The Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies

The Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies seeks to collate and connect the different research and researchers with an interest in the Mambila people of the Nigeria - Cameroon borderland and their neighbours; their languages and the area in which they live. We take a broad view of Mambila, including other groups speaking related languages such as Kwanja, Vute, Wawa, Nizaa, Njerep (3 speakers at last count!) Twendi (35 speakers), Tep, and others. Our research is primarily of an anthropological and linguistic nature; abstracts or full texts of papers are available at the site. The currently available work includes reports on Zeitlyn's research on kinship and language and his annotated version of Meek's early ethnological work in the region, and Connell's comparative linguistic research and work on tone realization in Mambila, as well as a full bibliography of anthropological, linguistic, and related research on Mambila. VIMS was established by David Zeitlyn (anthropology) and Bruce Connell (linguistics). We would welcome your comments addresses below.

The following inline image acts as a link to photographs of the "Physical Institute of Mambila Studies" in Somié, Cameroon which has been the base for much of this research.

Pages of historical documents captured as jpeg image files

Archiving a photographic studio in Mbouda, West Province

Notes and images from essays written by Mambila geography students in Mubi in the 1970s

2006-2009 Documentation of endangered languages and cultures in the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland

A Kent Anthropology MSc in Ethnobotany, 2009 "Sharing Knowledge Intra-cultural variation of ethnobotanical knowledge and the factors that pattern it in a Mambila community in the Cameroon-Nigeria borderland"

2003/4 Evans Pritchard Lectures

Words and Processes in Mambila Kinship

Contents

Other researchers known to be working on Mambila and related groups

• Roger Blench, Linguist, Cambridge Institute for the Study of Pacific and African Languages
• Mona Perrin Linguist, SIL.
• Dr Quentin Gausset, former research student in anthropology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, currently teaching in Copenhagen. Email = quentin.gausset@mail1.anthro.ku.dk

• Professor Charles Frantz, U. Penn, Philadelphia
• Rolf Theil Edresen, University of Oslo, Norway
• Gladys Guarisma, LACITO, Paris
• Raymond Boyd CNRS, Paris
• Jim and Marta Wade, University of Maiduguri, Nigeria

Research projects currently underway or completed

• Mambila Nggwun - the construction and deployment of multiple meanings in ritual
• The Mambila riddle machine - an interactive introduction to Mambila riddles
• Work on Mambila Divination, NB Including a Java-based simulation of Spider Divination
• A Day in the Life... Somié Village, Province de l'Adamaoua, Cameroon A series of video clips that were taken at approximately one hour intervals throughout the period 6am-7pm of Wednesday 21 April 1999.
• A preliminary report of linguistic fieldwork undertaken in Jan 1999 by Connell and Blench: including news of two previously undocumented languages
• Bruce Connell ESRC funded Comparative survey of Mambila dialects
  Results of this project:
  • Voices from the Grave: Dying languages and the complexity of the Mambiloid group - abstract
  • Four tones and downtrend: a preliminary report on pitch realization in Mambila, a language with four level tones A revised version of a paper presented to the 27th ACAL, University of Florida, Gainesville, 29-31 Mar 1996 and the LAGB, University of Sussex, Brighton, 11-13 Apr 1996.
  • The Roots of Mambila: Convergence and divergence in the development of Mambila Text of a paper presented at the 26th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden, The Netherlands, Sept. 5-7 1996.
  • Mambila Fricative Vowels a paper presented at ACAL 28, Cornell University, July 11-13 1997 to appear in Carstens, Vicki (ed.) Proceedings of ACAL 28

  • THE INTEGRITY OF MAMBILOID a paper presented at the Second World Congress of African Linguistics, Leipzig, July 27 - August 3 1997.

  • MORIBUND LANGUAGES OF THE NIGERIA-CAMEROON BORDERLAND a paper presented at the Symposium on Language Endangerment in Africa Leipzig, July 29 - 31, 1997

• David Zeitlyn: Pilot Project: exploratory research on archival sources for Mambila demography. Period supported: 1 Sept 1997-30 Nov 1998 Funded by the Wellcome Trust (ref no. 051191).
  • Original proposal.
  • Draft paper on methods employed.
• David Zeitlyn Kinship and language: a computer-aided study of social deixis
  in conversation. A project funded by the ESRC (UK) R000 23 3311

  Results of this project:

  • The final report of the ESRC funded part of this project.
  • Data from the project have been archived as part of the Child Language Data Exchange Scheme (CHILDES) They are also available from this page:
    1. 00read-me-doc
    2. OOread-me-doc-part2
    3. mambila.txt

Other material on Mambila

Data on Mambila can be found at the following locations:

• Meek on the Mambila 1931 Note that this includes Rehfisch's field annotations from 1953
• Mambila Transcript with digitised recording
• Intoductory notes on Mambila shields by David Zeitlyn
• A more recent survey of Mambila by a Nigerian researcher is in The Cross and the Gods [A Look at Adamawa and Taraba States, Nigeria]
  by Patience Ahmed CAPRO Research Office 1992
• A bibliography of works on the Mambila can be obtained in two forms:
  Click in Refer format (plain ascii)
  Click in JRAI format (HTML)
• A mongraph on Mambila ethnography which includes both ethnographic introduction and transcripts of sacrifical oath-taking is currently in print:
  David Zeitlyn. Sua in Somié. Mambila Traditional religion. Vol. 41 of the Collectanea Insitutii Anthropos. ISBN 3-88345-375-7. List price is DM 78 and it is available from:

  Academia Verlag, Postfach 1663
  D-53734 Sankt Augustin
  Germany
  Fax 02241/341528

  Reviews of this book may be found in the following sources:

  1. The journal Anthropos vol. 90 pp.657-8 by Bertrand Masquelier. With the kind permission of the editor, the text of this review is now available.
  2. The Journal of the Royal Anthroplogical Institute Vol 2 No. 2 pp. 398-9 June 1996 by Anthony D. Buckley. With the kind permission of the RAI, the text of this review is also available.
  3. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Band 146 - Heft 2 1996 pp 728 by Jorg Adelberger
     An English translation of this review is also available
  4. International Journal of African Historical Studies 30(1): 161-162 (1997) by P. Dekar.
  5. Journal of Religion in Africa XXVIII(1): 115-7 N. Lovell:

Other related material

The works of Professor Farnham Rehfisch

• A work on a group near Mambila: the text of Chilver and Kaberry's 1961 'History and customs of Ntem'
• The text of a novella written by someone from Mambila:
  Drink and the Innocent Policeman by Jonathan W. Mangbon
• The Paintings of Bolo Pierre, a Mambila artist
• The Gutowski's in Mambilla - an account and 137 photographs from Missionaries who were in Mambilla, Nigeria in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
• Early documentary sources on the Mambila - prepared for WWW by Danielle Domingue Banyai
• Locally authored report of the Eléphant club de Mafoulou (Somie) - a football club in the village of Somie.
• Doctorate on Mambila: FROM MAMBILA MARRIAGE TO CONJUGAL NETWORKS: TOWARD A REDEFINITION OF AFRICAN 'MARRIAGE' 1998
  Walter E. Pond The abstract is available online

Links to other related sites:

• UK Homepage of the Republic of Cameroon
• Mama for Story: publications celebrating the work of Sally Chilver
• Grassfields studies page
• All about West African Ants - a source so rare and prized that it has to be here!
• Material culture of twins in Cameroon by Rachael Ndi
• Borno Studies
• Northern Mandaras Homepage

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