Hello, all--

I live in the United States and have been doing some personal research on African beliefs and customs, starting with the peoples just below the Great Lakes region and then moving West and North into Nigeria and the coast.

My question, to whomever may be kind enough to answer it, is about how the word Mfumu is used. What I've found in Nigeria seems to be that Mfumu is used as an honorific title, like Chief, or King, or Big Boss...someone important in the community in some way, but not necessarily in a spiritual, religious, or magical sense. But further south Mfumu is used to refer to a practitioner of magic, although I cannot find that it has a directly negative association along with it like the words 'sorceror' or 'witch'. Kind of like, the Mfumu is the local wizard looking out for the community, etc.

Does anybody know, language-wise, where that change in the usage of the name begins to occur geographically?

I've spent the day enjoying reading the many posts on this site, and am happy to see Nigerians are just as much a spectrum as people here: Many of you are well-spoken, loving, looking out for your communities, and quite funny...and some of you are totally nuts! The internet: It's the same everywhere!

Err... it is not known as a name for a magician,king or Ruler in Nigeria. I believe the term is peculiar to the peoples of the great lake region and some parts of central Africa especially the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Champ, to get proper information on this forum for your research, you will need to be SPECIFIC as to the CULTURE of the particular AFRICAN TRIBE you are interested in.

It is a misnomer to conduct a research into "African culture". You talking about thousands of cultures!

I am of the view that the root word for your research ought be narrowed down to a particular tribe and you can then x-ray the term in the context it used in that culture in order to get a proper grip on it's meaning.

To illustrate the point, Nigeria is said to have more than 250 tribes, a word may be common to all the tribes in the country but the same word may have as many as 250 meanings!

Some of the meanings may be outrightly pejorative of other tribes!