HomeOld_PostsRain-asking ceremony ...the details

Rain-asking ceremony …the details

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CLIMATE change is blamed for a wide range of negative weather phenomena impacting agricultural production.
It seems obvious weather changes on a daily basis, but when average conditions depart from the norm, farmers are left with few or no options to alleviate the resulting damage.
The question one should ask is: Have we Africans always been that vulnerable to the whims of nature?
What, if any, technologies have we developed to fight climate change?
The new agricultural season is around the corner and the question on everyone’s mind is: Will we receive adequate rains for a bumper harvest?
What, if any, measures are individuals and communities putting in place to increase the chances of good rains?
In traditional African society, various rituals and ceremonies are carried out every year to enhance the chances of receiving good rains.
Unfortunately many Westernised (colonised) Africans consider these ceremonies backward.
Many of our (mis)educated consider the various rituals to be either evil, satanic or at best primitive and of no value.
In many cases, they are wrong.
One would be forgiven for thinking Africans, in their encounters with their European colonisers, have discovered better strategies for enhancing rainfall.
The truth is, apart from praying to God through Jesus at various church services, the Westernised Africans are nowhere near finding effective ways of increasing the chances of good rainfall.
Needless to say that traditionally, Africans also have always asked for rain from Musikavanhu, God, through their ancestral spirits, the mhondoros and vadzimu.
If anything, it is the so-called educated who have either forgotten or deliberately abandoned the ways of their forefathers to our own peril.
This week we shall explore some of the traditional strategies used to enhance or reduce rainfall occurrence.
The mukwerera is a community-based rainfall ceremony held regularly each year.
The local chief in consultation with the local mhondoro co-ordinates the ceremony.
Traditional beer must be brewed for the ceremony.
Grain, usually finger millet/rapoko (rukweza), sorghum and pearl millet (mhunga) and maize are collected as contributions from each family.
The traditional beer is brewed by elderly women who have reached menopause.
Young girls who have not reached puberty are also allowed to assist in the rain -ceremony preparations.
It is taboo for persons who are sexually active and those women going through the menstruation cycle to handle utensils or otherwise participate actively in the mukwerera preparations.
A designated svikiro (spirit medium) or elderly and celibate man will normally lead the ceremonies.
A series of elaborate prayers are made to Musikavanhu (God).
Because the Creator is too important to address directly, the prayers are made through a series of ancestral interlocutors who are then asked to take the requests for good rains to the supreme Creator of all things living.
It is important to note that the rain-asking ceremony is widely held throughout the length and breadth of Zimbabwe and other African countries.
However, in areas where the Western churches have successfully destroyed the spiritual heritage and practices, the people instead go to pray at Christian churches.
Individual farmers may also undertake another form of rainfall ceremony called kupetera.
Literally kupetera means to present something in a folded form in reference to the black cloth presented as part of the ceremony.
Before the start of the rain season, each farmer will approach the local mhondoro, who can be viewed as a regional spirit medium.
Each mhondoro controls a specific geographical area and may not infringe on the territories of other mhondoros.
Rain-asking ceremonies are an important part of the mhondoro’s portfolio of cultural and religious responsibilities.
For the kupetera ceremony, the farmer first purchases two to four metres of new black cloth of the approved quality.
S/he arranges to visit the shrine of the mhondoro.
Apart from the black cloth, a lump of dried tobacco called chambwa must also be provided together with a small monetary token to accompany the said items.
Grain such as maize, rapoko, sorghum or millet of five to 100kg, depending on the farmer’s capacity to source, is also presented as part of the ceremony.
Some of this grain will be presented as a gift to the mhondoro, while in some cases, some of the grain will be returned to the farmer after it has been ‘blessed’ by the mhondoro to be mixed with the rest of the planting seed.
In most cases, it will be proper to present the items to the spirit medium through vachiombera, the mhondoro’s shrine attendant.
Vachiombera will then present the items to the mhondoro in the shrine hut.
The shrine attendant claps his hands in a special way as he lists and presents the items, addressing the mhondoro, not the medium and stating the person who is making the request for rain.
The shrine-attendant will go into a long prayerful chant in which he humbly requests on behalf of the farmer, that adequate rains be provided by the heavens.
The prayer will include good health for both humans and their domestic animals.
The farmer and his party, which may include the spouse and senior farm workers, will clap hands in unison with vachiombera and occasionally women in attendance will ululate to endorse the request that is being made.
This rather elaborate ritual for rainfall may take anything from five to 20 minutes depending on the poetic genius of vachiombera.
The ritual will specifically name the requesting farmer, his family, totem and clan names and the location of his plot within the area of the mhondoro’s spiritual jurisdiction.
Vachiombera will ask the mhondoro to take the prayerful requests to higher spiritual echelons such as Mbuya Nehanda or Sekuru Kaguvi, who in turn will pass the message to Murenga, Tovera and all the way to Musikavanhu, the supreme Creator.
The kupetera rain ceremony was fully embraced by the former white commercial farmers.
On numerous occasions before the fast track Land Reform Programme, this writer visited the shrines of great mhondoros like Nyajore, Nyasoro, Kerutundundu and others in the Guruve and Mhangura areas.
There we met either the white farmers or more frequently their senior farm staff who were sent by their bosses to carry out the kupetera rain ceremony.
Many newly-resettled farmers across Zimbabwe also have embraced the kupetera ceremony.
However, many others misinformed or misled by so-called Christian teachings, have rejected kupetera or any other traditional rain-asking ceremonies to their great detriment.
It is in this writer’s experience that after kupetera, the rains will come almost immediately.
Let me also hasten to say where acts of moral misconduct have been committed such as where incest has occurred, rains have failed.
Visits to mhondoros have been the occasions when the spirit mediums have revealed the shenanigans that have taken place.
We see that rainfall occurrence often tracks good moral behaviour in African traditional societies.
On one occasion, a community approached a mhondoro spirit medium for rainfall.
Some in the villagers dissociated themselves and chose to go and do Christian prayers.
The rains came and jumped the fields of those who refused to conduct the traditional ceremonies.
We shall explore other traditional practices that enhance rainfall occurrence in future episodes.
Clearly, Africans have been grappling with climate change throughout their history.
The ceremonies and ‘technologies’ they have developed bear testimony to this long history of indigenous meteorological science.
We would do well to further research and embrace all traditional technologies that work.
We do not have to re-invent the wheel; we simply improve the African wheel’s performance.
That is what intelligent people do.

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