Manuel Jordán

In this text, transcribed from a mahamba ancestral possession ritual among the Lunda of Zambia, the ground hornbill (mungomba) is attributed a symbolically prominent place.  The bird serves as a companion or leader on a supernatural journey, during which the chase for its favorite meal (the grasshopper) is associated with the human search for the source of an affliction.  The journey leads to a crossroads, a powerful place that is believed to absorb the good and evil of everyone who crosses its juncture.  This location is considered as a supernatural threshold, frequented by diviners and spiritual entities.(2) The bath mentioned in the text above refers to a ritual cleansing performed at a crossroads by individuals seeking to obtain power or to redress various types of afflictions.  Mention of the “walk‑and‑jump” behavior of the spirits alerts the participants in the ritual to the ambiguous nature of afflicting spirits and serves to introduce a call to a spirit of divination known as Mwendanjangula.  Mwendanjangula, who may also be called Kalulu, is a half‑being that empowers only the most valiant of diviners (Jordán 1996: 150‑160).  Selectively, Mungomba is the character (creature/being) that leads the way to this extraordinary encounter.

_{Carved scene from a Chokwe chief’s throne includes a diviner (to the left and holding a divination basket) “backed” by his tutelary spirit (small figurine facing front) and a Chikwekwe (hornbill) spirit-being in the form of a mask.}

Outside mahamba healing practices, the ground hornbill features in songs performed at Chokwe, Lunda, Luvale, Luchazi, and Mbunda mukanda initiations, during which boys gain access to adult life after months of seclusion in camps under the tutelage of guardians (Turner 1967: 151‑279, Jordán, ed. 1998).  A simple phrase, “let’s sing for mungomba,” repeated numerous times, becomes a song at a key moment in the initiation ritual when the women sit at a crossroads near the mukanda camp to complement (or to challenge) the songs performed by the men within the enclosure.(3)  In this context, Mungomba is once again associated with a crossroads and an important human transition.  This ritual exchange lasts through the evening hours and into dawn, at which time Mungomba symbolically leads the way into sunrise, and therefore into renewal. Consequently, Mungomba is associated with other birds that announce daylight, such as the rooster (ndemba or ikumbu, in the last sentence of the introductory text). 

Emil Pearson (1984:100‑101) documented a story in southeastern Angola in which, as a matter of prestige and honor, Mungomba, Ndemba (the rooster), and Mukuku (the coucal) engaged in a competition to see which of them was in fact responsible for calling the sun (li‑tangwa or likumbi) and for bringing the new day into being.  In the end, the Creator (Kalunga or Nzambi) taught them all a lesson by hiding the sun behind storm clouds.(4)  Although different accounts place Mungomba at the brink of daylight, and often as the one who announces it, its character is symbolically employed in the performance of supernatural feats that occur in the evening hours.(5)  Although the bird is diurnal, Mungomba is cosmologically perceived as nocturnal. 

The symbolic attributes of the ground hornbill are similarly granted to its arboreal hornbill relatives (genus Tockus).  Of these, chikwekwe, a small hornbill, is the most mentioned in ritual contexts.  A hornbill’s beak may be found among the object‑symbols inside a diviner’s baskets (de Areia 1985: 336); the bird also appears in accounts pertaining to the origins of adult initiation (mungonge) as one of the “animals with eyes of night” (de Heusch 1982: 192‑194).  Chikwekwe (as a character) is one of the relatively few ornithomorphic types found in the carved figurative arts of the Chokwe and their neighbors.(6)  The character “comes to life” as one of the makishi (sing. likishi) masked ancestral characters that perform in mukanda initiations (Jordán 2003b).

