Vol. 4 No. 1 (2025): Women and Water: The Flow of Matriculture
Research Articles

Ehzele Laimbwe and Water Rituals in the North West Region of Cameroon

PDF
  • Henry Kam Kah
Henry Kam Kah
University of Buea
This image features jungle of the Camerounian highlands: a northern view of the Krehke'azheh (Kezheh Forest) Bu, Cameroon (Source: author's collections 2012)

Published 2025-03-30

Keywords

  • Cameroon,
  • Laimbwe,
  • performance,
  • ritual,
  • culture

Copyright (c) 2025 Henry Kam Kah (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Ehzele Laimbwe and Water Rituals in the North West Region of Cameroon. (2025). Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies, 4(1), 122-146. https://doi.org/10.60676/zamkm551

Abstract

Water rituals are part of daily life in Cameroon’s Western Grassfields in general and Laimbweland in particular. Women are connected with these rituals, which play an important role in fecundity and procreation, pacification of the living-dead, dissipation of malevolent spirits, witches and wizards, and treatment of ailments. In this article, I claim that water rituals of Ehzele Laimbwe (women) in North West Cameroon serve vital socio-cultural and cosmological purposes by preserving culture, forestalling looming disaster, and cleansing the community of subverting evil spirits. Regrettably, the advent of Christianity and Western education, among other external influences, diminished participation, with only a portion of the population continuing to subscribe to these rituals cultural practices of old. Rituals are performed during crab and tadpole fishing, for birth and death, at the start of the dry season, during masquerade performances at funerals, and when there is imminent calamity. Employing the methodology of critical observation, discussion, oral interviews and analyzing available documents, I surmise that Ehzele Laimbwe rituals in Baisso, Bu, and Mbengkas (Laimbwe villages) aptly serve these socio-cultural and cosmological purposes. The socio-cultural challenges that Laimbwe face today are due, in part, to their non-respect for and lack of participation in these rituals.

