o - Aceh Books website

MENDE 515
Leone's first head of state (and a Christian Mende), once designed and implemented
a program utilizing sande training sessions to introduce such modern
practices as health education and trained midwifery. The humoi society specifically
regulates men-women relations; "incest" is conceived as breaches of
humoi laws. Christian missions and Muslims oppose these associations, and
adherents who have been initiated often become inactive; some refuse to let their
sons be initiated into poro. For Muslims and Christians, sanctions of behavior
stem from their faith, not the traditional societies, and conflict is inevitable.
There are other societies of more limited membership devoted to such efforts as
healing/counseling and mutual aid (some were labeled subversive by the colonial
government). Muslim influence is shown in that insurance and mutual-aid societies
are called malodi (from the Arabic mawlid).
Mende have traditionally believed in a supreme creator deity, Ngewo, who
is contacted indirectly through a ngafa, a spirit. Ancestral spirits, non-ancestral
spirits and the spirits of the societies or associations suffice. Ngewo invest many
objects with supernatural power, hale, usually glossed as "medicine", which
can be utilized. Specialist practitioners are qualified to use hale; specifically, the
officers of the societies who cure individuals and ensure the prosperity of the
chiefdom, and the halemoi, a term covering diviners, private practitioners and
sometimes including mori men, Muslims who work with Islamic paraphernalia.
The word honei refers to a "witch-spirit" in the body of a witch, a honamoi,
those who have the ability and means to attack a victim with the supernatural
power (honei) in their own bodies, and sorcerers, who use magical devices of
extracorporeal origin. Some argue, however, that Mende take a "practical attitude"
towards life, concern themselves with today's problems and are little
interested in metaphysics.
Like other West Africans, Mende have taken over an Arabic/Islamic vocabulary,
the use of which does not necessarily imply extensive knowledge of Islam.
For example, the ancestral spirits come to be viewed as intermediaries between
Allah and the living and so continue to be propitiated. Similarly, traditional rites
are often continued while being supplemented by Islamic practices; thus commemorative
ceremonies on the seventh and fortieth days following a funeral are
added to the traditional fourth-day rite. In funeral ceremonies and elsewhere
Mende Muslims replace the old red rice sacrifice (made with red palm oil) with
the white rice offering (made with honey, sugar and/or coconut oil). The wide
range of traditional charms utilizing hale have been supplemented by Islamic
forms such as sura written on paper or nesi, "holy water," obtained by washing
a Quranic text off the board or slate on which it has been written, bottling the
water and subsequently using it as medicine. Charms are used for a wide variety
of purposes. Is is possible that conversion to Islam reduces the frequency of
autopsies to determine whether or not the deceased was a witch. The more
obvious manifestations of Mende Islam are the praying places outlined on clear
ground, the mosques, plus the Quranic schools; Mende call the students in the
latter "children around the fire," an apt description of a common village scene.