Nakayima: Home to the goddess of small pox

It will take you approximately three hours to get to Mubende town and another 15 minutes to ascend up to Mubende hill, allowing an eagle’s view of the town, all the way to the ancient tree locally known as Nakayima. The tree takes its name from a lineage of princesses from the royal family. At this tourism site I find a group of people seated at the tree’s buttress, which is so large that it can also pass for a cave. Visitors and caretakers sit at the opening of the roots, on grass and mats, smoking on pipes and freely exhaling clouds of smoke.

“You have to pay Shs500 as ‘site fee’,” one of the women tells me, to which I immediately oblige. Elderly Resty Nalubega sits close to the baskets locally known as ebigali, in which visitors make offerings to Nakayima. Mtucleh Kajura sits just a few inches besides her as he smokes a pipe.

“Help me put more fire in it,” he hands his pipe to a middle aged woman. “Kale jajja (okay grandfather),” she says as she takes the pipe from the grey-haired Kajura, lights it with a matchbox and hands it back him.

The story behind the tree
He crosses his legs. “So what do you want?” he asks me before taking me through games. Little do I know that he wants some money before he can divulge any information. I oblige and he immediately smiles sheepishly and begins the story.

“Legend has it that this was Jajja Nakayima’s place,” he starts. “People come here and pray and get what they pray for,” he adds. “As residents, this is our historical place. We are her children and grandchildren,” he goes on. He goes silent.

“Give more money if you want the deeper story,” half-drunk Kajura tells me. “But he has already given you the money,” the woman who lights his pipe every now and again tells him. She offers to tell me more. “Nakayima does not offer medicine and there are simple rules that govern this place. A woman is not allowed to come here during her periods,” she begins.

“In fact Nakayima’s grave is a distance from here,” she adds. Kajura reconsiders and shares another bit, “In 1989, white researchers came here and took samples of the tree for testing. They told us that this tree is estimated to be about 650 years old.”

After hearing this story, elderly Nalubega, of Engabi clan, reminds me that I had not performed one ritual, that of giving to the ebigali. As I put the money in the basket, she mumbles a prayer for me to have a healthy life, filled with wealth and freedom among other blessings.

A place in the museum
After this, she takes me around the tree and shows me 18 rooms, which are large crevices in the tree’s large roots. “Of these there are four rooms for Ndahura, some for Nnalongo Jajja Mukasa, two for Jajja Musoke and Kilunda,” she explains.

Besides the old tree, which history refers to as the witch tree, this tourism site is surrounded by a number of trees and just adjacent to the bigger buttress is a fire place which burns at all times.

As a child, I visited the Uganda Museum, where I saw Nakayima’s statue. So from Mubende, I head to the museum, where Nakayima is kept in glass with some of the symbols of her kingdom, Buganda.

Adorned in a ceremonial dress of bark cloth, the priestess of Mubende Hill is seated on her throne and at her feet lies leopard skin and spears, affixed in the ground.

Story etched in history
In Uganda Journal of 1966 in the paper Excavations at Mubende Hill, E.C Lanning writes that the legends of the Banyoro and Baganda tell of a ritual site having been on Mubende Hill since the earliest rulers of Bunyoro-Kitara, whilst excavations have revealed evidence of occupation over an area of twelve acres.

“The role of this ritual centre on the hill has been an important one, and it was a settlement long before the foundation of the ancient dynasty of Bito rulers of Bunyoro-Kitara,” he writes.

He adds, “According to local tradition, before the advent of the Bachweezi ruling clan, the predecessors of the Bito line of kings, a Muhima sorceress called Kamawenge came from Butiti (now in Toro) to settle on Kisozi, as Mubende Hill was originally known. Subsequently, her two sons asserted themselves in turn as local leaders. As a result the hill-top settlement grew into a centre of some importance.” Later, the place became a focal point for the Bachweezi and the residence of their last and greatest leader, Ndaula, also called Ndahura.

Healing small pox
At a time when smallpox was rife, Bachweezi’s influence over the Hima pastoralists collapsed, the clan’s power waned and the new dynasty of Bito rulers came into being. With the abandonment of Kisozi as the ruling centre, the hill came to be known as Mubende, meaning “there is another one”, not another person or ruler but a complete change in the ruling power.

Lanning writes that the settlement on Mubende Hill reverted to its original status as the abode of a sorceress; but with a difference. The memory of Ndaula, the Muchweezi leader who had become defied as the god of smallpox, was perpetuated here, at the site of his compound, through this woman. She assumed the name of Ndaula’s wife, Nakayima, also referred to as Nyakahima, and every successive priestess has been better known by this title rather than by her own name up to the time of the demise of the last holder, Nyanjara, in 1907.

Tree once an administrative seat
“Local tradition also tells that soon after the change of rule, the seed of a tree was planted close to the compound of the priestess in commemoration of Ndaula. This, it is said, grew to be the Giant Forest tree, called Ndaula in Lunyoro, which is better known nowadays ad the Witch tree,” Lanning adds. However, he does not specify which particular year this was, when the tree, which towers up to some fifty feet, was planted.

And throughout the centuries the Nakayima, always a Muhima from Ankole, wielded considerable power and was recognised even beyond the borders of Bunyoro-Kitara. Lanning further explains, “When distributed by the priestess, the water from the well was believed to have the power of healing small pox, and sacrifices of cows and sheep were common. On certain occasions the life of a youth was taken. This would be done by attendants on the orders of the Nakayima.”

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