40 by spreading it over the roof of the shrine.

My informants told me that money collection during chilewe is an innovation in the Bimbi cult in order to match with economic changes since the introduction of cash economy. In the distant past, before the introduction of the cash economy, maize was collected in all the region in which the Bimbi cult held sway. The maize was collected from every household from every village in small quantities. Normally a cob or two of maize were collected during a chilewe d a n c e .

The dance used first to be held by Bimbi himself at Ulongwe and maize was collected from every

house he visited in the area. This sparked off a series of other chilewe dances at the local rain

shrines led by the local cult leaders at the individual rain shrines. This, it is said, was done annually

fat the beginning of each and every agricultural season. According to Henry Chisinkha, one of the purposes for holding the dance was to collect maize. The maize so collected was halved. Some of it was kept by the cult leader and made into malt for beer offering. The other half was brought to Bimbi for a special blessing of the seed. It was blessed at a milawe ceremony, given out to the village headmen and to the people for planting in which case it acted as fumba

(fertiliser) and chiwindo (protective medicine against 41

wild a n i m a l s ) .

It appears from this that apart from blessing the fields themselves during the chilewe dance,

the prophet is also concerned with the seed itself which is planted hence the need to collect the maize as was done by him and other cult leaders before. This seems to be more in line with S a c h s ' suggestion that more frequently in a fertility dance the dancer is identified not with the planter but w ith what is

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planted. The custom of collecting maize for a special blessing still continues but not necessarily during a chilewe dance. It is now the responsibility of the village headmen and cult leaders to ensure that such small quantities of maize and other seeds are collected from their villagers and then brought to Bimbi when they consult him at a milawe ceremony. It is important to bear in mind that chilewe is performed under hazardous c o n d i t i o n s . It is not a dance designed to create and enhance joy among the participants. It is a serious dance and in order to

underline the solemnity of the time no food is tasted during the daytime when the dance is being held.

Swaleyi Mkwanda described the situation in the following w o r d s :

"When I dance Chilewe I do not normally eat sometimes for weeks or for a month. 3

A ccording to Kambani White Bimbi himself does not eat or sleep anywhere other than where the spirits tell him to do so. Bimbi is given food by the village headman in whose village he wants to spend the night. Food comes from other households also to the village headman's house in order for him to feed the dancing party. Forty to fifty people or more may be involved

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who share in this communal meal. Two things should be taken into account here. To start with, food

eating among the Chewa has a religious dimension. When people partake of the same food and of the same drink they proclaim their participation in a mystical body encompassing the living and the living-dead.

When different families or groups of people meet at a communal meal they transcend their individual egoistic self in all its negative aspects to a more reconciliatory all-encompassing body in which the ancestral spirits are heads and have a great deal of influence in matters of social, political and economic welfare of the people.

Besides, communal food eating has a tremendous sociological significance in that potentially hostile segementary sections of the community are drawn

together into a harmonious whole thus strengthening social ties,and reciprocal support in a society where people have to fight hard for their survival. By eating together in a common meal, normally at an open space called b w a l o , the participants express in an unprecedented way the oneness of their mind in a deeper way than words can express thus eliminating conflictive and disruptive elements in society.

That this is included in the Chilewe dance is seen in the way in which food is p rovided to Bimbi and his people. By entering into a communal

become one by partaking of the same meal thus cementing solidarity relationships between the Bimbi and his

followers on the one hand and the wider community on the other even in circumstances in w h ich these were n o n - e x i s t e n t .

Here we see one of the socio-religious

implications of the chilewe dance which, apart from other things, creates a unitary cosmology not only between men but also between them and the spiritual

forces. We may also assume, by implication that a certain degree of harmony with nature is achieved. All in all, therefore, the chilewe dance can be said to be the dance of total incorporation. The corporate nature of the community as a whole is power which can make the seed germinate and the plant to grow and

harvest more or less secured. Thus through the

collectivity man participates in the myth of creation and of its present a c t u a l i s a t i o n . And since creation is the first stage of salvation it seems plausible to argue that in the chilewe dance salvation is not only a future event but a present reality which can be acted upon and brought about.

