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The Documentary Podcast

Heart and Soul: The dead are not dead

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In certain cultures in Uganda and across Africa, a belief exists where departed husbands return as ethereal entities to engage in intimate encounters with their living partners. To ward off this phenomenon, women are required to perform Enkumbi. Ugandan presenter Daniel Leinhardt sets out to investigate this belief and its impact, including the role it may play in subjugating women. He from couples who see the Enkumbi rituals as something they still must perform, and women who think it's old fashioned nonsense but who still harbour the doubt of 'what if it's not?'

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Daniel Leinhart and this is the dead and not dead for heart and soul.

0:11.0

I'm 26 years of age and I live in Kampala, Uganda.

0:17.0

For the past five years, I've set out expos financial and cryptocurrency scams, including in programs for the BBC.

0:28.0

But this is something totally different. This is about tribal rituals in my country. I'm from the Banyankali tribe, which makes me a

0:39.0

Manyanquale. But the largest and most powerful tribe in Uganda is the Uganda tribe.

0:46.0

And like most African tribes, rituals are so much part of the curvature. My friends, many of whom are Uganda, which means they are

0:58.0

from the Vaganda tribe, often talk about rituals they had learned about from members of their families as they were growing up.

1:08.0

Like most of my friends in Kampala, I'm from a ruler village now moved to the city. We might physically have left communities

1:18.8

we grew up in, but we still remain very connected with our ancestral homes and we have brought many of these

1:28.6

rituals with us to the city. When I first had my friends talk about the Enchumby Rachel, it was strange to my ears. As a single

1:39.0

man raised in a Christian family, I had so many questions going through my mind. I wanted to find out

1:47.0

more. That's why I wanted to make this program. You are very welcome to join me on my journey to discover what

1:57.1

Encombe is and how it came to be, but I have to own you this subject is not for the faint-hearted. It's about marriage, it's about sex, it's about death.

2:10.0

It is so sensitive and quite graphic from the start.

2:14.0

But as you will hear, the people I meet on my journey,

2:18.0

both men and women, they are very comfortable talking openly about such things.

2:25.0

Okay, so we have to begin by finding out what Encombe actually is.

2:31.0

The Encombe began with the bagandas.

2:34.4

It's a cloth used in the bedroom to clean up after sexual intercourse.

2:41.3

It's used to clean the private pets. It's mostly the women that purchase it all get it for the men.

2:49.0

The Burganda and the Basoga, Kalichog lives.

2:54.0

They do believe that when a spouse passes on,

...

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