Bena Riamba

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The Bena Riamba , also Bene Diamba, were followers of a cult in the West Kasai province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo , to which independent clans of Bantu ethnic groups had come together. Bena Riamba or Bena Moyo means "those who have life" or "sons of hemp", because Riamba or Hemba means "hemp". Until the 20th century, these clans placed marijuana ( cannabis ), which was smoked in pipes, at the center of a unifying ritual.

According to European explorers in the late 19th century, hemp was imported by Arab traders on the east coast of Africa. Hemp was taken from the caravans as an exchange product and smoked by the porters. The smoking of marijuana spread among the local population to the lower reaches of the Congo . A German East Africa expedition commented disparagingly on marijuana smoking Nyamwezi (settlement focus around the Tanzanian city of Tabora , located on the trade routes at the time ):

"The smoke is sucked in through the lungs, a habit that causes a violent cough with the also common smoking of hemp, which is accompanied by the intoxicated smoker with animal roars and screams in the fistula."

Around 1870, the Riamba cult in the Congolese province of Kasai developed as a kind of peer pressure across several clans of the Baschilange who were bartered with one another. Baschilange (or Tusselange ) is the historical name for a related group or subgroup of the Baluba . It was the special form of an ancestral cult , the ancestors ( bajangi ) should be invoked by taking marijuana and influenced to positive behavior. Marijuana consumption was not previously common in this area.

The first report of the hashish cult was provided by Otto H. Schütt, who set out from the west coast as leader of a German expedition in 1878 to penetrate into areas in the interior of Africa where the population had previously opposed the march of other German expeditions. He summarized a description that he had received from the cult among the people of the Baschilenge with their chief Mukenge, whereby he described "Diamba" as "a kind of tobacco". Parts of the interim reports of his trip turned out to be falsified.

The second description of the Riamba festival comes from Hermann von Wissmann . In 1883 he set out from Hamburg on an expedition to the Kasai region. In the land of the Baluba, the expedition participants increasingly encountered signs of the hashish cult. The aim of the advance was to win Chief Mukenge as an agent for the colonization, as was regulated in the contract between Wissmann and the Belgian King Leopold II . In November 1886, Wissmann von Kasai set out on a second crossing of the African continent. His expedition initially consisted of 1000 people, including 600 Bena Riamba. After the troops had been decimated by smallpox and attacks by the Arabs, Wissmann sent the Bena Riamba back and only reached the East African coast and Zanzibar with a small core .

The Bena Riamba were made known in the west through Wissmann. From his description:

“The masters appeared with a mighty pipe, a hollowed-out pumpkin, into which a resounding cylinder was inserted as a pipe head and a mouthpiece cut into the upper end. Around Tschingenge, who was swinging his two fly whisk with gravity again, the bald, tattooed, tall, lean fellows sat down and began to light their pipes. Soon gray, sweetly foul-smelling smoke enveloped the strange group, from which convulsive coughing and snorting ... [came]. "

Cannabis consumption in the Lubuku region became an overly multi-purpose ritual, so long hours of smoking cannabis was supposed to help establish the truth. The members of the Bena Riamba cult submitted to the rigid rule of a leader with the title Kalamba , who forbade the practice of all previous cults, the use of traditional ritual objects and the previously common consumption of palm wine . The old cult figures were tracked down and burned. The cult accepted men and women and practiced an acceptance ritual. The objects of worship of the cult and the insignia of the Kalamba’s power included the hemp pipe, which consisted of a large calabash , a number of rifles and a white powdered chalk called pemba. The pipe was said to be so big that it had to be carried by two men. Clans that did not want to take part in the hemp ceremonies became opponents.

literature

  • Johannes Fabian: In tropical fever. Science and madness in the exploration of Central Africa. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2001. Chapter: Charisma, Cannabis and Caravans. Africa explorer in the land of friendship. Pp. 205-241
  • Brian M. du Toit: Man and Cannabis in Africa: A Study of Diffusion. In: African Economic History, No. 1. African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Spring 1976, pp. 17-35
  • Hermann von Wissmann : My second crossing of Equatorial Africa from the Congo to the Zambesi during the years 1886 and 1887. Verlag der Königlichen Hofbuchdruckerei Trowitzsch & Sohn, Frankfurt / Oder 1891
  • Kjell Zetterstrom: Bena Riamba, Brothers of the Hemp. In: Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia, 26, 1966, pp. 151-65.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Communications from the African Society in Germany. Vol. 3, No. 1, Berlin 1881, p. 11. Quoted from Fabian 2001, p. 218.
  2. ^ Otto H. Schütt: Travel in the southwest basin of the Congo. Edit from the traveler's diaries and notes. u. ed. v. Paul Lindenberg. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1881, p. 146. Quoted from Fabian 2001, p. 211.
  3. ↑ Fabian 2001, pp. 236-240.
  4. ↑ Quoted from: Kathrin Langenohl: 'Repeat when necessary.' On the relationship between tradition and modernity in the painterly work Tshelantendes (Djilatendo), Belgian Congo. Lit-Verlag, Münster 2003, p. 31; also in: Carl Falkenhorst : Black princes. Images from the history of the dark part of the world. Second part: rulers in East Africa. Ferdinand Hirt & Sohn, Leipzig 1892, p. 234 ( at Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Albert Maesen: Enciclopedia universal dell'arte. Vol. 2. G. Sanson, Florence 1958; Quoted in: Herta Haselberger: Method of Studying Ethnological Art. In: Current Anthropology Vol. 2, No. 4, October 1961, pp. 341-384, here p. 352
  6. ^ FW Butt-Thompson: West African Secret Societies. Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish (Montana, USA) 2003, p. 266 f.