SUBSAH-020 - secondary catalog
Goula Iro of Boum Kabir
Boum Kabir, north shore of Lake Iro, southeastern Chad - Central Africa
Restricted
yondo / yonto
Source term: rhombe / yonto
Yondo / Yontô: male initiation complex; Yontô is the being whose speech is represented by the rhombe in Pairault 1964
At Boum Kabir, boys entered the bush to ‘die Yondo.’ Their elders staged a burial, then returned them as a new generation of adult men. Over this manufactured death and rebirth sounded the rhombe, heard as the speech of Yonto, the being who presided over the ordeal. The Goula Iro said the initiation had been borrowed from their Sara neighbours about a century earlier.
Le rhombe est assimilé à la parole de Yontô.
The rhombe is assimilated to the speech of Yontô.
Pairault, Journal des Africanistes 34(1) (1964), p. 141 n.3
- Object
- Whirled slat understood as the speech of Yonto; Pairault gives no physical dimensions or construction details.
- Function
- Voice of Yonto during boys' initiation, which staged death, burial and rebirth into adult status.
- Map confidence
- high - Boum Kabir populated-place coordinate on the north shore of Lake Iro.
- Source location
- p. 141 n.3
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Death and rebirth