BURNING THE GOLDEN WEAVER'S NEST

by Martin Walsh

On a recent trip to Zanzibar, one of the books I picked up at the incomparable Masomo Bookshop was a primer of Kae (Kikae), the dialect of Makunduchi on the south of Unguja island. Rukia M. Issa’s Chowea: Kifahamu Kikae Lugha ya Wamakunduchi was published in Zanzibar last year. It’s a fascinating addition to the literature on this local idiom, which is now better known than most rural Swahili dialects.

The main title, Chowea, is the equivalent of Standard Swahili sema, and literally means “speak!” – by implication in Kae. It’s written in Teach Yourself style, with each chapter focusing on a particular aspect of village life and the vocabulary associated with it, beginning with everyday greetings and ending with the language of Makunduchi’s famous New Year ritual, Mwaka Kogwa.

It’s this organisation by lexical fields that I find most appealing, not least because it allows for the introduction of words and phrases that don’t find their way into the more conventionally ordered vocabularies of Kae.

The chapter on traditional medicine is a case in point, and full of intriguing information. My favourite so far is the phrase “Jumba la ndege Mnana”, “The weaver bird’s nest” (literally “large house”), which is glossed “Likichomwa hufanywa mafusho na kufukizwa mgonjwa mwenye maradhi hasa yanayo ambatana na shetani”, “When burnt it produces healing vapours used to fumigate a sick person, especially someone with an illness associated with a possessory spirit” (p. 91).

A subsequent example corrects and expands the phrase and illustrates its use: “Jumba lya ndege ya mnana kavu hutendwa mafuso ya wana. Jumba la ndege aina ya mnana lililo kavu hufanyiwa mafusho ya watoto” (p. 96). In other words, “The dry weaver bird’s nest produces medicinal fumes for treating children”.

African Golden Weaver in the Zanzibar Museum (photo: Martin Walsh)

Mnana is the name of the African or Eastern Golden Weaver, Ploceus subaureus Smith 1839. The subspecies aureoflavus is a highly gregarious and common bird on the island that typically builds a tightly-woven oval or spherical nest with grass or reed strips. Breeding can occur at any time of the year, and disused dry nests are presumably readily available. I’m unaware of any other record of their use for fumigation, or indeed similar practices being reported elsewhere.

Fumigation with the steam from herbal concoctions is a regular feature of exorcism and healing rituals in Zanzibar, but I’ve no idea why this brightly-coloured weaver’s nest is used in some contexts, and what those circumstances are. I presume that there is much more to be learned about this.

As the cover of Chowea reminds us, the culmination of the public festival of Mwaka Kogwa is the burning of a hut (kibanda) constructed of dry palm leaves or crop residues for this purpose. It is set alight by an elder of ceremonies – the mkuu wa Mwaka in Rukia Issa’s account – who immediately rushes out and runs into the bush, while people set about extinguishing the fire. The idea is that the evil spirits at the heart of Makunduchi will follow after him, thus cleansing the village for another year.

It’s tempting to see a parallel between the burning of the weaver’s nest and the community purification ritual, though there’s no evidence that participants draw any comparison between them, either consciously or subconsciously.  As already noted, we lack information on this kind of exorcism, and while existing descriptions of Mwaka Kogwa focus on its history and politics, they are comparatively weak on the analysis of its symbolism and local significance.

Photo 776701, (c) Peter Steward, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/pete_steward/10315455745/

References

BAKIZA 2012. Kamusi la Lahaja ya Kimakunduchi. Zanzibar: Baraza la Kiswahili la Zanzibar (BAKIZA).

Chum, Haji 1994. Msamiati wa Pekee wa Kikae: Kae Specific Vocabulary. Uppsala: Nordic Association of African Studies.

Echtler, Magnus 2008. Changing Rituals: The New Year's Festival in Makunduchi, Zanzibar, Since Colonial Times. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Bayreuth.

Issa, Rukia M. 2018. Chowea: Kifahamu Kikae Lugha ya Wamakunduchi. Zanzibar: Intercolor Printers.

