In the Kiriwinian language of New Guinea a bukumatala is a ‘young people’s house’, where adolescents go to stay on reaching puberty.

As the main aim is to keep brothers and sisters away from the possibility of incestuous sexual contact, they never stay in the same house. The boys return to the parental home for food and may help with the household work; the girls eat, work and occasionally sleeps at home, but they generally spend the night with their adolescent sweethearts in one bukumatala or another.