SUBSAH-040 - ethnographic attestation
Nyanga (Banyanga), eastern DR Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo - Nyangaland, North Kivu (Walikale) - Central Africa
Restricted
nyabungubungu English
nyabungubungu — the Nyanga bullroarer and the initiation spirit it voices; a female spirit, the wife of Kabiri.
In the Nyanga circumcision camps of the eastern Congo forest the bullroarer is a wife. Nyabungubungu — an ovoid blade of bwayi wood on a raffia string, made and swirled only by a specialist with permission to do so — is a feared unseen spirit of the rites, the wife of Kabiri, and when her voice crosses a village the women lock themselves indoors. Out in the forest she sounds among percussion sticks, kazoos and a drum around the kirimu, the masked ogre-monster of the forest who leads the boys away to be made men.
- Object
- An ovoid blade of bwayi wood on a raffia string, made and swirled only by a specialist with formal permission.
- Function
- Circumcision-rite spirit voice: nyabungubungu is a feared unseen spirit of the initiation — a female spirit, the wife of Kabiri — and when she sounds, the women lock themselves in. In the forest the blade sounds beside percussion sticks, kazoos and drum around the kirimu masker.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Walikale-territory anchor for Nyangaland; Biebuyck's Ihana/Iryamba ritual communities are not separately geolocatable.
- Source location
- Biebuyck, mukumo field text, p. 8
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite