The Sunday News
THE moon, the ash and African rituals and ceremonies; these three constitute a common combination in African rituals cultures. This is also true with regard to the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe.
Many ethnic groups apply the trio during various cultural practices such as the rites of passage. As pointed out in an earlier article, ash performs a role that is the same as that performed by facemasks made mostly out of exquisitely carved wood.
A few months ago, I was reading about Vimbuza, a ritual healing dance performed in Malawi. It is a healing dance that relies on the interventions of ancestral spirits. I was skimming through several books as part of preparations for my next book that I have started writing.
Of interest to me was the application of ash during the ceremony where a patient is healed through the ancestral dance.
The moon, it was believed by Africans, has some healing power. It is for this reason that traditional doctors share the same name as the cosmic body – inyanga, the moon and inyanga the traditional healer.
As once pointed out in this column, when the new moon appears in the western sky after the expiry of a lunar month, the Ndebele people utter a chant, “Kholiwe hamba lomkhuhlane!”
The understanding is that the moon has power to cure illnesses. The belief is that each new moon has its own unique characteristics and its healing capabilities different from previous moons. The healing powers for each moon are different. The monthly chants presuppose that. The belief was that each new moon was not the same as the old moons before it.
A careful scrutiny of a new moon reveals to the initiated, signs of what it holds in store for the people.
Its position seems to differ as one time its “horns” are facing upwards and the next time they may be slanting sideways. The implications for the different dispositions have different prospects regarding heath. Hardly any ethnic group in Africa failed to appreciate the significance of the moon in numerous cultural practices.
I will argue that the significance of the moon lies in the enduring perceptions that people hold. The various chants that awaited the emergence of a crescent moon bear testimony to how it was perceived among the diverse communities on the African continent.
We shall continue with such perceptions and beliefs that grounded the communities’ cultural practices.
As I often say, people act as they believe. Their cultural practices are powered and given direction and complexion by what they believe.
Ash seems to have been playing some significant role in the cultural practices of African communities. It should be easy for some people to proceed to the application of ash without a full explanation and interpretation of how and why it plays those roles.
Whether we know how to interpret its efficacy or not, its application will suffice. However, for those with perceptive minds, it is easy to figure out and unpack its philosophical traits that underpin and inform its efficacy.
This may not be the case with the majority of minds that are content with the practical use of ash.
Positive results are all that matters and not engaging in some vexatious mental gymnastics. The rest is not followed up, as there are no enquiring questions to initiate dedicated research for explanations and interpretations.
Even in the more mundane situations and applications such as the preservation of food grains, many will not explain how ash deals with insects that pose a threat to the food grains and thus increasing the spectre of starvation of communities.
They may not even know that insects have spiracles or breathing holes in their abdomens. They may not possess the explanation regarding how ash gets rid of the pests. For the people what matters is that ash works. How it works is some science for another day.
A scrutiny of cultural practices may result in figuring out what it is by way of worldview and thought that underpin the cultural practices that we observe. It is equally true that one may study the various arts genres of a particular community and arrive at a corpus of thought and beliefs that constitute the bases for the community.
One can move in either direction. The arts and cultural practices of a community point in the direction of beliefs, thought and cosmology, and vice versa. By starting at either end, such as a careful scrutiny of the arts, one can work out the underpinning thought, cosmology and beliefs. This is true of the cultural practices. They will lead one to the belief systems of a given community.
When I worked on the body art for African communities it became very patently clear to me that I could figure out the critical beliefs of a community. For example, the use of beaded amulets led me to the realisation that the people concerned believed in the Law of Opposites.
The world is replete with negative and positive energies that when harvested, manipulated and directed, can cause injury to targeted people. As a result, beaded amulets were worn as part of a comprehensive repertoire for counterbalancing the perceived negative energies and ensure good health and life.
This I give as one reason why I got interested in researching African body art. It was the enthralling hairstyles, fashioned out in particular in the West African nations that won my heart in the first instance. Later, I developed interest in the broader arts field of body art. It was an excellent opportunity to sample the cultures of various ethnic groups on the African continent and, in particular with regard to their body art. It has proved to be a study field that has broadened my vistas of knowledge for African body art.
I found myself having to delve into body modifications such as tattooing, body scarification and the use of lip plugs. African jewellery (earrings and necklaces), beadwork and lip plugs practiced by the Mursi people of Ethiopia were intriguing cultural practices which were a revelation for me.
In the end I found myself having to deal with African fabrics, African head wraps for women, African fashion and style, and the fantasy funeral caskets that Ghana specialises in. It was a way to inspire our own people and acknowledgement that the West Africans have excelled in various body adornments and have been doing so for quite a long time. I seek to understand what it is that led to more effective colonisation, the more effective decline in African cultures in Central and southern Africa.
I got to understand better how African medicines work. As we think of integrating the various medical traditions, we have a mammoth task to unpack African medical traditions that work differently from
Western medical practices pursued by a people who are materialistic in outlook.
On the other hand, the traditional health practitioners work within the context of spirituality where medicine has a broader setting beyond the active ingredient in herbs. There are numerous conditionalities that apply to the manner in which medicines work in Africa. Even as they execute body art, numerous conditionalities have to be borne in mind and taken on board.
I have devoted a whole chapter to the numerous conditionalities applicable to the use of traditional medicines in Africa. For example, the efficacy of such medicines may demand that the tree from which roots are extracted be addressed prior to extraction.
The state of the person extracting roots or whatever part of the tree is also important. There are cases when the harvester may have to be in the nude. There are specific directions; east, west, north or south, that must apply when roots are dug up.
On the day that the moon is “dead” the traditional doctors will not work. They come under the influence of the moon and its phases. Symbolism, metaphor and ritual chants all come to bear when it comes to the applicable methodologies.
To the traditional African health workers, a corpse is perceived as having a defiling effect on the person getting into contact with it.
Imagine numerous people dying in conventional hospitals and what effect that would have on the traditional doctors. Of course, if their agenda is about money, they are not going to decline the offer.
They will most likely sacrifice the values and ethics of traditional medical practice on the financial altar.
The morgues are out of bounds to them.
Somehow, I got diverted by issues peripheral to what I had intended to cover in this article. However, it was not a worthless diversion. Just too many African issues demand attention and explanation.
For too long people who despise African cultural issues, which issues they may not be sufficiently au fait, were given a blank cheque to mess around with our cultures.
