peter
ON my birthday, I visited my rural home. With African cultural astronomy in my mind, I was aware that birthdays are not originally part of African lunar calendars. The sun and the moon, and to a lesser extent, other cosmic bodies, did not reckon days. No star or moon tracked days that were reckoned as such.
Instead, the basic recorded and acknowledged unit of time was a lunar month. We are not here saying the unit of time known as a day, ilanga or usuku, did not exist. The sun did mark these as was discussed in the last article. Such solar-based units of time were not married to events such as the birth or death of an individual.
A birth registry did exist and was a product of cosmic movements of the sun in collaboration with the moon and its movements. Lunar months were recognized and each of the thirteen lunar months was characterised by distinct environmental events taking place during a particular lunar month. Commencement and end of each lunar month was clearly defined. The appearance of the crescent moon was to acknowledge commencement of a new lunar month.
When the moon was born or reborn, as a crescent, uzipho, symbolising a newly born baby, a month began. Even when the moon was not visible because of cloud cover, the accompanying weather told the story. Last week we experienced one of the harshest weather conditions for this year. The moon was just about to die. The moon, as we indicated in some earlier article, is always keen to loudly announce its birthday, its death day, and the flanking periods.
For the duration of a lunar month, the characteristic weather is a mediated condition between the movements, position of both the sun and the moon, in the main. Take for example, the month of July, appropriately named, as uNtulikazi in IsiNdebele, is a cold, windy, and dusty month. Its coldness is occasioned by the position of the sun, which is on its steady migration towards the September solstice. At the time, the sun is far from above the equator or the Tropic of Capricorn (winter solstice in the southern hemisphere).
The moon also added to the windy, tempestuous and cool weather. The moon was about to die (the dark moon in English).
The moon announces its approaching death through changed weather which is cooler than normal. The thirteen lunar months are recognised and used as markers or registers of one’s birth or death.
Thus, birth registration is, in the first instance, announced by the lunar month and its distinct associated environmental conditions. Zibandlela (January) is the time of year and lunar month when grass has grown to a point where it is covering (ukuziba) path (indlela). What is important to appreciate here is that each lunar month has an interpretation for its name.
This may not always be the case. It so happens that some names of lunar months have unknown origins to current generations.
What are the meanings/interpretations behind the following lunar months: uNhlangula, uMbimbitho, and uLwezi? The meanings may have been lost over the years when IsiNdebele was no longer as prized as it used to be in the past when it was a language of expression of political power, economic production modes and relations, and commerce.
The year was the second and last reckoning of one’s birth and death registration, all documented through observation of political, cultural and environmental events that took place during the course of the thirteen lunar months that constitute umnyaka, the year. When was he born? He was born when a star with a tail (Halley’s Comet that appeared in 1910). She was born when President Robert Gabriel Mugabe was dethroned (November 2017). She was born when Queen Elizabeth II visited Zimbabwe.
Iconic events involving iconic figures are better remembered and are readily recognizable. When a king or queen dies, that is a calamitous socio-political event that is known to all and sundry. The example that we have often used is one of an Ntabazinduna Nyathi man whose name was Zibomvu, so named because he was born in 1868 when King Mzilikazi died. The hearts of the Ndebele people were “red,” not in the literal but figurative sense of the word. The people were in a state of mourning, grieving and inconsolable.
Registration of both births and deaths embraced two components, the lunar month and the year. It was all-practical and decided upon by celestial bodies in terms of their movements and relative positions in the firmament. Now the way births and deaths are recorded is something new and foreign to Africans. The day when one was born is recorded and that day is characterized by pomp and ceremony, among those that can afford it. Just like Christmas Day, it has been commercialized. Money drives such days.
That was my birthday that never was. I am almost always reminded of the day. Many on Facebook post their wishes. Of course, I oblige and send back messages of gratitude. If you cannot beat them, you join them. The world we live in is about money.
