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Children are delivered by an experienced midwife. They are named ten days or so after birth, usually after an important relative of their father or mother or in memory of the circumstances of their birth. No distinction is made between girls and boys names. Girls’ ears are pierced and a boy circumcised soon afterwards. Twins are welcomed with a mixture of pleasure and consternation. They are other-worldly creatures and a series of rituals must be undertaken to persuade them to remain with their parents on earth. ‘Single’ twins are those children born feet first or with a cawl. A special shrine is made by the priest (tanyi: literally ‘father of twins’, as honorary title) inside their mother’s house. The children are medicated and fed with a special chicken while other mothers of twins (anyi) dance outside in the compound. The chief sends precious beads to place around their necks and two mugs to hang above their bed. Some time before puberty twins undergo a further ritual whereby they are secluded in a house for some weeks, rubbed with camwood (a red cosmetic) and given quantities of food in order to ‘fatten’ them. At the end of this seclusion they leave the house; tanyi sacrifices a cock and goat; and the anyi dance. This final ceremony cuts the twins off from the spirit world definitively. Children grow to adulthood without any rituals associated with puberty. They receive a general training from their mothers and fathers. A girl receives her first hoe when quite young, eight or nine, and a boy his first matchet when he is eleven or twelve. Nowadays almost all Bangwa children between the ages of eight and fourteen are attending school so that traditional patterns of socialisation are being affected. And mothers no longer have small nursemaids to look after younger brothers and sisters while they are away at the farm; in some cases this task has been taken over by their husbands, so keen are both parents that their children should attend school. In the past girls were betrothed soon after birth. The ceremony was a simple one, the suitor or his father placing a large log of wood on the fire of the mother of the newly born girl. If the mother and father agreed the log was left on the fire and the baby was betrothed to her suitor. As a son-in-law he now began a long period of service to his parents-in-law: he helped his mother-in-law in the heavy work of farm-clearing; he brought working-parties when his father was building a house in the compound. He was personally responsible for re-building his mother-in-law’s house. He could be sent on errands by them. When his father-in-law needed money he borrowed at will from him. Nowadays, since most of the young men are working in the south, accumulating heavy marriage payments, these personal services are no longer carried out: most of them are incorporated into the final marriage payments. 29 The Bangwa girl goes to her husband as soon as she is physically mature, although before puberty she has been visiting his compound under the supervision of a senior wife. She brings food to her future husband, receives gifts in return and begins to cultivate farms near his compound. Some girls undergo a ritual seclusion period of seven or nine weeks before they marry. In pidgin English this is called ‘fattening’; girls are put in the ‘fattening house’ who are ailing or who do not become nubile at the same time as their age-mates. The ceremony is essentially an elaboration of the twin seclusion ritual. The girl’s illness is attributed (by a diviner) to the torments of spirits. She is placed in a walled off apartment inside her mother’s house where she is rubbed with camwood and fed with nutritious food. The final ceremony involves much dancing and feasting, and the sacrifice of a goat whose blood is rubbed into the girl’s eyes to prevent her finding her way back to the spirit world. The same treatment is given to her full siblings since the ‘disease’ is supposed to be catching. In some cases a startling difference is remarked in the physique of the ‘fattened’ girl. The ceremony finishes with the girl going to market, rubbed in camwood and oil, where she ‘shows herself’ to the people. The marriage ceremonies (apoo) were elaborate festive affairs; today they have been drastically curtailed to a simple blessing of the married pair by an elder. Most husbands are unwilling to sponsor this ceremony since the expense is high and the chances of recovering the outlay, if the girl divorces him, slim. The polygyny rate is fairly high and is the reason why men marry their first wives late in life. About half the households consist of a man with two or more wives. A paramount chief may have up to fifty at the present time, a subchief up to twenty. A man’s widows are inherited by his successor although some are handed out to unmarried sons. Older widows leave their husband’s compound to settle down with married daughters or sons. Marriages
in Bangwa are legalised by the finalising of the marriage payments and the
transfer of a certain goat (the ‘marriage goat’) to the bride’s kin.
