CHAPTER 68
SPIRITS OF THE DEAD OR TUTELARY DEITIES
Spirits or tutelary deities are described in two categories, the first one being the spirits.
A spirit is quite an incomprehensible thing as regard to its resemblance and nobody knows where it lives, where it goes about, how it lives and why it does not die. It is not possible to understand the personalities of a spirit for it is not a human being, nor an animal or water, nor a stone or soi1 nor a carved wood or a worked-out metal, not even a handcraft work nor is it in the form of magic, fetishes, idols and fetish huts.
Spirits are something which is difficult to understand except that the Basoga hold a certain belief that anything on earth may be a man, animal, tree, stone, sea — all those possess natural life and that such lives are th.e spirits.
A spirit is always present on a person throughout his life but when he dies his spirit leaves him and stays beside his grave or in any place where the dead person is placed or where he was born. It is believed that after a person has died, his spirit remains on earth to look after his family or relatives or parents, especially those who may be responsible for dealing with the deceased’s customary rites. The spirit some times comes to any of these and causes him to become very ill; the person can even be the wife or child of the deceased. Not only that, the spirit can alternatively withdraw luck on possessions from him or them, or cause them to be unlucky in their crop yields or in producing children, and in any other sign which may mean that the person is being bewitched by an evil spirit. Therefore this person goes to a seer (‘Omulaguzi’ or to ‘Omusamize’ who informs him what sort of spirit or whose spirit is attacking him and why it is doing so. The reason might simply be because this person refused to arrange or failed to fulfil the customary rites of the spirit’s dead man.
There are also other spirits which stay on roads or in gardens. Such spirits can ascend on people who pass by, even though they are not related to them. Spirits of this nature do not cause serious inconvenience to their victims except to make them shiver very much and feel very cold. Then it is observed that such a person has been ascended upon by a spirit (‘omuzimu’). So they look for a person (witch doctor) who is capable of makg the spirits talk and catching them. When he comes he makes it talk in its language (whistling) which means it talks by whistling, as a human being does.
Actually it is not these spirits which talk or whistle; it is only the witchdoctor’s craftiness, who talks himself through his nose by putting seeds of an incense tree, or counter seeds used in ‘Mweso’ game in his nose so that when he breathes out heavily the air passes out making a whistling noise; with this noise he informs the people that it is the spirit talking. Usually the victim gets cured and the witch-doctors or native doctors who cure them are paid for their success in doing so (whereas the illness itself is a mere sort of malaria).
There is also a quicker and easier way of getting rid of these highway spirits from their victims. This kind is performed by women only. As soon as a person is understood to have contracted a spirit, the relatives summon a woman witch-doctor who cures such spirit attacks. When she comes she takes two pieces of strychnia plant which she ties together with some medicinal leaves. Then she takes a certain sort of plant known as ‘Kakubansiri’ which she uses to sprinkle medicine in the house where the patient is, on the patient and on the pieces of strychnia plants. Then she sits down in the middle of the room where the patient is, surrounded by the owners of the house. She holds the bundle of tied strychnia plants firmly with both hands and her legs, between which the bundle is held upright, are stretched out. Then all the other people in the house sing a song which is believed to call spirits, at the same time they rattle symbols used in heathen rites. They continue singing until they see the bundle held by the doctor starting to shake as if their holder is shivering, whereas it is the spirit doing so in the form of the witch doctor. Throughout the singing and shaking the doctor stays silent holding the bundle. The singing and rattling continue until gradually the witch-doctor’s hands and whole body start shaking and it would seem that the strychnia plants would fall out of her hands. Then she begins to speak in a very loud voice in the language of spirits and which is understood by ‘Abasweezi’ only — ‘We are many but we found this person in such and such a place but he or she narrowly escaped me or us because when he or she found us, we were determined to kill him or her completely at the spot’. Then those present reply requesting the spirit or spirits to spare the person and have mercy on him or her because it is their (spirits) servant or slave and that he did not know that his or her lords were on that spot, so that if he or she knew, he would not have approached it so as to meet and disturb them.
After this conversation the doctor gets up vigorously and runs swiftly away towards the direction where the spirits were contacted by the patient. She runs for a distance of between 200 to 400 yards, where she falls to the ground heavily in the middle of the road. Then she becomes unconscious and seems to be dead. Behind her come three women who have followed her when she ran from the house; they have also run as swiftly as she did, one of them holding a piece of broken pot in which she carried certain medicines with burning cinders. This broken pot containing some medicine was lit with burning cinders in order to produce smoke, and was placed near the doctor at the time that the people were singing.
The second woman carries the wooden mortar in which there is medicated water, while the third woman is the rattle player.
When the doctor gets up to run, these three women also get up and run, following her as swiftly as she runs. They are thus arranged before for this sort of race and when they get to the place where the doctor has fallen and is unconscious, the woman with the wooden mortar containing medicinal fluid sprinkles it on the unconscious doctor’s head, legs and hands, while the other two women assist her by straightening the bent fingers and toes of the doctor. When they see that she has awakened, they return home, leaving her there with some things which they had brought with them; before leaving they pour some of the medicinal fluid from the wooden mortar on that spot. On their return they take another way home and carry the wooden mortar and rattle, only leaving behind the doctor’s tied strychnia plants and the piece of broken pot with its contents. They do not look behind to where they have left the spirits and the doctor in case the spirit returns with them, but go straight back home to the patient. That is how spirits are discharged or taken back to their places but only refers to spirits of this nature which are not of the people’s family or of their clan.
