MOELLER1936-002 - ethnographic attestation
Mbo (Moeller's Bombo), Ituri
Democratic Republic of the Congo - Ituri forest, Province Orientale (Babali initiation belt) - Central Africa
Restricted
mongomongo; maduali French
Source term: Mongomongo; Maduali (rhombe)
mongomongo: the Mbo (Moeller's Bombo) name for the bullroarer at circumcision; the same people call it maduali when they hold the mambela rite.
Like the Ndaka beside them, the Mbo of the Ituri kept both eastern initiations going at once, and the bullroarer changed its name with the rite. At circumcision it was the mongomongo, sounded with a whistle called akuteli and a pipe, the aduombo, shaped to imitate the cry of the bird that was supposed to have done the cutting. When the Mbo held mambela instead they used the Babali words: maduali for the roarer, akutelo for the whistle, nasasa for the hornbill-beaked pipe -- nasasa being the bird credited with tattooing the novices' chests. The object was the same either way, an oblong plank of wood on the end of a cord, whirled until it droned like a motor. Adolphe Moeller set out nine things all these initiations had in common, and they read as a list of what was taken from the boys and from everyone else: seclusion in an isolated place, a ban on speaking to women or to the uninitiated, practical teaching in hunting and the ways of animals, esoteric formulas, the sight of the 'spirits', the surrender by parents of their rights over their children, the passing of every social power to the initiators, and, last, the exclusion of women.
Ces trois instruments, dont les indigènes ne peuvent parler aux non-initiés, se retrouvent dans les rites d'initiation qui nous occupent.
These three instruments, of which the natives may not speak to the uninitiated, are found again in the initiation rites that concern us.
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 only under the Babali name maduali (p. 551) and then states that the names in his table are the same three instruments under other words; no Mbo specimen is described, and no dimensions, wood, cord length, or perforation is given.
- Function
- Swung at male initiation under two names: mongomongo at circumcision, with the whistle akuteli and the bird-pipe aduombo, and maduali at the mambela, with the whistle akutelo and the hornbill-pipe nasasa. One of the three 'esprits de l'initiation' that initiates were forbidden to speak of to the uninitiated; the rites shared seclusion in an isolated place, a ban on speaking to women, and the exclusion of women outright.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Nia-Nia, on the Ituri road west of Ndaka country, used as a district-level anchor for Mbo country between the Babali and the Ndaka; Moeller names no locality for the Bombo.
- Source location
Page references
Moeller 1936:551-552 (table on p. 552)
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women