#wimbum

[T]fu [Limbum for "witchcraft"] can be seen as discourse on gender ... Among the Wimbum, men and women have been accused of practicing tfu ... Gender is also part of tfu discourse because Wimbum people think that a woman's tfu is stronger and more dangerous just because she is a woman. In Wimbum areas people say that a woman must be involved if medicine is going to be powerful (O ki kupse mshep njinwe bu mbao ka).

Witchcraft or sorcery, as far as I am concerned, is ... a temporally and spatially changing form of language. In Africa its closest kin is music. Like popular music (High Life, Sukus, Juju, etc.), popular paintings from the Bini or other convents and the slums of Lagos and Kinshasa, or the vibrant Key to Success titles in the so-called Onitsha Market Literature, sorcery constantly changes forms and instruments, but the content remains whatever misery or joy the individual or community might be experiencing at a particular time. Like music, painting, or literature, sorcery is an art of the soul, at once personal and social.