Word: mwata
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Snakes & Sinews. It is no small honor to be Mwata Yambo of all the Lunda. With a history dating back at least four centuries, and boasting a population of 1,000,000, the tribe spreads from the Congo's Katanga province into both Portuguese Angola and Northern Rhodesia. The Lunda's most illustrious son is Katanga's secessionist leader Moise Tshombe, who married a daughter of Mwata Yambo XXIV. When his father-in-law died last June of a burst bladder, Tshombe for a time was considered as successor. But the tribal elders, suspecting that Moise might...
...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...
Groveling Subjects. Mwata Yambo 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...
...knee and touch the floor twice with the palms of their hands, and even his closest courtiers may not speak to him unless they fall to their knees; all who pass in front of him must crouch low and snap their fingers repeatedly as a safeguard against Mwata Yambo's possible displeasure...
...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...