Religious Mobility And Body Language in Kubandwa Possession Cults

One of the most interesting features of the Great Lakes cultures is the Kubandwa spirit possession, observed by first European travellers in the second half of 19th Century, and later studied by numerous authors during the 20th Century. This paper reflects on the trans-national dimension of the practice analysing examples of Kubandwa rituals from various places and periods: Kubandwa tends in fact to cross linguistic, political and temporal frontiers, re-appearing in different spots and moments through forms always renovated but still clearly recognisable. Despite the variety of the spirits – forming a dynamic pantheon which is continuously increasing – the ritual, based on the mechanism of spirit possession and a specific body language, tends to remain constant throughout the region. While the discourse of ethnicity is often spoken in the political arena, underlining divisions and separations, this religious and healing tradition offers the opportunity of “speaking” (in embodied forms) another kind of discourse, the one of trans-nationality and multi-ethnicity .