Introduction

Mama Zogbé completing Adé for one of her great-great grandfathers who was a priest. Togo, West Africa.

If one's ancestor(s) or child has died prematurely, or through violence, torture, abuse, poisoning, witchcraft (Azé), prison, gunshot, war, etc., the Adé ceremony is critical. Each family’s ceremony is different depending on the person, their spiritual ranking, circumstances of their death etc., This ceremony not only frees the dead family member from the dark violent chaos that they would otherwise remain perpetually suspended in, he/she blesses, protects and elevates the entire family for performing this ceremony on their behalf. Tragically, many in the Diaspora are unaware of these ceremonies, and assume that an expensive funeral will send their loved one who has died tragically or prematurely to “heaven” or to “the Ancestors.” Unfortunately, this is simply not true. This is why even after all of the grieving has ended, there still is no real closure. The spirit of the deceased is still haunting them to be put to peace.

Many Africans enslaved in the New World had already descended from Mama Tchamba lineages in which their ancestors might have sold slaves, or were themselves enslaved. It is important to note that the Mama Tchamba ancestral clans in which all the enslaved dead (and those who enslaved them are held accountable) and grouped, can involve any ethnic/racial/religious group.

All of the wealth gained from their enslavement is returned to their hands. All of the wealth the enslaver has earned from the enslavement of others holds no spiritual value. It will only circulate as “dirty wealth” as it creates more misery for them and the world. No one elevates until compensation is made through service to them.

The fundamental root that has brought much suffering, instability, division, confusion and despair to the African Diaspora, has its roots in the status and condition of their biological ancestors. This suffering is particularly true for those Africans enslaved and their descendants still suffering persecution in North America.

Many of those ancestors were brutalized murdered, tortured, (castrated, mutilated, boiled in oil, raped etc.) and endured tremendous suffering prior to their deaths. Even after their deaths, they were not accorded a respected funeral and burial in accordance to their unique spiritual status and/or ancestral traditions. None of their culture was either acknowledged nor respected by those who enslaved them. As a result, their spirits are not at rest, and they exist suspended in the underworld of “chaos” which has created a great deal of chaos and despair in their families. Families who now have no knowledge of either them, nor this important aspect of their spiritual culture.

The problem lies in the Diaspora is in them not understanding that the solution to put these ancestors at peace, is not political, but is rather spiritual. The solution lies not in more anger, rage, hatred and violence, for their ancestors who have suffered in this manner, are already in a suspended state of darkness due to the violence which caused their deaths. What they are seeking is freedom.

The ancient ceremony, known as Adé is what they are desiring, which removes them from the land of “perpetual chaos” and allows them to return back into the land of the Ancestors, and with their families served through the Mama Tchamba. Their spirits are begging their children for this ceremony, but many no longer understand their cries.


Only when this ceremony is performed are they able to be of assistance to their living families. Without this ceremony, their kin (and their entire living families) will neither be protected, truly prosperous, nor will they elevate. These suffering ancestors will continue to watch their children murdered, homeless, penniless etc., without the ability to properly advise and assist them.

The Adé (Mama Tchamba) ceremony elevates the entire family.

Typical ancestral Mama Tchamba Shrine. It is the enslaved ancestors from every family that must be appeased before one will find peace.

HISTORIC BACKGROUND IN WEST AFRICA
In Northern Togo about thirty-five kilometers from Sokode, in what is known as the “Tchamba District,” there exists a multi-ethnic mixture of mainly Fulani groups who are known as the Tchamba. These rural districts consists of numerous towns and villages with Kri-Kri, Kambole, Dantcho and Kousoutou comprising some of their main village centers. Buli and Gur, also known as “Atche” is the language spoken by these Tchamba groups, whose inhabitants reside across the entire West African landscape including in Northern Ghana, Upper Volta, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and among the Kaby (Ewe) in the central Kara region of Togo.

The ancestral spirits of these numerous Fulani groups are served in the lineages of the Ewe, Mina and Quatchi clans in southern Togo because many of the Fulani women who fled northern Togo in search of work in the south were held in perpetual servitude by some Ewe families who often did not pay them due compensation for their services.

