{"id":"NYANGWESO1930-001","label":"Mumbo cult bullroarers (Alego / Kavirondo)","people_or_site":"Luo adherents of the Mumbo cult, Alego, western Kenya","country_current":"Kenya","historic_region":"Alego, Central Kavirondo (Siaya)","macroregion":"Africa / East Africa","local_name":"","source_term":"","source_language":"English","object_description":"No object recovered; reported prescription only.","function_summary":"Cult worship: sacrifices to Mumbo were to be made 'with dancing to the accompaniment of drums and bull-roarers', in every boma.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"nyangweso_1930_mumbo","source_type":"published_account","source_url":"https://archive.org/details/journalo3843419301931east","page_or_plate":"Nyangweso 1930, p. 15","map_confidence":"low_medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Alego location, Siaya county — the cult's origin district.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"In 1913, in the Alego country of Central Kavirondo, a man named Onyango Dunde was sitting in his hut when a gigantic snake reared out of Lake Victoria — so tall, they said, that its head touched the clouds — swallowed him whole, then a moment later spat him back, shaken but unharmed. That, Nyangweso recorded, was merely how the snake got his attention. The snake named itself the god Mumbo and made Onyango its mouthpiece: those who acknowledged the god would live forever in plenty, their crops growing of themselves and cattle rising from the water. Among his commands was how he would be worshipped — sacrifices made with dancing to the sound of drums and bull-roarers, and not at any shrine but in every boma, each homestead its own place of the whirring voice. The sacred groves and idols that later grew up around the cult, adherents insisted, Mumbo had never asked for.","pull_quote":"I am the God Mumbo whose two homes are in the Sun and in the Lake. I have chosen you to be my mouth-piece.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Nyangweso 1930:13","term_gloss":"","cls":"sacred","class_label":"Sacred / spirit","color":"#8A5A2B","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","snake"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"sources":[{"citation":"Fr. Nyangweso, 'The Cult of Mumbo in Central and South Kavirondo,' Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 38-39 (1930), p. 15","url":"https://archive.org/details/journalo3843419301931east"}],"source_citations":"Fr. Nyangweso, 'The Cult of Mumbo in Central and South Kavirondo,' Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 38-39 (1930), p. 15","source_display":"Fr. Nyangweso, 'The Cult of Mumbo in Central and South Kavirondo,' Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 38-39 (1930), p. 15","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"No object recovered; reported prescription only.","function_display":"","confidence_display":"low to medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"luo adherents","display_name":"Mumbo cult bullroarers (Alego / Kavirondo)","image":{"full":"assets/objects/FRAZER1913-016_hollis1909_plXV.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/FRAZER1913-016_hollis1909_plXV_thumb.jpg","alt":"Hollis’s Nandi instrument plate: a long bow above a dark elongated bullroarer with looped cord, beside a broad textured rectangular object.","credit":"A. C. Hollis, The Nandi: Their Language and Folk-lore (1909), plate XV","license":"Public domain (published 1909)","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/nanditheirlangu00holl","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Hollis's plate of Nandi instruments: a bow above, the bullroarer","pool_id":"auto-FRAZER1913-016_hollis1909_plXV","auto_assigned":true},"slug":"nyangweso1930-001-luo-adherents-of-the-mumbo-cult-alego-western-kenya"}