LINDBLOM1920-001 - primary ethnography
Akamba
Kenya - Ukamba, British East Africa
Play / practical
Source term: bull-roarer
No Kamba-language term is given for the bullroarer anywhere in this passage or its footnotes, unlike several neighbouring toys named on the same page.
A small boy in Ukamba had his own bullroarer: a rough oval slice of wood, its cord threaded through a single hole at one end, spun on its string purely for the noise. Gerhard Lindblom counted it among Kamba children's playthings -- beside peg-tops, calabash-shell wheels, and trundled hoops -- but it was the only one he ever saw in his years among the Akamba: a boy's private roar, unnamed and unceremonious, among a village's ordinary games.
Of the bullroarer I have only seen a single example in Ukamba, used by quite a small boy. It consisted of a pointed oval slice of wood, coarsely cut out, with a cord fixed in a hole at one end.
Lindblom, The Akamba in British East Africa (1920), p. 421.
- Object
- A pointed oval slice of wood, coarsely cut out, with a cord fixed through a single hole at one end; no dimensions given.
- Function
- A small boy's toy, spun on its cord for the noise alone; Lindblom counted it among ordinary Kamba children's playthings (peg-tops, calabash-sherd wheels, hoops) and saw only this single example in his years of fieldwork in Ukamba.
- Map confidence
- medium - Anchored on Machakos town, historic seat of the colonial Ukamba Province and one of Lindblom's two fieldwork districts (with Kitui); the passage names only "Ukamba" generically, not a village.
- Source location
- p. 421
- Toy / secular survival