Any spirit of a patient’s deceased member of the family or clan is not disposed of in the above way but is got rid of by making a feast and sacrificing a goat or, in the case of very important dead persons, a cow, and by building a fetish hut for it.
Normally they are the spirits of people who were much respected before they died, or were ‘Abataka’ (head of clans) or had several children; sometimes such spirits became gods and tutelary deities.
In order to find out why a certain spirit has caused illness or any other trouble to a certain person, the relatives of that person invite a seer, or go to one, who informs them what sort of spirit it is and what it wants to be done in order to settle its grievances. After these people have fulfilled its requirements, the patient sometimes gets cured or the trouble finishes but in some cases the patient may not get cured nor the ‘trouble’ cleared up even if everything has been carried out according to the likes of the spirit.
There are two ways of knowing that a spirit exists in a family. The first way is to consult a seer who would tell them whether it was a spirit; the second way being a person falling ill and a doctor sought to tell whether it is a spirit attacking the person and how to get rid of it. If it were not for these two ways, there would be no possibility of believing that spirits existed, nor would the name of a spirit be known to people.
Another similar kind of spirit and one which is most common is a spirit which chooses its permanent person and when he dies, it embarks on his heir or any other members of the family or clan. The fetish huts for such spirits are built in forests or on rocks, in swamps or in plantain gardens, under very big trees or near roads, or just in the court yard. Such spirits are termed Misambwa (tutelary deities). That gives us the difference between a dead person’s spirit and the other kind of spirit known as ‘Omusambwa’ — a dead man’s spirit has a hut built for it in the compound but sometimes it is not necessary to build a hut, a feast being enough however, when huts are necessary in this respect, just a small hut will do and when the hut becomes old and falls, no maintenance is necessary nor is a hut made until some other trouble occurs, when a new hut is built.
On the other hand, huts for the ‘Misambwa’ need continual maintenance and whenever repair work on them is carried out, sacrifices are offered.
People usually carry out the repairs during seasons of drought because this is when people think that the failure of rain falling is due to the fact that not enough sacrifices were offered to the ‘Misambwa’. Again, huts for these Misambwa are attended to when the particular spirit attacks the chief or any other important person who is responsible for the construction of its hut or for offering a sacrifice to it — it causes serious trouble to him or his family and at last speaks to that responsible person and tells him what it really wants to be done for it; that might be to build a hut for it or to offer it a sacrifice. Then its request is carried out accordingly. The kind of spirits known as Misambwa varies in many ways, just as the construction of their huts in many different places. They are of different categories : — Some Misambwa are the spirits of very important people who died long ago, or were doctors or heads of clans (Abataka) or people who did extraordinary things in their time which were a wonder to others. At their death their spirits became Misambwa after a long lapse of time. These were people such as Mukama, Kintu and Kalabu of Bugweri, Kafamba and Namugera of Bulamogi, and others, and Nawandyo of Bugabula, now these names become the names of certain Misambwa and before these people lived there were no Misambwa bearing such names.
Another kind of Misambwa are those which originate from hills, mountains, lakes, rivers and big forests, because all Basoga believed that everything on earth was created by God; therefore it is He who gives life to such so that they do not perish; that makes the Basoga call such life or lives ‘spirits’. They believed that although such things perished, its spirit remains and such spirit had power over all living things. Such a spirit was worthy to be called ‘Omusambwa’ and to be adored and have sacrifices offered in the same way as other Misambwa. A living person was requested to offer a sacrifice to this sort of spirit (‘Omusambwa’) in case he or she were in any kind of danger caused by this Misambwa, either by death or any other kind of trouble. For that reason, every spirit of Musambwa of any sort (an animal, tree, lake, hill or a snake) was adored and given sacrifices in the way it preferred.
No Musoga would rebel or refuse to comply with the orders of these spirits or Misambwa until such time that the European religion was brought into the country. Then those who followed it started to believe that there is one God who is Almighty, having control over everything. The believers stopped adoring and presenting sacrifices to these heathen spirits and abandoned everything connecting with the worshipping of these spirits. However, before they followed the European religion they continually bore in mind that if one disobeyed a spirit or ‘Omusambwa’, one was liable to lose all one’s lucky chances and that the whole country had to suffer rain shortage and similar troubles.
These days pagans complain that because chiefs have become Christians and have abandoned the old way of worshipping the spirits and their needs, the whole country has changed for the bad in every respect, compared with the state in which it used to be when spirits were worshipped. Rain is no longer falling as much as it used to, when it would fill rivers with water. The whole country is now dry, the plantains are no longer as healthy as they used to be long ago, the population has decreased considerably as the birth—rate has fallen off; people die earlier now and do not live as long as they used to, and chiefs are verysoon dismissed from their chieftainships, whereas formerly it was not so.
All this is said simply beause they do not know how the world changes gradually and they think that the spirits and ‘Misambwa’ have become annoyed because they are not worshipped, and thorefore the spirits have revenged themselves by causing danger to the country.