“Hale!” “Halele!”
Long ago, on the high plateau of Nyumakele, in south-east Ndzuwani, people lived in fear. The djinns, the first masters of these lands, carried off men and women to devour them. No one dared go to the fields alone any more.
One day, however, the djinns let it be known that they were ready to live in peace with humans. A man from the area, whom tradition calls Waziri, went to negotiate with them. He obtained a pact: the djinns would stop carrying people off, and the humans would offer them a sacrifice every year, following a long route chosen by the spirits themselves.
Since then, in the pigeon pea season, a strange figure emerges from the village: the Trimba. He is covered from head to foot in banana leaves, wears horns and a tail, and no one must know which man is hidden underneath, except the leaders of the rite. For three days, he leads the procession from sacred place to sacred place, to the sound of drums and songs. The dancers fall into a trance, and the spirits speak through their mouths.
At the end of the route, the procession reaches the sea, and the offerings to the djinns are thrown into the waves. Only then can sowing begin: the land, it is said, will be fertile, and peace kept for another year.
What we know about it
The Ntrimba (or trimba) is a fertility rite that opens the farming year in Nyumakele: a community procession that visits the ziara, the region's sacred places, with songs, dances and possession rites. Accounts differ: for some, it seals the pact with the djinns; for others, it commemorates the journey of the first inhabitants washed up on the shores of Anjouan, who took refuge in the uplands when the Shirazi arrived. Sources describe it as annual or as celebrated every two years.
Described by J.-C. Hébert in 1960, then by the Comorian newspaper Kashkazi in 2007 and by the historian Abderemane Bourhane, it is frowned upon by some religious leaders, but some of the faithful refuse to give it up, for fear of angering the “first inhabitants of the Comoros”. Nyumakele is also the region of the great 1940 revolt.
Further reading
- Voices of the archipelago Kashkazi (journal comorien), Trois jours de fête pour sceller le pacte avec les djinns, 2007. Kashkazi no. 65, republished by Muzdalifa House.
- Voices of the archipelago Abderemane Bourhane, Les rites pré-islamiques à Anjouan. Contribution à une étude culturelle des Comores, 2017. doctoral thesis, Inalco.
- Outside view J.-C. Hébert, Fêtes agraires dans l'île d'Anjouan (archipel des Comores), 1960. Journal de la Société des africanistes, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 101–116.