Word: lunda
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...accord with early tribal belief that a serpent, the Lunda's most sacred creature, had a head at each end and was both male and female, the new Mwata Yambo's final approval came from the senior chief, Kanampumbe, and the senior chieftainess, known as the Ruwej. Then the chosen one was dragged to a hut and surrounded by villagers spitting filthy insults at him-to point up the fact that he was not yet divine. At last, on a sacred mountain 150 miles from Musongo, the Mwata Yambo was installed. From the gnarled hands of the Ruwej...
...XXIV had been a progressive sort who encouraged tribal children to attend school and urged males to work instead of loafing while wives labored. He spoke French, got along well with Europeans. His successor displays no such interest in 20th century manners. He is suspicious of whites, speaks only Lunda and a little Swahili...
...would think that such autocratic and slothful leadership might trigger revolt. After all, economic conditions are also pretty pitiful. Because their manioc crops have been repeatedly plundred by Congolese soldiers and Katangese ex-gendarmes, many Lunda have stopped planting, and more than one village suffers near starvation...
...strangely, the new Mwata Yambo is more popular among tribal elders and even some youth than his predecessor. Says one young Lunda just back from the bright lights of Elisabethville: "While I was away I began to think all this tribal ceremony was perhaps a lot of nonsense. But now that I am back home it seems perfectly natural, and I like...
...pale substitute for an earlier practice, banned years ago by the Belgians, which employed sinews from the penis of a Lunda warrior ceremonially slaughtered for the occasion...