Pakenham, R.H.W. 1959. Kiswahili names of birds and beasts in the Zanzibar Protectorate. Swahili 29 (1): 34-54.

Pakenham, R.H.W. 1979. The Birds of Zanzibar and Pemba. B.O.U. Check-list No. 2. London: British Ornithologists' Union.

Racine-Issa, Odile 2002. Description du Kikae, parler Swahili du sud de Zanzibar, suivi de cinq contes. Leuven and Paris: Éditions Peeters.

Walsh, Martin 2011. Elephant dung and expelling spirits. East African Notes and Records, 13 February 2011. Online at https://notesandrecords.blogspot.com/2011/02/elephant-dung-and-expelling-spirits.html.

THE WRATH OF THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS

by Martin Walsh

I've just finished The Wrath of Koma, Maurice Kambishera Mumba's entertaining tale about tradition and tragedy among the Kauma, published by Heinemann Kenya in 1987. The back-cover blurb of the paperback introduces the story:

Old Chembe, a Kauma man from the Am[i]dzichenda people of the Kenya coast, is gravely worried about his son, Dundu, who appears to be going mad. He travels across many ridges to see Mokoli Mwiru, the famous medicineman, for a diagnosis of his son's problem. Mokoli Mwiru gives his diagnosis: Dundu, born after intercession to the ancestral sprits, is under the wrathful attack of the spirits who resent the ingratitude of Chembe's family. Mokoli Mwiru prescribes a ceremony of appeasement.

Old Chembe, weak and irresolute, botches the ceremony... What tragic fate awaits him, his son and his larger family as the unappeased spirits seeks their revenge?

I won't spoil the plot here. Although I bought this short novel in Mombasa shortly after it came out, this is the first time that I've read it from cover to cover. It may not be great literature, but I've enjoyed Mumba's story-telling, the tales-within-tales, the dissolution of the text into poetry, and his wry description of rural life and morality in the waning years of colonial rule. The Wrath of Koma is especially interesting for its anthropology, and not just because the Kauma are among the least written about of the Mijikenda. I've mined Mumba's tale in the past for ethnographic and in particular ethnoornithological tidbits (as in my 'Birds of omen and little flying animals with wings'), but there's much more in it that deserves to be exposed and analysed anthropologically. This includes passages that revolve around the gendered perceptions and motivations of spirit possession and the sometimes violent reactions of men to the claims made upon them. Hearing the distant sound of an exorcism ritual (kupunga pepo), the protagonist reflects on his own experience:

As the sound of the pepo drums faded in the background, becoming less and less audible as he plodded on, Old Chembe thought of the costs he had incurred in having pepo [possessory spirits] exorcised from his four wives.

  There were moments when Old Chembe wondered whether his wives had not conspired to feign that they were possessed by pepo so that they could acquire items which he had refused to buy for them. But Old Chembe was not like his eastern neighbour Jaramba, who once flogged his wives with his walking stick to exorcise the demons in them--none of them 'dared' to be possessed by pepo again after that! (p.29)

The text goes on to detail how Jaramba came to administer this punishment, and how Old Chembe acceded to requests for the treatment of his possessed wives despite his scepticism. This is literature grounded in the observation of everyday life, a fictionalised account that conjures up the so-called 'deprivation theory' of spiritual affliction (Lewis 1971: 72-89), and invites further analysis with reference to current understandings of gender-based violence and its genesis in the imbalances of power and gendered patterns of inequality in the domestic and public spheres. It's a pity that The Wrath of Koma isn't more widely known. Maurice Mumba was the Town Clerk of Mombasa when it was published, and didn't follow it up with another novel. I don't know what has become of him since. When I lived in Mombasa I actually bought three copies of his book, one to give to another anthropologist. Although I only used it for many years as a work of reference, I'm glad that I finally got round to reading it.

References

Lewis, Ioan M. 1971. Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Mumba, Maurice Kambishera 1987. The Wrath of Koma. Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya.

Walsh, Martin 1992. Birds of omen and little flying animals with wings. East Africa Natural History Society Bulletin 22 (1): 2-9.