by
Martin Walsh
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| Mhamadi Khamis Makame |
My last post, ‘
Burning the Golden weaver’s nest’, was about an unusual ingredient in the treatment of possession-related illness in Makunduchi, in the south-east of Unguja island. Fumigation and steaming are common components in traditional medical practice in Zanzibar. They are also essential in the invocation of possessory spirits, as Hassan Gora Haji describes in his recent PhD dissertation on the songs that accompany spirit possession rituals on Tumbatu island and elsewhere in northern Unguja.
Here is part of his description of
kupigwa nyungu, ‘to be given a vapour-bath’:
“
Nyungu [literally ‘clay pot’] is a mixture of medicinal plants which are boiled together and used to fumigate oneself […]. But according to
waganga, traditional doctors,
nyungu is a kind of medicine for steaming which is made with a mix of the leaves of seven different plants. These plants vary from
mganga to
mganga or from one kind of spirit possession treatment to another. […] The
nyungu medicine is used to attract the spirit so that it comes as soon as it is called.” (Haji 2018: 54; my translation).
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| Crouching under a mat |
On 18 October 2007, when working on the Gray Brothers’ documentary
The Nightmare (Para Docs Productions, 2008), I took the crew to film a series of interviews about a recent Popobawa panic in Potoa. Afterwards, one of my in-laws demonstrated the use of
nyungu medicine for the camera. His patient was a young boy who had been sent to him for treatment, and had been staying there for some time. As both of them crouched under a mat, Mzee Mhamadi held a bunch of steaming leaves under the boy’s nose and encouraged him to inhale the vapour.
After this demonstration, Mzee Mhamadi listed the seven plants that he would have used if he had been doing this for real. He described this as a
nyungu mix for treating treating
jinamizi, which is loosely translated as ‘nightmare’, but often refers to more specific phenomena, such as the frightening hallucinations that can accompany sleep paralysis and manifest as incubi or succubi.
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| Inhaling the vapour |
Here are the seven ingredients, listed in the order in which he gave them and identified with the help of available botanical glossaries of Swahili plant names in Zanzibar:
1.
muwakikali, Horsewood,
Clausena anisata (Willd.) Hook.f. ex Benth. (family Rutaceae).
2.
mnanuzi, Orange Climber,
Toddalia asiatica (L.) Lam. (family Rutaceae).
3.
mchakuzi,
Uvaria acuminata Oliv. (family Annonaceae).
4.
mbaazi, Pigeon Pea,
Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. (family Leguminosae).
5.
kivumbazi,
Ocimum spp. including Basil,
Ocimum basilicum L. (family Lamiaceae).
6.
mpera, Guava,
Psidium guajava L. (family Myrtaceae).
7.
mchakati,
Mallotus oppositifolius (Geiseler) Müll.Arg. (family Euphorbiaceae).
The last of these botanical identifications is the least certain: Heine and Legère (1995: 107) also record
mchakati as
Leucas sp. (family Lamiaceae) and
Acalypha ornata Hochst. ex A.Rich. (family Euphorbiaceae).
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| The nyungu medicine |
Most of these plants, including the cultigens, are used in a variety of medicinal and ritual preparations in Zanzibar, and some are well known as traditional medicines more widely. According to Heine and Legère,
waganga consider Horsewood to be “one of their most useful plants” (1995: 244), while they and other authors give different examples of its use.
Ingrams describes the use of Orange Climber roots in a “Hadimu” (south and east Unguja) ritual for “Calling a devil for possession” that is somewhat different from the northern Unguja (Tumbatu) practices already described:
“Take a piece of
mnanuzi root, and three of
muiza jini [
mwizajini, Coffee senna,
Senna occidentalis] […] and boil together in a new pot. When it boils, place a pad on the patient’s head (to stop burning) and place the pot on top of it. The patient will then shake her head, but the pot will not fall down. The medicine man then gives the patient some of the mixture to drink. The devil will now come, and though he may go away for short periods, will always come back. After this the medicine man will drop the
muiza jini down a ruined well, so that it is out of the way of mischief-makers, and the other root will be fastened to the leg of the possessed person, where it will stay for seven days.” (1931: 453)
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| Listing the ingredients |
Elsewhere Ingrams discusses the magical significance of the numbers 3, 4, and 7 in Zanzibar, and parallels further afield (1931: 478).
As Hassan Gora Haji makes clear in his dissertation, the herbal steam bath is only one part of a spirit possession or healing ritual, which may also involve specific incantations. Ingrams also records a sample of these. I didn’t get another opportunity to ask Mzee Mhamadi more about this, and alas he is no longer with us, though I’m told that at least some of his medicinal knowledge has been passed on.
Acknowledgements
In memory of Mhamadi Khamis Makame, and with thanks to Adam Gray for sending me unused footage from the filming of
The Nightmare. All of the images in this post are taken from that footage.
References
Haji, Hassan Gora 2018.
Uchambuzi wa Nyimbo za Uganga wa Pepo Zanzibar: Mtindo na Dhima Zake. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Chui Kikuu cha Taifa cha Zanzibar (SUZA).
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| During filming |
Heine, Bernd and Karsten Legère 1995.
Swahili Plants: An Ethnobotanical Survey. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Ingrams, W.H. 1931.
Zanzibar: Its History and People. London: H.F. & G. Witherby.
Kombo, Yussuf H. 2017.
Jozani Natural Forest: Zanzibar Treasures in Wild (2nd edition). Zanzibar.
Legère, Karsten 2003. Plant names from north Zanzibar.
Africa & Asia (Göteborg) 3: 123-146.
Williams, R.O. 1949.
The Useful and Ornamental Plants in Zanzibar and Pemba. Zanzibar: Zanzibar: Protectorate.
