Luvale

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Training center near Luena in Angola (co-financed by Aktion Tagwerk )
Traditional Likishi dance costume (around 1900)
Traditional musical instrument

The Luvale (also Lovale , Angola Luena or Lwena ) are a matrilineal Bantu people , which in the east of Angola and western Zambia is located. They are counted as part of the large Lunda group , although they are closer to the Chokwe . They are estimated to have 20,000 members, and the Luvale language is said to have 800,000 speakers.

The name Luena is associated with the Luena River , after which the Angolan city of Luena is named.

Way of settlement

The settlement area of ​​the Luvale is preferably in the grassy plains (chana) on rivers and lakes, which are flooded in the rainy season and therefore provide good grazing land for their cattle in the dry season. The shifting cultivation is the basis for the subsistence of the small village communities. The women mainly plant maize, cassava, peanuts, cassava, cabbage and sugar cane. The diet is supplemented by breeding small animals, hunting and fishing as well as honey for the wine production of men.

Social organization

The social organization is based on matrilineal descent with a preferred virilocal residence; d. H. the wife moves into the husband's village and lives in a working and living community in the husband's village. Their children are included in the woman's matrilineage. If the wife divorces her husband, she and her children return to the village of their matriarchy . Because of the virilocality, mainly sons of the same matrilineal descent live in the villages. The chief's or village head's family must descend directly from the eldest woman of the most respected maternal lines. The individual lineages can be traced back via the genealogies , the oldest and thus leading lineage provides the chief , who takes on the representation of the village interests to the outside world. There are bride price ( lobola paid), which is only possible if the majority of men is able to pay them; this in turn presupposes that there must be a certain surplus of food, pets, etc. The Luvals only have local chiefs .

religion

The Luvale know a creator god and supreme power, the Lalunga, as well as a number of nature and ancestral spirits , the Mahamba. These spirits belong to an individual, a family or the community. Disregarding them leads to individual or collective unhappiness. Evil spirits can be conjured up by the shaman, which can only be resolved by appropriate counter-conjuration. To do this, the individual must consult the priest, the nganga, who exposes the client's problems. The prophecy is usually based on up to 60 objects in a basket, which are mixed and poured out. The nganga interprets the cause of the disease from the state of affairs.

Web links

Commons : Luvale Folk  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files
  • Isabella Andrej: Chapter 5.4.3. Traditions of the Lunda people. In: Matrilineare societies - An investigation from an ethnological and historical point of view. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna 1998, March 4, 1999, accessed on August 22, 2013 ( complete download: PDF; 1.4 MB, 315 pages).
  • Christian Sobiella: Africa - Angola - Luena. In: Harry's Hamburg Harbor Bazaar. Karin Rosenberg, 2003, archived from the original on September 27, 2007 ; Retrieved August 22, 2013 .
  • Lexical entry: Luvale information. In: Art and Life in Africa Online. University of Iowa, November 3, 1998, accessed August 22, 2013 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lexical entry: Luvale Information. (No longer available online.) In: Art and Life in Africa Online. University of Iowa November 3, 1998, archived from the original December 11, 2006 ; accessed on August 22, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uiowa.edu
  2. ↑ Ethnologue entry: Luvale - A language of Zambia. In: M. Paul Lewis u. a. (Ed.): Ethnologue: Languages ​​of the World . 17th edition. SIL International, Dallas Texas 2013, accessed August 22, 2013.

literature

  • Albert E. Horton: "A grammar of Luvale". Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1949.
  • Joseph Robert Papstein: "The Upper Zambezi. A History of the Luvale People, 1000-1900". Ph.D. Thesis, UCLA, 1978.
  • Boris Wastiau: "Mahamba. The Transforming Arts of Spirit Possession among the Luvale-Speaking People of the Upper Zambezi". Friborg: University Press Friborg, 2000. ISBN 3-7278-1293-1 (Collectanea Instituti Anthropos, 48)