EXH2026-015 - ethnographic attestation
Bakumu (Komo) tuambi
Democratic Republic of the Congo - NE Congo (Babali initiation belt) - Central Africa
Restricted
tuambi French
Source term: Tuambi (rhombe)
tuambi: the Bakumu (Komo) name for the bullroarer swung at circumcision, paired with the whistle kabili and the bird-pipe mokomo; the same tuambi + kabili pair recurs among the Bamanga, and as tuamba + kabili among the Warega (Lega).
Circumcision, among the Bakumu, was not done by a man. It was done by a bird -- the mokomo, whose beak was pointed, so the pipe that gave its cry was cut to a point to match. Beside it the initiators swung the tuambi, the bullroarer, and blew a whistle called kabili. Adolphe Moeller, administering the Province Orientale, described the object under its Babali name: a simple oblong plank fixed to the end of a string, which whirling makes a noise like an engine roaring. He was blunt that the 'spirits of the initiation' were nothing more than these very simple instruments in the initiators' hands -- and equally blunt about what was built on them. Novices were shut away and forbidden to speak to women or to the uninitiated; the sight of the spirits was itself a stage of the rite; parents surrendered their rights over their children; women were excluded outright. The Bakumu kept only the circumcision, not the Babali mambela. Their word for the roarer, tuambi, is the word the Bamanga used too, and, as tuamba, the Warega away south in Maniema.
La circoncision, comme le tatouage chez les Babali, est censée être faite par un oiseau que les Bakumu appellent « mokomo »; le bec de ce volatile étant pointu, la forme de l'instrument varie donc en conséquence.
Circumcision, like tattooing among the Babali, is supposed to be performed by a bird which the Bakumu call "mokomo"; the beak of this bird being pointed, the shape of the instrument varies accordingly.
Moeller 1936:552
- Object
- A simple oblong plank of wood fixed to the end of a string and whirled in free air. Moeller describes the type-object under the Babali name maduali (1936:551) and states that the names in his table are the same three instruments under other words; he does not describe a Bakumu specimen separately, so material, dimensions, cord and perforation are unrecorded.
- Function
- Swung at the boys' circumcision rite alongside the whistle kabili and the bird-pipe mokomo, cut to a point in imitation of the beak of the bird said to perform the circumcision; one of the three 'esprits de l'initiation' that initiates were forbidden to speak of to the uninitiated, in a rite whose common features included seclusion in an isolated place, a ban on speaking to women, and the exclusion of women.
- Map confidence
- medium - Komo country SE of Kisangani
- Source location
Page references
Moeller 1936:551-552 (table on p. 552); earlier trail Soderberg pp. 184-185, de Jonghe 1936 pp. 62-63
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women