The Bullroarer Atlas

KONRAD1973-001 - ethnographic attestation

Mbay kinga-muru-mbi, which silences the owls

Mbay (Sara-Mbai) country of Moïssala, Nadili canton, Mandoul, southern Chad - Africa

Restricted

Representative—not this record’s object: Frobenius’s plate of Benue roarers, wood and iron.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Frobenius’s plate of Benue roarers, wood and iron. · Public domain Image source

kinga-muru-mbi

Source term: Schwirrholz

kinga-muru-mbi: the Mbay bullroarer of the ndo initiation, heard on its first night.

To the Mbay, a boy who has not been initiated is a koy, an owl, because like the women he knows nothing. On the first night of the ndo the owl-boys are whipped out of a hut and made to squat in a grove by the marsh while drums thunder, and a masked bird with a gaping beak dances past them; they are ordered to lift their heads and look. Then the master of the initiation knocks each boy’s head against a log on the ground, “so that your body may become hard”. They lie down to sleep near the village, and if they are still chattering, the bullroarer howls close by, and they grow afraid and fall silent. The bush camp is the yo-ndo, a name that also means “to outwit death”.

Falls sie noch schwatzen, heult in ihrer Nähe das Schwirrholz (kinga-muru-mbi) auf. Dann bekommen sie Angst und schweigen.

If they are still chattering, the bullroarer (kinga-muru-mbi) howls near them. Then they grow afraid and fall silent.

J. Fortier, Notes Africaines 87 (1960), p. 84, in W. Konrad, Encyclopaedia Cinematographica E 1519 (1973), p. 9
Object
A bullroarer whirled in the dark near the sleeping novices.
Function
Howls near the novices on the first night of the ndo initiation to frighten them into silence.
Source
W. Konrad, Sara-M’Bai (Zentralafrika, Mittlerer Schari): Herstellen einer Maske für die Knaben-Initiation, Encyclopaedia Cinematographica E 1519 (Göttingen: Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film, 1973), pp. 5-6, 9
Source location
Page references

p. 9 (roarer); pp. 5-6 (ndo, yo-ndo, koy)

Source confidence
medium to high
Location note
Nadili village, Mandoul (OSM/Nominatim), about 14 km SSE of Moïssala: the informant Dumkoji’s clan village and canton. The rite is the Mbay ndo in general, not a single camp. A second Nadili near Sido (8.267, 18.724) is outside Moïssala country.

Regions: Africa · Central Africa

View source Open this point on the interactive map