The Germans and Africa

[BURTON John]

Don
Don

I don't have access to much library material here, and the detail you give
is impressive. Anyhow, if Laycock couldn't find any southern African origin
what's all this on http://come.to/sangoma and similar sites ...

http://allafrica.com/stories/200207180061.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/620565.stm

I see that sangoma principally involves traditional healing but
nevertheless...

John Burton


Hi everyone,

I seem to have missed the original correspondence re sanguma, so please
excuse any duplication.

An important article is:

Laycock, Donald C.
	1996	"Sanguma." In Papers in Papuan Linguistics, 2, pp. 271-81.
Pacific Linguistics, A 85. Canberra: Australian National University.

Laycock reviews much of the literature on this subject, both regards
definition and origins of the word in TP. He cannot find any similar word
from southern Africa (p. 277) and concludes the TP word is most likely from
Monumbo (who nowadays are most often called Mambuan by other groups).
Laycock has a very useful bibliography which, however, should also include:

Poch, Rudolf
	1908	"Reisen an der Nordkuste von Kaiser Wilhelmsland." Globus
93/9: 139-43.

In this source, there is a reference to the Monumbo 'zanguma' on p. 141.
This comes from Poch's research there with Fr Vormann in 1904. Laycock's
first reference to the term is a letter from Vormann in 1906-7. (BTW, Poch
is also important to us as he made the first sound recording of TP in 1904
which he was in Potsdamhafen in the Monumbo area: of a Sulka police man!).

Re your comment via Luke Kabariu (whom I met at the Garma Festival right
before he went on to see you) about Papua New Guineans in Africa. This
interests me a great deal. Certainly a group of 150 boys and men from
German New Guinea went to Dar-es-Salaam (arriving on 29 January 1906) to
help suppress the Maji-Maji Rebellion. Some returned for health reasons on
12 March, others on 25 May. Otto Dempwolff, of Austronesian linguistics
fame, was working in Africa then and was thrilled to spend as much time as
possible with the Papua New Guineans. He even recorded some of them singing
on cylinders. Perhaps Lupak was part of this contingent (sadly he is not
among those recorded)? Or were there other trips to Africa by PNGns during
this period? I have no information that this group ever went to other
German colonies in Africa.

Regards,
Don