{"id":"DEHEUSCH1982-001","label":"Mbunda ndumba, the ancestor at night","people_or_site":"Mbunda, mukanda circumcision camp","country_current":"Zambia / Angola","historic_region":"Mbunda country, upper Zambezi (western Zambia and eastern Angola)","macroregion":"Africa / South-Central Africa","local_name":"ndumba","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Not recorded.","function_summary":"Sounded only at night on the outskirts of the village during mukanda; the novices first take it for the fearsome voice of an ancestor and later learn what it is.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"deheusch1982_vrydagh_mbunda_ndumba","source_type":"comparative_secondary","source_url":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3335136","page_or_plate":"De Heusch 1982 pp. 218–219, n. 139 (Vrydagh 1969 p. 69); mingongi and liula pp. 217–218","map_confidence":"low","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Lukulu (Western Province, Zambia; Nominatim), a representative point in the Zambian Mbunda country where Vrydagh worked ('Makisi of Zambia', African Arts 1977); the mukanda camp is not located.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"After dark, out past the last houses, the ndumba throbbed. Mbunda boys shut away in mukanda, the circumcision camp, took it for the fearsome voice of an ancestor; only later in the rite were they shown what made it. Among the Mbunda it was never heard by day. The camp lived by sound. Each morning the novices clapped their batons, mingongi, like the wingbeats of the bird that draws up the sun, singing that the sun was up, they would eat, and the elders were coming to beat them — and the kicks duly followed. After the night of the genet came a day of silence, when the mothers were told a cannibal monster had eaten their sons. At dawn a guardian beat a piece of bark, and the boys ran to the river for their first bath, their mothers straining past the guardians to touch them.","pull_quote":"at first the novices are frightened by this unusual sound, which they take for the fearsome voice of an ancestor","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Luc de Heusch, The Drunken King (1982), p. 218, after Vrydagh 1969","term_gloss":"ndumba: Mbunda name of the bullroarer in mukanda. mukanda: the boys' circumcision and seclusion camp. mingongi: the novices' ritual batons. liula: the beaten-bark sound that announces the first bath.","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","initiation","death_rebirth"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Luc de Heusch, The Drunken King, or The Origin of the State, trans. Roy Willis (Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 216–219"},{"citation":"Paul-André Vrydagh, Mbunda and Old Mbunda Makisi Masks and Dances, doctoral thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles (1969), p. 69"},{"citation":"P.-A. Vrydagh, 'Makisi of Zambia', African Arts 10(4) (1977)","url":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3335136"}],"source_citations":"Luc de Heusch, The Drunken King, or The Origin of the State, trans. Roy Willis (Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 216–219; Paul-André Vrydagh, Mbunda and Old Mbunda Makisi Masks and Dances, doctoral thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles (1969), p. 69; P.-A. Vrydagh, 'Makisi of Zambia', African Arts 10(4) (1977)","source_display":"Luc de Heusch, The Drunken King, or The Origin of the State, trans. Roy Willis (Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 216–219; Paul-André Vrydagh, Mbunda and Old Mbunda Makisi Masks and Dances, doctoral thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles (1969), p. 69; P.-A. Vrydagh, 'Makisi of Zambia', African Arts 10(4) (1977)","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Not recorded.","function_display":"Sounded only at night on the outskirts of the village during mukanda; the novices first take it for the fearsome voice of an ancestor and later learn what it is.","confidence_display":"low","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"mbunda","display_name":"Mbunda ndumba, the ancestor at night","image":{"full":"assets/objects/HAD1898-008_maa_1922-383_xhosa.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/HAD1898-008_maa_1922-383_xhosa_thumb.jpg","alt":"Xhosa bullroarer with a flat wooden blade attached by cord to a long slender whip-handle, with cord wound around one end.","credit":"Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge (1922.383)","license":"No open licence stated (Cambridge MAA online image) — rehosted for non-commercial research","source_page":"https://collections.maa.cam.ac.uk/objects-and-photographs/?keyword=1922.383","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"The whip-mounted Xhosa bullroarer","pool_id":"auto-HAD1898-008_maa_1922-383_xhosa","auto_assigned":true,"last_modified":"2026-10-19"},"slug":"deheusch1982-001-mbunda-mukanda-circumcision-camp"}