I agree...that whole perspective of women and their natural wholesomeness and tendency toward tenderness and cleanliness and blah blah blah is from someone who lived in a far more stringent and gender-separated society AS WELL AS glorifying parts of the "oriental" world that he didn't understand or bother to get to know. Repeated contact, of some decent length, will send any sentiments like that into the garbage where they belong, because people are people are people once you take our different wrappings off, and we all pass gas and have boogers and trip over our own feet sometimes, women included.

It's very much like the European perspective on native Americans as being "Noble Savages", which, cleverly disguised by language, was a way of saying "We like their look, but we're still justified in taking all their stuff in the name of civilizing them".

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!