MOELLER1936-001 - ethnographic attestation
Ndaka (Moeller's Bandaka), Ituri
Democratic Republic of the Congo - Ituri forest, Province Orientale (Babali initiation belt) - Central Africa
Restricted
ngwe; maduali French
Source term: Ngwe; Maduali (rhombe)
ngwe: the Ndaka (Moeller's Bandaka) name for the bullroarer swung at circumcision; the same people call it maduali -- zizi ya mambela, 'spirit of the mambela' -- when they hold the mambela rite instead.
The Ndaka of the Ituri ran two initiations, and gave the bullroarer a different name in each. At circumcision they swung the ngwe -- and only the ngwe: where their neighbours brought out a whistle and a hornbill-beaked pipe alongside the roarer, Moeller's table leaves the Ndaka circumcision line with the roarer alone. When they held mambela instead, the older forest initiation of the Babali, the same instrument answered to maduali, zizi ya mambela, the spirit of the mambela, and the whistle and the bird-pipe came with it. The thing itself was plain: an oblong slat of wood fixed to the end of a string, whirled until it threw off a noise like an engine turning over. Moeller was blunt that these 'spirits' were nothing but very simple instruments in the initiators' hands. The secrecy around them was not. Novices were shut away in an isolated place and forbidden to speak to women or to the uninitiated; the sight of the spirits was itself a numbered stage of the rite; parents gave up their rights over their children and the initiators took every social power. Last on his list of what all these rites shared: the exclusion of women.
C'est une simple planchette oblongue fixée au bout d'une ficelle et qui produit en tournoyant un bruit semblable au vrombissement d'un moteur (rhombe).
It is a simple oblong plank fixed to the end of a string, which as it whirls produces a noise like the roaring of an engine (bullroarer).
Moeller 1936:551
- Object
- A simple oblong plank of wood fixed to the end of a string and whirled in free air. Moeller gives the type-object under the Babali name maduali (p. 551) and states on p. 552 that the names in his table are the same three instruments under other words. He gives no dimensions, wood species, cord length, or perforation, and does not describe an Ndaka specimen separately.
- Function
- Swung at male initiation under two names in two rites: ngwe at circumcision, where Moeller's table gives the Ndaka the bullroarer alone with no whistle and no bird-pipe, and maduali (zizi ya mambela, 'spirit of the mambela') when the same people held the mambela, alongside the whistle aduteli and the hornbill-pipe nasasa. Common to both rites: seclusion in an isolated place with a ban on speaking to women and the uninitiated, the sight of the 'spirits' as a stage of the rite, and the exclusion of women.
- Map confidence
- medium - Mambasa, the administrative centre of Ndaka country in the Ituri forest, used as a territory-level anchor; Moeller names no locality for the Bandaka.
- Source location
Page references
Moeller 1936:551-552 (table on p. 552)
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women