Large Zaramo Medicine Gourd With Figural Stopper

Across much of East Africa from Ethiopia to South Africa and west to Congo basin calabashes are cultivated, trained into useful shapes, hollowed out and fashioned into containers. In traditional societies they were often hung from the rafters and on the walls of huts where they housed everything from fermenting beverages to honey and medicinal elixirs and powders. When it came to housing medicinal substances the calabash became something more than a mere container as the effectiveness of its contents required the active involvement of overseeing spirits or powers. For this reason, particularly in Tanzania, medicine gourds were special and needed to look the part. They were embellished with beads, shells and other adornments and always closed with carved stoppers. These stoppers may be anthropomorphic, zoomorphic or non-figural, but where nganga (traditional medicine) is involved they are almost never plain. This calabash with its elegant stopper stands 12″ tall. Zaramo people, Tanzania.

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