Konde ifula rain bullroarer

ifula

Among the Konde at the head of Lake Malawi the bull-roarer is named for what it once commanded: ifula — rain. By the 1920s it had slipped into the hands of children, and the old people held both truths at once: the whirling blade stops the rain, and a child is only playing. A weather instrument remembered by its name, retired into a toy.

Ifula, rain, is our bull-roarer; old people still believe that it stops the rain; but even they admit that no well-disposed spirit takes any notice of child's play.

MacKenzie, The Spirit-Ridden Konde (1925), p. 53