Before christianity, who was our god?

-: Uvwiivi vwalage kumu, yivakaa amaguta kigira gayivillika 😎😎. It is not possible to get or retain an original name or tongue, always someone will corrupt it, in fact the original Valogooli were named by Basoga of Uganda who called them Abalokole which meant saved people or religious people, soon someone replaced the e at the end to read Abalokoli, then Avalokoli, Avalogoli etc and later the mzungu who rubbished everything Africa had to put his version Maragoli which stuck to date

-: Many languages have borrowed words. Even English itself is made of many languages

-: What I heard in my primary school days is that our ancestor Mulogoooli was a seer. He was actually called Mulaguli because kulagula is to prophesy.

Methinks that they were called Maragol by their Luo neighbors whose words end wit consonants & maybe the colonialists who settled in Kisumu before moving e Vologooli got the word Maragol from Luos and added I to it because all our words end with vowels.

This is food for thought.

-: Kulagula in Lulogoooli is prophesy.

-: It is true the original Mulogooli was very religious, the Mzungu missionaries had no problem converting them and as I said the Basoga of Uganda loved and welcomed them because of their(Valogooli) religious nature, so their name started as Abalokole and ended up as Maragoli, Luos just picked the name @Maragoli and only removed the i at the end

-: And what is this similar:in Luhya Nyasaye and in Luo Nyasaye both meaning God.

-: Matters Religion. 

Before Rees in 1902, what was the religion of people like Ahai? 

Abstractly, there is no evidence of monotheism neither polytheism. 

But I have been told there was a ' general feeling' or a 'happenstance' caused by Imungu Karoka, a force. Like how a canopy would bend to wind. 

Belief was, I think, in what was happening. For instance, explaining a troubled person as cursed. Taboos in general aim for an orderly society. Witchcraft is still an interesting topic to follow up on. 

But a man woud call on the names of his ancestors (kurahira?) often with the thought they kept an eye over him and he would join them later. With necessarily no goodies or such a Christian mind of rewards for good. Taboos had ends to mistakes. You mess, you become sick or die. Good of you. The end. 

- Thanks. 😄

-: True. But they had their god called musambwa(misambwa)

-: Misambwa. 

Is it like the Ibo of Amadioha, Egwugwu or deities of seasons as harvest? 

Can we name any musambwa? 😊

-: Swearing on the ancestor's grave spearing mtembe use of sheep or black hen for cleansing

-: I remember reading in a book authored by the late Mzee Nathan Luvai that each home had a shrine called lusambwa...where the head of the family performed some kind of prayers.

-: Guga, aren't these objects of rituals? 

Can we call mutembe an umusambwa?

-: We may have sounded easy with Christianity not because we were already religious but because we lacked a religious system in our fore fathers. 

Rebellion would be much there if we had concrete deities pouring libations on, revered traditional priests and forth. Witchcraft was the disliked 'way of tackling supernatural problems.' And people disliked them. 

Listen to the traditional Christian songs. They are fighting mahiri ga watuga and forth. 

Our forefathers, vanga Mbari of Mbale, Musivoji and etc who traded in cattle - buying and selling. Thrift men. If there was a religion before them, then they killed it. Or the society had already settled on secularism. 

Kaboom, the Bible came. And as Achebe writes, it attracted the vagabonds, nobodies. Vihanzahanze. 

The Tiriki could not give up their idumi so easily. In fact Maragolis who migrated there had no custom as stringent as idumi. And what happens when you got no culture? You attract one. 

Unfortunately Tiriki is presently a 'dark community' due to their refusal to throw away idumi so easily for Christianity. Kids never schooled. And Maragoli grabbed the opportunity. Not because we are sharp. We had nothing to lose. 

- With Thanks. 😆.

-: Umutembe tree was a shrine while ulwuvu or elgon teak was an alter, if you go to most Maragoli home steads, you can't miss a lwuvu, the musaaliisi or elder in the home would use this lwuvu tree to hung amadamiku geege gukusaaliisa; the mutembe tree was a worship place where all and sundry woul go for prayers to misambwa, misambwa because there were different misambwa for different items of prayer; mungoma was the final place, if you went in you were likely to come out dead or alive, you would be tied a long rope around the ankle, so that in case you die while inside the attendants would pull you out!! Quite frightening but that was the process