Notes
Notes Introduction . All vernacular terms used hereafter, unless otherwise stated, are written in Luvale, the language spoken by the Luvale people, or the Valuvale, often referred to in the literature as Lwena. In Chavuma, the Zambian district where I conducted two years of fieldwork, this language is also spoken by other closely related groups, such as the Chokwe, Luchazi, and Mbunda. I use the Luvale spelling adopted in Zambia, but I have flattened all aspirated consonants (ph, for example, appears as p). All Luvale terms used recurrently in this book are listed in the Glossary. . For other cognitive approaches to anthropomorphism, see Boyer and Guthrie . . The somatization of trauma has been studied in psychoanalysis by such authors as Brett (), Brody (), Friedman and Jaranson (), Orley (), and Parker (:-). . Several authors have underscored this existential and pragmatist dimension of divination, among them Graw (, ), Shaw (, ), and Whyte (, ). . For the influx of Angolans into Zambia during colonialism, see, for example, Cabrita ; Mitchell ; Powles :-; and White b, :. . For information on the Angolan wars, from the liberation struggle in the s to the cease-fire in , see Birmingham , ; Brinkman ; Chabal ; Chabal and Vidal ; Ciment ; Davidson :-; Guimarães , Messiant ; Newitt ; and Pélissier . . For the resettlement of Angolan refugees in Zambia, see Barrett ; Hansen , a, b, ; Mijere ; Powles ; and Wilson . . These figures refer to Chavuma subdistrict, that is, to the wards located on the east bank of the Zambezi River. Chavuma became a district in and was expanded to include the wards located on the west bank (see Annex , “Households and Population Distribution by Ward, Constituency, District and Province,” Central Statistical Office ). . For similar spirits reported elsewhere in Africa, such as the zar, hauka, and masabe, see for example, Boddy ; Kramer /; and Stoller a, . . In the early s, Manuel Jordán met a diviner in Kabompo, North-Western province, Zambia, whose divination basket included a small plastic toy soldier that 144 Notes to Pages 14–37 stood for a person killed during the Angolan civil wars or a form of affliction caused by an ancestor who died in combat (:). In Chavuma, I never came across a divination basket containing a comparable article. . I thank Michael Jackson for helping me shape this argument. . For a general overview of important sociocultural and historical aspects of the Upper Zambezi and south Central Africa, see Hudson ; McCulloch ; Pritchett ; Redinha ; Reefe ; Vansina ; Wastiau ; and White b, . Chapter A portion of this chapter appeared previously, in a different form, in Sónia Silva, “The Birth of a Divination Basket,” in Chokwe! Art and Initiation among Chokwe and Related Peoples, ed. Manuel Jordán (Munich: Prestel, ), -. . All names of individuals and residential areas within the district of Chavuma are pseudonyms. . Elsewhere, I translated the Luvale term mwivwi as “advance fee” or “first payment ” (Silva :-). I now believe that the term deposit is a better translation, for it evokes both the initial payment of a cost and the creation of a bond or relationship of trust between diviner and basket maker. Diviner Sanjamba told me, “The diviner gives a small deposit to the basket maker so that she knows that she has been given work, so that she says to herself, ‘When I finish making this basket, the diviner will come and pay me for my work.’ She says this because he has already given her the deposit.” . Mufu is a dead person whose life force (mwono) has already departed and whose body is not yet decomposed. The physical corpse is called chivimbi (White a:-). Kakoma’s statement that the basket is the corpse of the late diviner implies that this basket will be animated through contact with Kayongo, a spiritual manifestation of the late diviner, in the course of a ritual ceremony. . Between September and January the average exchange rate was , kwachas to one US dollar. In Chavuma, a large chicken, for example, sold for , kwachas, and a good chitenge wrapping cloth sold for , kwachas. For people with little access to cash, , kwachas was (and still is) a significant amount. . On the link between speech and the act of striking the earth or another material base, see, for example, Keane :; Livingstone :; and MacGaffey :-. . Clans, or miyachi, are highly dispersed and noncorporate groups shared by the Luvale and related peoples. For a discussion of the origin and significance of these social groups, twelve in number, see White . . This contradicts fisherman Kakoma’s statement that a lipele is buried with the corpse of its owner, as well as Merran McCulloch’s remark that “at the death of...
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