sequences or changes in life which are expected, the liminal stage provides the setting for a dramatization of the individual's recasting into a new form, a statement that the old has passed and the new is born An elaborate example of rites of passage performed for an anticipated event is chisungu, a female initiation ceremony done publicly among the Bemba of Zambia. The expressed purpose of chisungu is to change girls into women, not merely by teaching them songs and dances, and showing them sacred emblems, but by transforming them in the course of the ritual experience Overt emphasis of the rites is placed on marriage, a woman's responsibilities, her subservience to her husband, to senior women and all others in authority. The rituals are opened by the headman of the village but men play only a minor role. Audrey Richards noted that the full ritual is long, taking four weeks to complete in 1931. She was told that formerly it lasted several months, the rites intermingling with visits from kin, feasts and dancing. During this time, the girls remained as ritual initiates, learning about marriage, motherhood, and other features of socialization such as the power of men within the matrilineage, the role of chiefly authority in village life and some aspects of cosmology of mystical importance. A particular rite, called""begging for parenthood displays these associations An important stage in the ceremony had now been reached -the lighting of the new fire This might be described as the first of the rites of aggregation. The senior"father's sister"of one of the girls, wrinkled and bent with rheumatism, danced to the company and then lay down on her back. Nangoshye picked up the firestick and started twirling it round in the groove on the old woman's thigh, telling the two girl novices to copy her afterwards. Then the two old women set out to make fire in earnest. omen do not commonly make fire among the Bemba. The work needs skill and practice as well as considerable strength. The two old women rubbed the firestick in turns, sweating and groaning with the effort. The company swayed to and fro, moaning the chisungu fire songs We have come to get fire Lion we beg it of you Scratch scratch(the grating of the firesticks) How many children have you born? When at last the tinder caught fire it was greeted with relieved clapping. The father's sister plays the leading part in the ceremony and it is she who by tradition influences the fertility of the girl The interpretation of the songs was given as follows: the sticks are rubbed on the back of the girl's father's sister who can give or withhold parenthood(she represents the father's clan); the girl is told that she owes fire to the older woman whose hands ache from the rubbing; she must take over now. She must take her turn at the bearing of the children now; the lion is the bridegroom,the chief or the male principal throughout the ceremony; the bridegroom is begged