Rïm’s Unrest: Issues of Secrecy and the Multivalent Use of a Nalú Traditional Shrine Piece

What we know, or don’t know, about Töngköngba’s [Rïm’s] function is complicated by a number of factors, including the extreme secrecy enveloping the sculpture and the probability that it was used in different ways by different groups

(Lamp 1996:140).

Rïm is a diffused ritual object created and employed throughout the Upper Guinea Coast. It is found among the Nalú people and sometimes referred to as Mnimba Kawala, meaning “resting Nimba.” Rïm also appears among the Landuma (who call it Tabakän) and the Buluñits. Finally, Rïm has also been documented among the two northernmost dialect groups of the Baga: the Sitem call this ritual object Tönkö or Tönköngba and the Mandori refer to it as Kañkäbälá or a-Tshol-ña-Bäpsë, which translates as “the medicine that lies on its stomach”.¹

The epigraph by renowned African art historian Frederick Lamp is important for two reasons. First, he alludes to the context-specific multivalent uses of Rïm as a sculptural tradition, shrine piece, spiritual residence, and masquerade found among the peoples of the Upper Guinea Coast of West Africa. This claim suggests the fluid nature of the genre in both space and time. The diversity and multiplicity of uses make it hard to pin down a single description of Rïm. An important contribution to the study of African art is unpacking Rïm as a physical object with multiple interpretations by those who use it.

Second, based on his extensive fieldwork among the Baga of Guinea Conakry, Lamp opined that the sculpture was enveloped in “extreme secrecy.” He later admits, however, that his claim was conjectural, since it was based on secondhand information and no direct observation of the associated rituals. Van Beek et al. maintain, “The question of secrets raises the issue of cultural integration. … [C]ultural secrets may correspond to elements of public culture, sharing ways of reasoning and methods of classification” (1991:143). In this sense, sharing and maintaining secrets is an act of making, remaking, and unmaking meaning within a culture.

Among the Nalú of the Quitáfine Peninsula of Guinea-Bissau,² Rïm’s public ritual enactment renews Nalú traditions and cultural distinctiveness. These public rituals, however, simultaneously face ongoing transformative pressures such as modernity (i.e., Western education, population mobility for work), ethnic Susu-ization (da Silva 1956), and religious Islamization. Rïm is shared with those from beyond the community’s socio-geographic boundaries; in fact, Rïm cannot be enacted for local gain, and therefore must axiomatically be shared with outsiders. As such, Nalú continually enact, portray, and refashion their cultural identity through both shared practices and demonstrated differences. Within this article, the presentation of Rïm in situ allows for the elaboration of the dynamics of sharing secret knowledge and what this means for the community and culture writ large. This makes the definition of Rïm and its interpretation by those who use and/or view it fluid and complex. Supporting the position of this argument is the observation by van Beek et al. that, “The problem of secrecy in culture is a complex one that has as yet received little theoretical attention” (1991:143).

Ferdinand de Jong, in his book Masquerades of Modernity: Power and Secrecy in Casamance, Senegal, demonstrates how secrecy is penetrable through a discussion of “the dialectics of the expansion of secrecy into public spheres” (2007:4). De Jong goes on to adroitly argue that “the autonomy of the sacred forests is relative … [and] old rituals persistently survive and receive renewed attention as identity markers in a rapidly modernizing world” (2007:5). Elsewhere, I built upon de Jong’s theory in relation to the sacred groves of the Nalú in southern Guinea-Bissau (Lundy 2012a). What I found directly corresponded to de Jong’s remark that “the state and market economy both penetrate the realm of secrecy, resulting in a continuous process of domains being inter-locked” (2007:3). Simultaneously, the...