These payments (called dowry throughout 30 In Bangwa thinking
everybody, male and female, is descended from a female slave. The
successor of the man who bought her is your tankap and he receives
multiple services and dues from his wards (azem nkap) the most
important of which are marriage payments on females. Since the bride’s
real mother may have been bought, the tankap, even at the present
times may claim the shares due to the mbe tetse, the mbe nkembetü
and tankap. The tankap institution is being hotly discussed in Bangwa at the present time; many people declare that it is a depressing relic of slavery. More and more cases of unpaid dues are appearing in the courts. Up to the present time the tankap’s rights have been successfully defended by the interested parties, mostly chiefs, but slowly the Bangwa are beginning to realise that it is only in their local customary courts that rights in azem nkap will be upheld. Its sudden abolition might have deleterious effects; perhaps it is better to let nkap marriage die of its own accord. The Bangwa are a business-like people. As the tankap fails to carry out his reciprocal role as the ‘father’ of his wards, so his claims for exorbitant shares of the bridewealth will be opposed. The Bangwa ascribe natural and unnatural causes to death. They can recite lists of symptoms for various fatal as well as non-fatal illnesses which are diagnosed with skill. Witchcraft is a common cause, but once a confession is induced the cure must be aided by medicinal means. Thus madness results from a man transforming himself into a bush-cow and falling into a hunting pit; but its cure includes psycho-therapy, cupping and shock treatment. There are many specialists: bone-menders, experts in the treatment of rheumatics, children’s and women’s complaints, barrenness and impotence. The general term ngang afu (leaf man) is given to these practicants. Other experts specialise in the exorcisation of spirits, particularly those bedevilling children. Others perform complicated purification rituals after evil deaths (suicide, murder, an accident, death in pregnancy, death from dropsy and elephantiasis.) Others hunt the invisible witch who is haunting a compound bringing bad luck and illness. Ngang ntshep has the secret of the medicine which punishes the children of a man who is backward in his bridewealth payments. In all these activities the medical expert or priest is on close contact with the diviner (Mbo, Banyang, Bamileke, as well as local diviners, are used by the Bangwa). Their roles are all socially approved, directed towards curing illness or punish evil-doers. Morally unjustified ‘black magic’ is not common in Bangwa, nor even socially recognised. Witchcraft (lekang) has an ambivalent position since it may be used for good or evil purposes. It pervades Bangwa beliefs and has many manifestations; basically it is a belief that all men and women have the capacity of changing themselves into animals or natural forces, for the purposes of bewitching their relations, or for the less anti-social activities of chiefship and medical healing. Of course only some people take advantage of the propensity; ability varies and may be inherited or learned. Men, women, tiny children may be witches: elephants, swarms of bees, lightning, aeroplanes: a witch preys on the flesh of 31 living people causing their illness and eventual death. Witchcraft also causes crop failure, sterility and barrenness, poor trading-success, failure at examinations. It explains the miracles associated with healing, a chief’s power or a young man’s brilliance on the football field or the xylophone. Since most deaths are ascribed to witchcraft post mortem examinations are regularly carried out on all corpses, including those of tiny babies and senile men. The stomach is operated by an expert. The vital organs are removed and any marks, protuberances or colouring noted to ascertain whether the dead person has been a witch. Each organ examined - in the stomach, the chest and throat - is associated with a particular transformation. The operator declares, for example, that the man has been ‘using’ his elephant in the forests near the Mbo Plain where he had been trapped in a swamp, caught pneumonia and died. If none of these signs are discovered it is presumed that the person has been bewitched by a family member and all present took an oath over the dead body, sometimes dipping a kola nut into the bloody water which has been used to wash the dead man’s stomach. If the father, husband or successor of the dead person is not satisfied he seeks further advice from a diviner as a result of which medicine (nchep) is prepared to hunt down the witch and cause him to become ill. Such an illness is only cured through confession: such confessions even among children, are not uncommon in Bangwa today. The dead are buried in oblong graves behind their houses. Special ceremonies accompany the burial of a chief or noble but for a child or commoner it was a simple affair. Children of chiefs are buried in the lefem copse, outside the palace. Beliefs in the afterworld are complex. Dead men’s souls go to the Bangwa heaven or hell - the ‘good country’ and the ‘bad country’ both of which were below ground. The sky is the abode of witches, not angels, a fact which determined many old Bangwa from accepting Christian doctrines. Ghosts are the dead