Titamnga mautwa kept by mothers

mautwa

Source term: bullroarer

mautwa: the Kamea name for the bullroarers of the men's cult.

Before the boys go into the forest, the men hand the mautwa to the boys' mothers — wrapped in leaves and bark cloth so that only the tip of one end shows — with instructions to watch over them carefully. Then the mothers enter their own seclusion house, and the guarding begins. “The only thing mothers can do is sit in the house,” one Kamea man said. “If they leave it, the noses of their sons will break.” At the first stage of the rites the men take the bundles back, unwrap them, and show the novices what their mothers had been holding.

Certainly, no woman ever admitted to me that she had handled the bullroarers … this may be a ‘publicly acknowledged’ secret—known by all but admitted by none.

Sandra Bamford (2004), p. 205 n. 20; quoted in Pascale Bonnemère, Acting for Others (HAU Books, 2018), p. 107

Particulars

Object

Bullroarers wrapped in leaves or bark cloth with only one tip exposed.

Function

Wrapped bullroarers are entrusted to the novices' mothers to guard through their seclusion; the men reclaim them at the first stage of the rites and reveal them to the boys.