FROM CHINAMWALI TO CHILANGIZO:

ciation and 'celebration ofthe powers oflife which Chiuta has given these organs' (Van
BreugeI2001:152).
A rigorous attempt is therefore made among the Chewa people to honour and appease
the mizimu by carrying out their demands and remaining faithful to the ancestral cus­
toms such as the proper burial and initiation rites. Most of the taboos that surround the
life cycle rituals have to do with sexual abstinence. The belief is that there is some mys­
tical power associated with sexual fluids, menstrual blood, and sometimes with salt
(DeGabriele 1999 and Van BreugeI2002).
Therefore, while initiation rites (chinamwali), for boys and girls, are the means by
which one becomes an adult member of Chewa society, chinamwali for girls, who are
'sacred vessels oflife,' is also the means by which fertility for the girls is established for
replenishing the race. The presence of nyau is not just to inculcate right behaviour, but
to intercede with Chiuta for continued fertility in the village. The driving force behind
all this is the Chewa belief in the mizimu ya makolo as the guardians of the ancestral
customs which must be passed on from generation to generation through initiation rites,
thus giving the initiates identity and a sense ofhistory.
The Chewa people are thus moulded by the above cultural heritage. Its nature echoes
Harold Turner's (1977) six-feature analysis 16 ofthe primal worldview, where there is no
dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual. Turner's six features are: (1) 'a
profound sense that man is akin to nature;' (2) 'the deep sense that man is finite, weak
and sinful and stands in need of a power not his own;' (3) 'the conviction that man is
not alone in the universe but is surrounded by a transcendent spiritual world in which a
hierarchy of both benevolent and malevolent spirits are found;' (4) 'the belief that
people can enter into relationship with this benevolent spirit world and so share in its
powers and blessings;' (5) 'the beliefthat man's relationship with the spirit world is not
only for this life but goes beyond death such that the "living dead" remain united in
affection and in mutual obligations with the "living living;" (6) and, 'the conviction that
the "physical" acts as the vehicle for "spiritual" power, and that there is no sharp
dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual.'
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