returned from their graves to haunt members of their family: they are exorcised by a simple lustration ritual. A Bangwa man’s ancestors (male and female) are worshipped through their skulls; they provide succour in times of need, explanation of misfortune and justify succession to title and inheritance of property. There is no regular skull cult. Individuals worship their ancestors through the mediacy of their successors; sacrifices are made, on the whole, to close ancestors - father, father’s father, mother, mother’s mother. There are one or two exceptions; wards (azemnkap) may be directed by diviners to sacrifice at the skull of their tankap even if there is no blood relationship between them. Similarly the skulls inherited by a chief may affect his personal slaves; a childless man could bequeath his skull to a slave who would begin a cult in his name. A year or two after a man’s death his successor makes
preparations to exhume the skull. Before the earth is removed, a sapling,
planted above the dead man’s head, is shaken by the priest concerned and
food and wine poured into the grave. 32 It is believed that the skull has been wandering around
inside the earth and this sacrifice persuades it to return to the grave in
readiness for exhumation. The priest removes the skull, rubs it in oil and
special leaves and places it in a clay pot in the ancestral shrine or
merely behind the successor’s house. A further sacrifice is made by the
man’s heir with all his atsen ndia present: and if, the next day,
the white ants have eaten the oil and melon seeds it is known that the
departed ancestor is content. Although the royal ancestors have no ritual significance for
the country as a whole the skulls of dead chiefs are worshipped with more
ceremony than those of commoners. On a special day of the week the chief
(or one of his deputies: the queen mother or his Great Servant) sacrifices
to the skulls to the accompaniment of the trumpeting of a carved ivory
elephant blown by one of the palace retainers. For most Bangwa the
ancestors are only appeased when they show evidence of annoyance: when a
child is sick, or a trader is having a run of bad luck. Nevertheless the
ancestors are always invoked in the course of other rituals not directly
concerned with them. While the Bangwa consider their ancestors to be their most
vital spirits or ‘gods’ (belem) each adult also worships at a
shrine dedicated to a personal spirit guardian, his ndem bo. A
man’s ndem Each chiefdom, and some important subchiefdoms too, have
their own sacred spot - usually a lake or waterfall, a cave or strangely
shaped boulder - where sacrifices are made by the chief and his close
associates. The tanyi priests conduct the rituals which assure
fertility to the women of the country who are blessed with the sacred
water associated with the place. The fertility of farms is assured by an
annual ceremony performed by a society of priests called ku’ngang;
for several days the ku’ngang people retire to a hut in the
palace preparing a ritual centred on their sacred images (lekat).
On the final day all the people bring their seed, hoes and matchets to be
blessed. Some of the seeds are planted by the women in their farms; others
are planted on the boundaries of the country to ward off evil spirits
which may destroy the crops. (Apart from this ritual farming itself is a
pragmatic affair, free from magic; certain taboos, however, come into
force, especially at planting time). 33 In
this account of the Bangwa I have been primarily concerned to sketch
traditional social organisation, and to stress its functioning in the
past. A study of present-day Bangwa would be considerably different. The
1960s, particularly, are seeing important changes. Before independence,
relations with the outside world were intermittent and superficial. At
irregular sessions of the Bangwa Mundani Council the chiefs and some of
their educated subjects discussed the possibility building roads and
introducing medical services and secondary schools; they also touched on
vital social problems. But Bangwa’s remoteness from the administrative
centres and major networks of communication meant that they received few
of the amenities of European civilisation. For example the first motor
road from Dschang to Bangwa was completed only in 1963 although plans had
been afoot for thirty-five years. This road was put through by the hard
work of the Roman Catholic Mission, community labour and financial grants
from the The
Bangwa are a virile, hardworking people, adaptable to new and profitable
situations. Their culture will change beyond recognition within the next
generation. It is hoped that some elements of their distinctive and highly
developed culture will remain. Weird, brilliant pieces of sculpture,
terror masks and figures of mothers of twins and chiefs, have won a place
in private collections and museums all over the world; today they lurk in
corners of old compounds, highly valued as symbols of chiefship or relics
of the past. A chief’s Great House is a splendid example of 34 If you accessed this page from inside the Lebialem.info site and wish to return to it then simply close this window. If, however, you accessed this document directly through a search engine and wish to see other articles on the Lebialem site then please click on the icon below:
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