PDF

References

  1. Aguilar, Mario I. “African Conversion from a World Religion: Religious Diversification by the Waso Boorana in Kenya.” Africa 65, 4 (1995): 525-544.
  2. Aref, Mohammad and Vahid Golestan. “Morphology of Intact Rituals of Water-Sprinkling of Human on Nature and Human on Human in Iran.” American Journal of Scientific Research 92 (2013): 38-44.
  3. Bádéjọ, Diedre. “African Feminism: Mythical and Social Power of Women of African Descent.” Research in African Literatures 29, 2 (1998): 94-111.
  4. Balogun, Olanrewaju Isiak. “Exploring the Theatrical Elements of Lisabi Festival of the Egba People in Abeokuta, Nigeria.” EDE: Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 2, 2 (2020): 19-32.
  5. Beidelman, T. O. The Kaguru: A Matrilineal People of East Africa. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.
  6. Benjamin, C. Ray. African Religion: Symbol, Ritual and Community. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc, 1976.
  7. Boudewijnse, Barbara. “The Conceptualization of Ritual: A History of its Problematic Aspects.” Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies 11 (1995): 31-56.
  8. Boyle, Alexander. “Matrilineal Succession in the Pictish Monarchy.” The Scottish Historical Review 56, 161 (1977): 1-10.
  9. Guédon, Marie-Françoise. “Introduction.” Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies 1, 1 (2020): 3-7.
  10. Gufler, Hermann. “Yamba Marriage Systems Spouses and their Offspring between Protection and Affliction.” Anthropos 90, 1/3 (1995): 89-108.
  11. Holden, Clare Janaki, Rebecca Sear and Ruth Mace. “Matriliny as Daughter-Biased Investment.” Evolution and Human Behavior 24 (2003): 99 – 112.
  12. Kah, Henry Kam. “Women as Makers of History: A Study of the Kelu Women Movement in Bu-Wum, Cameroon 1957-59.” CASTALIA: Ibadan Journal of Multicultural / Multidisciplinary Studies 17, 1 (2004): 12-40.
  13. ________. “Leadership Fuss in Bu Fondom, North West Province, Cameroon, 1942- 2001.” Epasa Moto: A Bilingual Journal of Letters and the Humanities 3, 2 (2008): 161-186
  14. ________. “Feminist Activism, Economic Carte Blanche, Political Control, Symbol and Symbolism: A Historical Interpretation of the Kelu Women Revolution in Bu-Cameroon, 1957-59.” Afrika Zamani 17 (2009): 81-100.
  15. ________. “Women’s Resistance in Cameroon’s Western Grassfields: The Power of Symbols, Organization, and Leadership,1957-1961.” African Studies Quarterly 12, 3 (2011): 67-91.
  16. ________. “Camwood (Pterocarpus Tinctorius) in the Political Economy of the Cross and Manyu Rivers Basin of Cameroon and Some Hinterland Communities, 1916-1961.” Afrika Zamani 20 (2012): 149-164.
  17. ________. “Wuai, Kesiazheh, Nyengui:” History and Livelihood Challenges in a Cameroon’s Montane Forest Reserve.” Economic and Eco-history XI, 11 (2015): 93-104.
  18. ________. “The Laimbwe Ih'neem Ritual/Ceremony, Food Crisis, and Sustainability in Cameroon.” Journal of Global Initiatives 10, 2 (2016): 53-70.
  19. ________ and Eric Kangha Chu. “Education, Preservation, and Transformation in a Cameroonian Polity.” Lefem: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Transformation Education A Publication of St Monica University Higher Institute Buea 1, 1 (2023): 35-58.
  20. Leis, Philip. “Past Passages: Initiation Rites on the Adamawa Plateau (Cameroon).” Ethnology 50, 2 (2011): 169-188.
  21. Muam, Ndo. Traditional Structures and Political Evolution: A Case Study of Bu Chiefdom. Bamenda: Quality Printers, 2001.
  22. Müller-Kosack, Gerhard. The Way of the Beer Ritual Re-Enactment of History among the Mafa Terrace Farmers of the Mandara Mountains (North Cameroon). London: Mandaras Publishing, 2003.
  23. Mutia, Babila. “Performer, Audience, and Performance Context of Bakweri Pregnancy Rituals and Incantations.” Cahiers d’études africaines 177 (2005): 218-237.
  24. Nebasifu, Ayonghe Akonwi and Ngoindong Majory Atong. “Discourses of Cultural Continuity among the Bakweri of Mount Cameroon National Park.” Culture and Local Governance / Culture et gouvernance locale 6, 2 (2019): 103–121.
  25. Nsugbe, Philip O. Ohaffia: A Matrilineal Ibo People. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
  26. Obasi, Winifred Uche. “From Shrines to Prayer Houses: A Religious History of Igbo Women, 1900-1970.” PhD Thesis, Michigan State University, 2013.
  27. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. “The African Experience of God through the Eyes of an Akan Woman.” CrossCurrents 47, 4 (1997-1998): 493-504.
  28. Ouzman, Sven. “Cosmology of the African San People.” Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Non-Western Cultures, Edited by Helaine Selin, 644-650. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2008.
  29. Poewe, Karla O. Matrilineal Ideology: Male-Female Dynamics in Luapula, Zambia. London: Academic Press, 1981.
  30. Reenan, Van Joke. Central Pillars of the House: Sisters, Wives and Mothers in a Rural Community in Minangkabau, West Sumatra. Leiden: Research School CNWS, The Netherlands, 1996.
  31. Sorensen, Jesper. “Ritual as Action and Symbolic Expression.” In Genre and Ritual: The
  32. Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, E. Ostrem, MB Bruun, NH Petersen and J. Fleischer (eds), 49-64. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005.
  33. Strategic Plan of the Wum Council 2009-2014.
  34. Turner, James W. “"The Water of Life:" Kava Ritual and the Logic of Sacrifice.” Ethnology 25, 3 (1986): 203-214.
  35. Wolfstone, Irene Wiens Friesen. ReMembering Matricultures: Historiography of Subjugated Knowledges. An Independent Study, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta-Canada, 2018.
  36. Wulf, Christoph, ed. Ritual and Identity: The Staging and Performing of Rituals in the Lives of Young People, trans. Alice Lagaay and Elizabeth Hamilton. London: The Tufnell Press, 2010.