Old Kikuyu religion 'igongona' and 'mambura': sacrifice and sex: re-reading Kenyatta's ethnography

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Periodical article

Title:	Old Kikuyu religion 'igongona' and 'mambura': sacrifice and sex: re-reading Kenyatta's ethnography
Author:	Bernardi, Bernardo
Year:	1993
Periodical:	Africa: rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione
Volume:	48
Issue:	2
Pages:	167-183
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Kenya
Subjects:	African religions Kikuyu
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/40760779
Abstract:	In his description of the old culture of the Kikuyu ('Facing Mount Kenya: the tribal life of the Gikuyu', 1938), Jomo Kenyatta reserved a large section for an analysis of traditional rituals and beliefs. He tried to explain them by searching what in Kikuyu culture could be taken as the equivalent of the Western idea of religion. He proposed as such the two concepts of 'igongona' and 'mambura', conveying respectively the idea of sacrifice and of the sacred. The present author evaluates this proposition in the light of further ethnographic evidence, taking into account the methodological difficulties Kenyatta had to face as a cultural translator. He argues that the concept of 'mambura' is usually connected with ritual sexual intercourse. Even if the idea of sacredness carried by the two terms 'igongona' and 'mambura' seems to be founded, when it is compared with the Western idea of religion the equivalence is not so transparent, neither as ritual nor as ideology, a discrepancy that emphasizes the original peculiarity of the old Kikuyu culture. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in French and Italian.