RIGHT/LEFT, MAN/WOMAN, EVEN/ODD

Right/left

If we reconsider this opposition, we find that it does not provide us with a dichotomous model but employs reversal to oppose levels. I have just argued this point in relation to marriage; it is also apparent in the highlighting of situations of the kind that certain important ancestors require, in which right and left are associated.

In case of misfortune, it is sometimes appropriate to honour particular ancestors, namely, twins and persons born in a reversed position (the kashindye, who ‘are born showing their feet’). There are distinctions within these two categories but together they are clearly differentiated from all the other ancestors. A particular type of mafinga calabash is especially associated with them. One fills these mafinga with lwanga (flour and water) and anoints the sick person. The person who does the anointing is the mhoja (a commoner who is equivalent to the ntemi wa mhoja mentioned above, the master, at court, of ‘peace’ with the ancestors) – on this occasion one of the sick person's aunts. Ordinary anointing, for instance to protect someone who is setting out on a journey, which does not involve the invocation of ancestors of a particular rank, is done on the forehead, throat and sometimes on both shoulders. It is one's father who performs it. For other acts of consecration, of animals, and for sacrifices, the mhoja is an uncle (Bösch 1930, pp. 95, 99–100, 103, 146), but here a woman, an aunt, is chosen. The paternal/maternal opposition recurs, for one's father's sister or one's mother's sister is chosen, depending upon whether the kashindye ancestor or the child born a twin is on the father's or the mother's side.