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I’m going to present and comment on excerpts from an Italian article: “Chi non ha una parente Andinna?” by Gianni Dore, http://www.ethnorema.it/pdf/numero 3/04. GIANNI DORE.pdf
This direct Kunama testimony about the Andinnas was recorded and transcribed decades ago by colonial and church officials. Dore presents it in the Kunama with Italian translation. The orginal titles are retained. My comments are in italics.
The Andinnas
The andinnas, these don’t have heirs. Their profession is this: At the time of the ancestors the andinnas worked. These died. There’s a time of the year in which the andinnas are taken by the spirits, it is said. Once the spirits arrived, the andinnas run to scramble up on the house. She says thus, “O countrymen, the land has broken into combat, flee; if you don’t want to, wait until they come to throw you out and go away, are your feet tied? Why don’t you want to escape?” These words said, she plunged from the roof of the house to earth and fainted. Then her companions sprang up, turned her into an andinna, and she became their head. She then got up and transformed her companions into possessed women; she and her companions became andinnas. [76-77]
Then a man went to the house of the possessed women. They did like this: when a sick person comes from them, they say they are extracting the ill from that person. Some of them pull out stick from him. Others say they extract pebbles. Having done this, they take recompense in sorghum, sesame, millet, tobacco, honey and meat. For seriously ill people, some of them kill a white she-goat and collect a little of the blood in a receptacle. Then they take the ill out of the sick person and pour a little water and cover him; with the goatskin they cover the sick person’s head, with that skin they wrap up his body so that the spirits and the ailment go out of the sick person.
Because of this they call them andinnas, but they do not have heirs. [77, Note 2, contrasts this with the many Kunama offices inherited by matrilineal law. 78, note 5, explains that the sick person rides two or three times the animal to be sacrificed. Poorer folk use eggs instead.]
Extracting illness energies out of the sick is a classic practice by medicine people all over the world. So is the use of sacrificial blood, herbs, or eggs, to cleanse and infuse energy. Other African accounts repeat the theme of shamans climbing up onto roofs, or sometimes into trees, when in ecstasy, for example among the shaman-diviners of the BaYaka in Congo.
Andiney
Now here is the story of the andinnas. The possessed women in the summertime [do] thus according to their custom: they don’t eat honey, nor do they eat fresh sesame; thus they remain until the fire festival is celebrated in this time. They take themselves to the countryside, they collect roots of curative plants and then go to the river; arriving at the river, they scoop a dent in the water and put the curative root in the water which streams around it; they undress and bathe. Then returning home, they mix sesame and honey with water brought from the river and put the medicine in it; all the andinnas consume it. Then the rest of the medicine they put upon the door lintel and also put it under and in the clay oven and in the fireplace. That’s how they do it according to their custom. [78]
This beautiful ritual uses plants and the power of living water to heal.
Andinnas goddita [the closing ritual]
Then the next day the women go to bring water and in midday the possessed women do the closing dance. Once the aifa is filtered, they take it to the clearing, then they sound the cithar of the andinnas and the women begin to dance. The women clap their hands and dance, then at the center of the clearing they counterpose their lances. One at a time the possessed women throw themselves on the lances, each one throws herself on the lance, all the andinnas do thus. Then a woman takes the sorghum beer in a clay receptacle, and stands in the middle of the clearing. Then the andinnas, dipping their fingers in the aifa, spray it here and there; then one at a time they all run away and the men hold them up so they don’t fall. All the andinnas do this. [79-80]
Then all the andinnas are brought home, they rush to take the chicken meat from each others’ container and eat it. The andinnas are bathed, then they take off the fat from their hair, and send the spirits back to their countries. From this moment they come back to normal. Once back in their normal state, they begin crying and saying, Where is my son, where is my husband, where are my relatives? Then when they stop crying, they are given millà greens to eat. Then they offer aifa to those present.
Then their companions come to find the andinnas back to normal and greet them saying, Have you returned well from your journey? Are you well, they say. Have you seen our relatives? and they answer, saying We met in this or that place of the dead this one and also that one. So to the youth who is not married they say that he is married there and has come with his wife and they found each other. And offering tobacco to the spirits they also take tobacco. Now I have written the story of the possessed. Tell me another. [80]
The above describes the closing ritual after the Andinna-s have spent weeks in trance, going in procession from village to village, carrying out healings, oracular speech, and feasting on special food.
In the appendix, Dore includes a colonial letter referring to orders to question the women affected by the “devil”. This language is typical of colonial European demonization of the indigenous religion, and reflects a systemic campaign to eradicate it. The writer describes how three women sang in honor of the Elephants, Giraffes, and Buffalos and saluted the brigands, repeated two more times these salaams. He recounts the usual multiglossal chants of the andinnas.
One morning they played their cithar and playfully set about drinking from a pumpkin gourd given by the countryfolk and another gourd of honey mixed with sesame and another gourd of meal, of uaca, and of water; they killed a white hen putting the flesh in a clay cup, then with the water of the last gourd the three women wash their hands making the water pour in the gourd with the meat and with their hands washed, they rub their feet, mouths, and navels.
Then they give the meat to children and begin to disport themselves with the cithar, two of the women spread a mat on the ground and lay down covering themselves with a futa, and from under there saluted the people who were around, while the third woman threw herself on them shouting Ualladi Salama, uommi salama onani soan salama, then begins to speak a language which is neither Arabic or Baza or Tigré, and then is healed. [85-86]