The article is about the history of Avatime people rites of passage, which accompanied girls’ adolescence and symbolized the transition from childhood to adulthood in Avatime culture (Ghana). The full Kusakokor rite cycle (“the given cloth”) is recorded for the first time. Long ago the Avatime were looking for their place to stay through battles before leading a sedentary, peaceful lifestyle. That is why nowadays informants do not exclude the borrowing of the female rite while were living next door to other peoples on their way in the past. Unlike the male rite, Kusakokor is practiced today.

By the way, both the external form and the internal content are different from the oral tradition, which continues to be passed from mouth to mouth of the elders and Queen-Mothers. The paper deals with the changes in the rite and its functions that occur from the arrival of Europeans to this day (late XIX - XXI centuries). Traditionally, the rite Ablebe (“ripe pineapple”) was performed, but after the first Mission station was established in the 1870s a new model of the rite was suggested. Nowadays the number of different layers of clothes became a symbol of high status in society, but first “given cloth” was gifted by a missionary in order not to allow the Avatime girls to perform Ablebe naked, covered only with beads.

The article is based on field materials collected during 8 years of working with respondents from the small people of Avatime and Ghana in general. The first expedition took place in 2011.