world; it has been compared to bullets hitting flesh. The boys gather the ants who are drugged with herbs to put them to sleep by the Medicine Man. While the ants are sleeping off the drugs, they are placed into woven mesh gloves. When they wake up, they are trapped and become angry and aggressive. Boys must keep the gloves on for ten minutes and do a dance to keep their minds off the pain. As if that isn’t bad enough, a boy must perform this ceremony 20 before they can prove that they are now men.
