Nyanga nyabungubungu circumcision bullroarer

nyabungubungu

nyabungubungu — the Nyanga bullroarer and the initiation spirit it voices; a female spirit, the wife of Kabiri.

When Nyabungubungu sounds through a Nyanga village, the women lock themselves indoors. It speaks for a feared unseen spirit of the circumcision rites, in the company of percussion sticks, kazoos and a drum. Teketeke, one of the boys bound for the lodge, peeked through the holes in his door as the instruments crossed the village plaza, and scoffed that the men were only beating sticks and twirling a plank and calling it Nyabungubungu. Wounds broke out over his whole body. They healed only when the boys came out of the lodge.

A chief may never see Kabiri or the Banamwami or Nyabungubungu; if he hears them sounding, he must go and hide in his house because a chief in our land does not undergo the circumcision rites.

Biebuyck, Nyanga mukumo field text, p. 21

Particulars

Object

An ovoid blade of bwayi wood on a raffia string, made and swirled only by a specialist with formal permission.

Function

A feared unseen spirit of circumcision initiation, sounded by a specialist. In the forest the blade sounds beside percussion sticks, kazoos and a drum around the kirimu masker; when it passes through a village, women lock themselves indoors.