Chilewe may last for two or three w e e k s .

Sometimes it lasts for a month. It all depends, so it is believed, on how many villages the spirits want Bimbi to cover. Bimbi under the influence of spirits may decide to dance chilewe up to chief Chimwala,

in Mangochi District, to Mwima in Machinga or even as 45

far away as L i w o n d e 's area.

Kambani White gave me the following testimony:

"If he goes to dance Chilewe far away he may stay there for five days. I follow him in the d a n c e . I danced Chilewe with him last time. It was danced here at Kalembo. He performed Chilewe at Nandumbo's, Milala, M a w o n i , Namalomba, Chidothi, Namungumi,

Mpango.and other villages there which I cannot remember by name."

In the dance, Yao, Chewa, Ngoni and Lomwe villages are covered as if they were under one 'tribal' chief with the same political and social interests. It can been seen from these testimonies that Chilewe is a transcendental dance for it ignores the limitations imposed upon the wider society by family, lineage and tribal affiliations. For in a dance the dancers are required to adopt the same rhythm, in other words they must look alike in their steps f o r it is the

harmoniously co-ordinated way of the dancers' movements dancing in unison with nature and the spirit world

which makes the Chilewe dance a religiously meaningful dance and not c h a o s . Chilewe dance is as it were a re-enactment of the creation story whereby order is established over chaos.

When the days set for Chilewe are over and the Bimbi feels that he has achieved his main

objectives, he and his party return to the-Bimbi village. Kambani White has it that when going back to the village people still sing Chilewe songs. When they arrive in the Bimbi village they must not be welcomed by anyone. Once they arrive with their

luggage they sing and dance around for sometime and then stop and rest. Some of the money collected during chilewe is distributed to the participants from the Bimbi village and the rest is used for buying a black cloth for the mother rain shrine in the Mponda forest. This done people resume their normal life and the scene is set for milawe.

b Milawe: possession seance

"Belief, ritual and spiritual experience, these three are the corner stones of religion and the greatest of them is the l a s t . "47

The preliminaries

For all practical p u r p o s e s , chilewe is a preparatory stage for m i l a w e . Milawe is a religious ceremony involving spirit possession and it is the most important ritual in the life and call to

Bimbiship of the incumbent. The dominant belief is that during milawe Bimbi is seized by the ancestral spirits who fall upon him and make him speak on their behalf thus revealing to him alone the secrets of the spirit world in the heavenly council of the ancestral spirits. The content of this revelation is more

often than not related to weather conditions prevailing at the time of the consultations or in the near or

far future. Through this kind of knowledge, so it is believed, people are enabled to prevent the occurence of a drought or to counter-attack' the adverse effects of an existing drought by following the advice given to them by Bimbi at a milawe sitting.

For lack of better terminology I translate milawe here as possession seance that is a group

meeting or sitting usually in darkness, for the purpose 48

of investigating psychic phenomena. Since milawe is believed to be conducted in a state of spirit

possession we can argue that Bimbi temporarily ceases to be a mere human being and becomes a quasi-spiritual being in order to be the vocie of the ancestral

spirits and sometimes of Chauta the ultimate source of all being.

Rymond W. Firth has defined spirit possession as a set of practices and ideas based upon belief in the entry of a spirit into the human being (or a close control by a spirit of the body of the human being) so that actions of the person affected are thought to be either those of the spirit or to be

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directly dictated by the spirit. Elizabeth Colson in her study of spirit possession among the Tonga of Zambia has pointed out that when an individual is in

a state of spirit possession, a spirit is said to have entered (k u n j i l a ) the body of the one possessed and that during periods of active possession the vehicle is addressed as the spirit and treated in

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