Getting back to my rural home is a time to reminisce with the stars, the planets and the moon. The night sky is an object of keen observation. When all else is dark the lit-up sky is the centre of attraction. My rural home has not benefited yet to the program of rural electrification. Darkness rules supreme, only dwarfed by the myriads of twinkling, blinking and shining cosmic bodies some of which have been named. Knowledge is measured in terms of the known and named world over which humans exert dominion and power.
For a change, I am away from the madding lights of Bulawayo, a city malnamed and misnamed by Cecil John Rhodes and his admirers. The darkness of city lights diminishes the knowledge of African cultural astronomy. In the strange darkness, stars shy away instead of shining brightly. We do not see and learn from them. It is a darkness that delinks, disconnects and uproots us from our past, and from our traditions. No wonder, I have identified towns and cities as cemeteries of our culture.
Today I reminisce with the sky and the ancient wisdom brightly etched on its belly. I see, and very clearly too, the Milky Way, umthala. My mind races back to what I have been reading about concerning umthala, as we know it in IsiNdebele. Umthala is a name and a description. Names, as I often say, are not carelessly and nonchalantly thrown onto objects, be they human or non-human.
The English view the Milky Way as a distinctive bright streak across the night sky. In terms of their mythology, the brightness emanates from a man whose armpits shone rays of light. Humans always seek to explain, understand and interpret the world around them. If the Milky Way is white, attempts are made to explain how that colour came about.
If the Milky Way is sort of meandering, they will see and explain it in terms of a world known to them. On earth, there are rivers. The Milky Way must be a heavenly river. In mythology, it is a Great Sky River. Myths characterize all human groups.
There were times when what today we understand as myths were perceived as the truth in terms of knowledge available then.
Ideas change over time, because of contact with other peoples, improved technologies and techniques. Current generations then begin to see their ancient parents as having been propagating myths. Sometimes we tend to think what we know in the present will endure into eternity. This is not so. Knowledge will continue to change and backslide into the burgeoning world of mythologies. Sometimes myths enjoy currency when they find their way into films and related artistic expressions.
In the main, the Milky Way, because of its white colour, is portrayed as milk, ash or cornmeal. For example, in ancient Egypt, the Milky Way was viewed as a pool of cows’ milk. Where phenomena are extra-ordinary, the tendency is to deify them.
Indeed, in Egypt, the Milky Way was deified as a fertility cow goddess known as Bat.
The Khoisan of South Africa had their own explanations and interpretations of the Milky Way. In their mythology, they claim that a long time ago there were no stars. That meant there was palpable darkness all around. A girl was lonely and desired to visit other people to enjoy their company. As a strategy to light up the sky and see her way around, she took embers in a fire and threw them into the sky.
Mythologies were developed for the sole purpose of deriving meaning out of phenomena that human societies and communities observed. The phenomena were analysed, explained and interpreted in terms of their designs, their shape, unique traits, structure and other qualities, inter alia. It was an effort to live at peace with an understood world. Different communities saw the same phenomena differently. Their traditions, pre-existing knowledge, cosmology and philosophy led to their unique explanations, analyses, interpretations generation of meanings. This explains the diversity of mythologies attached to the same phenomenon. It is not easy to operate outside of one’s cultural experiences and perceptions.
Through myths, we get a better appreciation of a people in terms of their thought, cosmology, their traditions, language and technologies. Where there is reference to dogs and cows, we are alerted to the fact that a particular community had already domesticated dogs and cattle. The people project their known earthly world onto the unknown cosmic world. “As below, so above!”
The Cherokee view and explain the Milky Way as resulting from a thieving dog that stole some white cornmeal and fled to the north. The trail left behind by the fleeing dog spread the cornmeal, resulting in the origin of the Milky Way. The stories do differ from one community to the other. What is common and consistent is the universal desire to explain, interrogate and interpret unfamiliar and unknown aspects of the world, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial with a view to live with a known world. A known and understood world is beneficial to the communities who seek to live in harmony with it.
The concept of Ubuntu applies where interconnectedness of life is centred.
Online Reporter