Mumbo cult bullroarers (Alego / Kavirondo)

In 1913, in the Alego country of Central Kavirondo, a man named Onyango Dunde was sitting in his hut when a gigantic snake reared out of Lake Victoria — so tall, they said, that its head touched the clouds — swallowed him whole, then a moment later spat him back, shaken but unharmed. That, Nyangweso recorded, was merely how the snake got his attention. The snake named itself the god Mumbo and made Onyango its mouthpiece: those who acknowledged the god would live forever in plenty, their crops growing of themselves and cattle rising from the water. Among his commands was how he would be worshipped — sacrifices made with dancing to the sound of drums and bull-roarers, and not at any shrine but in every boma, each homestead its own place of the whirring voice. The sacred groves and idols that later grew up around the cult, adherents insisted, Mumbo had never asked for.

I am the God Mumbo whose two homes are in the Sun and in the Lake. I have chosen you to be my mouth-piece.

Nyangweso 1930:13

Particulars

Object

No object recovered; reported prescription only.