_{Chokwe Chikwekwe (hornbill) spirit mask, Barbier-Mueller Museum.}

The Chikwekwe likishi is ancestral in nature and is thus explained as an ancestor who chooses to take the form of a hornbill to articulate its symbolic attributes during performances for the benefit of the initiates and public audiences. In 1992, a Chikwekwe mask was brought to me by a Zambian Luvale/Lwena man who had carved and performed it in Angola for mukanda a year earlier.  Along with Chikwekwe, he presented me with an Ngulu (pig) mask that danced in the same mukanda initiation as Chikwekwe.  The “pairing” is significant because it demonstrates the educational role of makishi and the strategy of teaching by comparing characters and their attributes.  In performances, Ngulu is considered domestic and behaviorally erratic, or even foolish, while Chikwekwe is approached as an ambiguous being that comes from the edge of the wilderness.  Chikwekwe represents acute supernatural abilities that manifest themselves in a world to which very few individuals have access.  The hornbill likishi belongs to a category of ambiguous mask characters that scare, take, hide, or render things invisible on a whim.  People, particularly women, keep a distance from such makishi; their appearance is often considered intimidating enough (Jordán 2003b).

Bernard Mukuta Samukinji, a Chokwe ritual expert and mukanda leader who worked with me in Zambia from 1991 to 1993, commented on the Chikwekwe mask. He clearly defined it as a character of Chokwe origin and said he had first seen it perform in the Moxico area of Angola many years back.(7)  He added that “although young people do these things” for mukanda, in fact the character is one of extreme supernatural power, and is only performed privately by men in the evening hours.  In the context of mungonge adult initiation, Samukinji  placed Chikwekwe  among the ominous beings that threaten and torture initiates throughout the evening hours.

Chikwekwe, like other ambiguous characters, appears in mukanda between consecutive performances of other makishi that are either aggressive, with large facial features and head superstructures like Kalelwa or Utenu, or familiar, including anthropomorphic masks such as Pwo (the woman) and domestic animals like Ngulu (Jordán 2003b).  However, the true symbolic counterpart of the hornbill likishi is the stork, Nkumbi.  The stork is associated with daylight (li‑kumbi or “day,” the same root as kumbi, the marabou stork).  The stork is a solar bird that announces the evening (de Heusch 1988: 22) and is commonly represented in Chokwe royal arts, including stools and thrones.  Chikwekwe also features in the iconography of royal art forms, and is usually incorporated to reflect the supernatural abilities of chiefs or the powers available to them.  A miniature whistle, in the form of Chikwekwe wearing a chief’s crown, facilitates the call of the bird as an enticing sound to attract animals (when hunting) or evildoers (during divination) into a powerful supernatural trap.(8)

_{Nkumbi stork mask, private collection.}

Whereas Chikwekwe and Nkumbi are bird‑beings from the edge of the wilderness, mask representations of the rooster (Ndemba) and the guinea‑fowl (Khanga) serve as their domestic relatives.  Due to the relative rarity of bird masks in collections and the lack of published comparative pieces, Marie‑Louise Bastin’s sole illustration of a correctly identified guinea‑fowl mask (1982: 92) has led to other bird masks being incorrectly identified as Khanga.  In fact, the most common bird masks represent Ndemba, the rooster.(9)  Several other published bird masks are in fact representations of the hornbill, Chikwekwe. Indeed, Bastin’s illustration of Khanga is the only published example of this mask to my knowledge.(10)

The hornbill’s symbolic attributes of ambiguity and supernatural power arise from their anomalous or “marvelous” (Roberts: 1995) physical and behavioral characteristics.  Indeed, hornbills are “awkward‑looking” birds with peculiar behavioral patterns.  In the case of the ground hornbill, the bird spends most of its time on the ground (instead of in trees or in the air) foraging for insects and even snakes.  Its large size, prominent beak and strikingly red (ominously colored) neck on a black/dark plumage make it a perfect candidate for a metaphoric articulation of ambiguity.  The arboreal hornbill is also perceived as an out-of-the-ordinary creature: its beak is similarly “over proportioned” with a bony casque, and its flight is characteristically “erratic” when compared to that of other, more common birds.(11)  Its call is loud and piercing, and sometimes interpreted as a warning of impending danger.  The fact that it can often be found in termitaries (considered thresholds of the ancestors) adds to its association with the spiritual realm.  In mask form, hornbill symbolism fuses with the ancestral; consequently, the Chikwekwe likishi is defined as a being whose powers derive from the merging of complementary supernatural forces.  In keeping with the sense of irony that is characteristic of such representations (Jordán 1993), the mask’s obvious and deliberate form stands for powers that are strategically veiled in semantic ambiguity.(12)

Notes

Bibliography