2003
137 pp.
6 drawings, 1 table, 1 graph
Text language: English
The series Africans write back has made it its task to publish texts of indigenous ethnographers, following the tradition of Montesquieus’ “Lettres persanes”, and Michel Leiris’ appeal to African ethnographers and historians to oppose the descriptions of their cultures out of a foreign, western perspective against an inner view, i.e. ‘to write back’.
The present work constitutes a description of L.T. Rubongoya’s own version of his culture and of the Kingdom of Tooro / Uganda. During twenty years the author collected the results of personal conversations with a group of traditionally conscious compatriots who are interested in their language and history, carrying on on his literary research concerning this subject. Therefore, this study offers a deep insight into a complex and collectively shared knowledge within the areas of traditional healing methods, witchcraft, divination, initiation, sacral kingdom, and ancestor worship.
Paying attention to the background of Christian fundamentalist movements in Uganda, which increasingly “satanize” the traditional African religions, Rubongoya presents an alternative draft that relieves this tradition from any ‘primitiveness’ and that tries to bring it into harmony with Christian doctrine, especially with the Old Testament.
Under these links you will find grammatical descriptions, dictionaries and text collections of further Ugandan languages and cultures and of languages in the Great Lakes Bantu area (Tanzania / Uganda / Rwanda):
