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the markets (yaa), and the initiation camps (dyoro). If a behavioral rule is broken, the thil in charge of the social area involved punishes the guilty one by causing him or a member of his immediate surroundings to fall ill; by causing crop damage, accidents, or other such calamities; or even by killing the transgressor. It is worth noting that the Lobi are well aware of this law-making and law-enforcing function of their thila and explain it by reference to the command which thangba yu gave to the thila. |
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The thila also look out for the welfare of the community by forcing certain individuals to open markets in specified places or to organize collective hunts. In fact, a market cannot be opened in Lobi country without being ordered in this way. In addition, the thila help people overcome their manifold problems. Through the diviner they prescribe medicine to heal certain diseases, for example, or methods for a bachelor to find a wife or for a wife to have children. They suggest which sacrifice to make to protect oneself from sorcerers or from soul-eating witches. The thila seem to have a solution for virtually every problem, but they offer their solutions only under certain conditions. Finally, the thila also look out for the welfare of their owners by supplying them with the means to use sorcery against their enemies. |
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To help the Lobi in the ways I have described, the thila need diviners, for, as bodiless beings, they have no voice. The diviners communicate their instructions, which differ from case to case. |
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The diviners are usually men; only 2 percent of them are women. Usually they are forced to become diviners by a thil, whom they discover in the bush and then embody in a shrine at home (such thila are called wathila; singular, wathil). It is correct to speak of a thil's relationship with a human as coercive. A Lobi who learns through consulting a diviner that, besides his usual work, he must also advise his fellow man free of charge, tends at first to ignore the command, waiting for further signs from his wathil and hearing what five or six other diviners have to say before he answers his calling. Some hard (kiere) individuals even defy their wathil for years under heavy physical and material hardship. But the thil has no understanding of his stubborn owner's reasons for resisting and employs ever stronger methods, such as crop damage, sicknesses, and deaths, to bend his owner finally to his will. |
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We may ask ourselves why the Lobi exhibit such dogged resistance to the calling of a diviner. The Lobi give several reasons. Most important, a diviner is not allowed to refuse a client who wants a consultation; he risks sanctions from his wathil if he does. An exception may be made only when someone in the family is seriously ill or has died or if the diviner himself is sick or in the process of making a sacrifice. This impossibility of refusing a client weighs heavily: a Lobi diviner gets four or five clients a day and on heavy days up to twenty, even though every ninth man between the ages of twenty-five and seventy years generally is a diviner |
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