Article #1: The Fore and Kuru notes

• Kuru: fatal neurodegenerative disease that’s transmitted through a human eating another human or the remains getting in an open wound

• Transumption: a sacred practice of the Fore people and their neighbors that was the consumption and incorporation of a dead person into the bodies of their living relatives which helped free the spirit of the dead

• Argument: the outdated research about transumption describing rubbing brain tissues on the mourners was very incorrect, and that the Fore people consumed the entire body, especially the brain with significant spiritual reasoning

• Bagina: land that is alive and created the landscape as well as the amani

• Amani: guardians of the clans and who the Fore people descended from, when human population grew, they retreated to their own lands being the sacred ground also called amani; it’s consisted of mountain, lake, pine, and palm grove

• Kwelanandamundi: the land of the dead that can be accessed through a cave in the amani land; also called the home of the ancestors

The Five Souls: auma, ama, kwela, aona, and yesegi; these depart from the dead on the last breath

• Auma: only soul that departs to kwenlanandamundi almost immediately; first, it has to be forgiven by a close male relative, then it reaches amani where it explains to the clan guardian why it died, food and water left by family feed it on the journey, lastly it crosses the red river, is welcomed by ancestors, and waits for the ama and kwela so it can be reborn; similar to western concept of a soul; only has a person’s good qualities

• Ama: similar to auma but more powerful; needs the funeral rites to be carried out before going to the kwelanandamundi; assists family with those rites/avenge their death; gives blessings to people who ate and increase their aona

• Aona: blanket term for a range of abilities the Fore people have; example: person with aona that gives him the ability to share food at feasts will also never be short of food, good hunter/gardener, etc; these abilities remain with the ama until it’s passed onto the favorite child

• Kwela: pollution from decomposition of the dead body; is a cloud in the form of a man that travels through wind and harms family members if the funeral rites aren’t done properly; very dangerous so it needs to be disposed of only in the wombs of females called anagra to contain it; only removed from anagra with aluana (purification rite) to the sepulture (fireplace where body was cooked); after this, it can go to kwelanandamundi with ama after agona rite was performed

• Yesegi: person’s occult power in the past that made him a great warrior and powerful sorcerer; found on skin of living; stays with kwela until passed to one of the kids of the deceased before kwela goes to kwelanandamundi

• Funeral rites were to make sure all 5 souls went to where they should be, or dire consequences would occur, and the souls wouldn’t be reborn into the family/an ancestor

• In the Fore region, bodies could be buried in a basket, or on a platform in a grove, but transumption was the most popular method especially in the South Fore because it’s an act of love, an expression of grief, an assurance that the aona and yesegi would be reborn in the family, a protection against the kwela, loved ones to get blessings from the ama which strengthened their aona, and an assurance that some of the souls made it to kwelanandamundi

The Practice of Transumption

• After death, family and relatives mourned for 2-3 days then took the body to a bamboo, sugar cane, or casuarina grove by stretcher; body is laid on a bed of edible greens on a tapa cloth placed on banana leaves so no part of the body gets lost; body is divided among anagra and anaso (woman’s female guardian who lived in the same village she married into); anagra would give the head of the deceased and sometimes the right arm to the anatu (females related through the male lineage)

• How they cut, divided, and cooked the body: senior anagra were in charge and older anagra helped because they wouldn’t be affected by the kwela due to their aona being faded from age; cut pieces of meat were placed on a banana leaf and bones of the parts placed on top; anagra and anosa cut up the piles of meat into smaller pieces with the of their daughters and daughters-in-law then put the meat into bamboo containers with wild ferns to be cooked over the fire in the sepulture; after the body was divided the anagra cleaned their hands with banana skins, sugar cane, or bamboo shoots which were then put in the sepulture

• Process of eating the body: each anagra put half the content of her tubes onto a communal plate made of banana leaves to feed the ename (women from nearby communities who came to express grief); if the head was eaten on the same day, half of the tubes of the anatu (daughters-in-law, daughters, and sisters of the deceased) would also be added to the ename thus spreading the kuru even more; these women were fed with a sharpened stick and chewed wesa leaves to purify their mouth due to the fear of the kwela; after, the anagra, anosa, anatu, and the anatu’s children would eat their portions of meat, and any remaining meat would be taken to the widow’s house and shared with the women who stayed to comfort her and the family;

• Ikwaya ana: funeral rite where the rest of the body and bones were eaten in the morning; bones were dried by the fire, placed into a stone with breadfruit leaf and igagi (wild grass), crushed with another stone to make sure that none of the bone was lost during the process, then placed in bamboo tubes to be cooked; only bones that weren’t eaten were the jaw and collar bones which were worn by women for the memory of the deceased and by men to request help from the ama of the deceased

• Isosoana: a feast for those who mourned after the body had been completely eaten

• Pepatakina: a purification ritual using the steaming leaves from the earth oven to prepare the isosoana; they were placed in the doorway of the hut so the women who passed through the steam would be purified and able to leave the house to help with the funeral rites

• Aindu: ritual that happened the day after pepatakina; women caught rats and men hunted possums to set on fire, so their fat and fur burned; the smell caused the kwela to be removed from the women; the carcasses were rubbed on anything that they might’ve touched to ensure any remains were wiped onto the dead rats and possums who were then eaten by the women

• Kavunda: means “eating wild greens” and lasted for several weeks where people would come to grieve and bring food; also, a purification ritual since wild vegetables were symbolic of kwelanandamundi; when grass started to grow on the sepulture, the ritual ends

• Aluana: a feast of wild animals and vegetables after kavunda ended; it’s a form of compensation for the women who had to eat the remains; some men were responsible for the payment and the women got a share of the food

• Agona: final funeral rite; huge payment that can take several years to complete; once done, the kwela and ama went to kwelanandamundi taking all of the foods and goods that had been used in the rites

• The eating of the brain: this ritual was the most responsible for the transmission of kuru; children under the age of 3 were never fed any part of the body; children between 3-6 usually wouldn’t eat any part of the brain due to the belief that it would stunt their growth, or the kids would let some fall to the ground, but some areas didn’t follow this rule or simply indulged their child; males over the age of 6 never ate brain tissue, but some females of all ages in South Fore consumed it

• Concluding thoughts: due to the fear of the kwela and assurance that it departed to kwelanandamundi, the entire body had to be eaten by women, so the brain was never rubbed on their bodies