ABSTRACT
As in the case of nyvu the author wondered whether people saw the ancestors (bkvubshi) as conscious beings and whether they were thought to cause illness. He considered it better to approach the topic indirectly, rather than simply to ask people what the bkvubshi were. The bkvubshi can ‘see’ violations of tradition and inflict illness as punishment. People can communicate simultaneously through different, often incommensurable discourses, leading to apparent contradictions in what they say. Christian and traditional discourses merge, and the terms which the author was discussing are the points at which this merging takes place. They are therefore necessarily indeterminate. When the bkvubshi inflict illness to punish someone and a diviner says that they are responsible this will give added import to the elders’ authority, and prevent any further discussion of the matter.
