Provenance:  Mbunda People - Western Zambia - Circa 1940 or before.

 

 

 

Sachihongo - The Diplomat

This is one of the finest Sachihongo masks known. Sachihongo masks are often powerful or amusing, but few match the plastic qualities - vigorous sculpture, harmonious balance, surprising expression and deep patina of this powerful character example. Its features make it one of the masterpieces of the expressionist art developed by the Mbunda.

 

 

Makishi Lya Zambia - Pg 223 - Charles Meur

 

 Above - Sachihongo as he may appear in full costume.

 

 

 

 

Sachihongo's dominant features are forehead wrinkles, open carved eyes and mouth with protruding cheeks - carved in high relief. Decoration may include feathers attached with fibre cord or inserted into holes in the masks upper ridge. In this masterwork, provision was made to insert nasal and beard hair. A ring of filed teeth circles the inner portion of the open carved mouth.

 

 

 

 

Sachihongo has been described using conflicting ancestral attributes. These include a hunter, a diviner and even an Mbunda version of the Chokwe chiefs' mask - Chihongo.

 

 

 

 

We differ. After years of continuous search in an area, which clearly contained the largest concentration of Mbunda people living in Western Zambia, informants convinced us otherwise. The core area is located along the west bank of the Zambezi. It begins north of Kalabo, continues south towards Sioma and encompasses the territory westwards to the Angolan border. Smaller communities of Mbunda are scattered on the east bank of the Zambezi up to and including the Kabompo area to the north - northeast.

 

 

 

 

Drawn by the abundance of water, fish and wild game, a large concentration of Mbunda and Lozi people live in villages side by side along the length of the high water line on the west bank of the Barotse Plain. These villages are densely populated and often overlap. Regardless of the ethnic background, language and custom, it sometimes is impossible to ascertain that you have left one village and entered another. Where villages fail to interconnect, you may find up to one kilometer of space between, often burial grounds.

 

 

 

 

The Lozi and Mbunda are decisively different from one another. Their culture is separated by language, history and tradition. It is in this context where Sachihongo evolved and flourished.

 

 

 

 

The Mbunda and related Chokwe peoples circumcise their boys at mukanda, a male coming of age training camp. They learn about various ancestral personalities in the form of makishi or likishi who perform and teach the young boys to be men. Mbunda children and women are not allowed into the camps, nor are uncircumcised men such as Lozi.

 

 

 

 

Village elders explained that friction increased as the ethnic populations of the Mbunda and Lozi grew along the flood plain. Fights, often inspired by alcohol use, would break out if Lozi were uninvited or expelled from Mbunda festive masquerades. From the animosity, Sachihongo's conception was conceived and evolved.

 

 

 

 

Sachihongo was made as the one personality that all people, children, men and women, circumcised or not could view and enjoy, of the otherwise secretive Mbunda mukanda.

 

 

 

 

No doubt, Sachihongo would be able to hunt, or know of traditional medicine, or might even act like a friendly chief, but above this, Sachihongo drew conflicting overlapping cultures together through an intentional diplomatic role.

 

 

 

Sachihongo - The Diplomat and Peacemaker

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