When these Fulani servants died, their spirits would return to the Ewe families from which they were indentured and demand to be honored and that their children be justly compensated. In the majority of the cases, these ancestral spirits were inter-ethnically mixed because many Ewe men married their Fulani servants and bore children with them.

Divine Compensation: Righting Moral Wrongs
Because the system of Divine Restitution is inherent within the Yeveh Mami Vodoun Ewe cosmology, special ceremonial rites are held to honor those indentured Fulani whose ancestral lineages are as old as Africa herself. In return for their honor the Ewe are rewarded with blessings of wealth, health and protection of their own children as well as divine relief from the Law of Restitution. Although the Tchamba groups are found today in Northern Togo, their history is an ancient one that extends to a far more remote period in African history.

The Fulani are some of the oldest Africans on the planet and are genetically connected with all African groups. Sometimes being completely absorbed by the local groups wherever they have settled. However, the “Tchamba” “slave sibs,” did not begin with the Ewe. It has its origins deep in the soils of Africa’s oldest matriarchal ancestral spiritual systems. Specifically in the matriarchal compensatory systems of ancient Africa, where no African soul is “lost,” but are re-subsumed back into the cosmogenetic families of their original ancient sibs. In modern terms, for all enslaved throughout the Diaspora, this would mean the genetic haplogroups who descend from the first ancient mother clans of “Eve.”

Ancient Meaning and Origin of Word "Tchamba"
Although attributed to the Fulani, “Tchamba” is actually a cosmological concept rooted in restoring justice to the ancient totemic and elevated ancestors whose children have been wronged by other Africans. Without this system of divine justice, the offending African clans will suffer misfortune and even extinction if justice through agreed compensation is not restored. According to some sources, the word “Tchamba” is a German phonetic corruption of the word “Samba” or “Somba,” meaning “naked/native.” The colonial French spelling is “Chamba” and was attributed to the Fula (Fulani) groups of the West African Atlantic regions and among the Mande in North Africa.

However, the word “Chamba” could have its etymological origins in the word “Chamha” as it was known by the ancient [Ewe] Syrians and “Hama” by the Persians, meaning “Sun-people,”1 or literally “children of the Sun,” and more extant “Temple of the Sun.” Referring to one of the oldest Mami temples located in the Siwa desert in southwestern Egypt. This ancient Omphae oracular temple was later usurped by the priests of Ammon and renamed “Temple of Ammon.” Nevertheless, the Fulani, Ewe and Da-Adangbe groups share an ancient cultural and, prior to its usurpation by Mohammedan Islam, matriarchal spiritual history together.

The Fulani, Slavery and Divine Compensation

One version of the story claims that it was during the height of African patriarchy in which the forced usurpation of the original matriarchal clans/sibs that divided the Fulani groups, with many of the patriarchs adopting and imposing the new misogynistic Islam upon its resistant queen mothers and clan members. Those who did not comply were tortured, killed or sold into slavery. What distinguishes the Fulani from other Africans who later participated in the West African slave trade, is that they were the first to establish an organized system of commerce in “chattel slavery”, which they began by selling off their own fellow ethnic clan members to the white Arabs and later to the Europeans. The Fulani were the major business intermediaries of slave commerce throughout Africa and made no compunction about selling those matriarchal clans who would not comply in converting to Islam. In the “New World”, on the island of Trinidad and in Tobago, the name “Chamba” and “Thiamba” still survives and is directly identified with the Fulani slave traders or the speakers of the Gur languages.

Why was the Haitian Revolution
(1791–1804) so successful?
They fed their “Petro” Ancestors!
(Petro meaning “hot” or those Ancestors who died violently) Once they are strengthened, they are better able to fight for their living children. Until the Diaspora take care of their ancestors, they will always see their children, and themselves befallen by violence, misery, suffering and more death.

Christianity was introduced to remove all knowledge of how to service ones own Ancestors and deities.

Photo:
Jean-Jacques Dessalines. He was chosen by a council of generals to assume the office of governor-general. He ordered the 1804 Haiti Massacre of the white Haitian elite minority, resulting in the deaths of between 3,000 and 5,000 people, between February and April 1804.

The world of the Ancestors (dead) is very complex, specific and definitive to each family lineage and their lives. Depending on the circumstances of their life and death, they are served differently and uniquely. In the case of the above Fulani (Awussa) priestess, she serves Mama Tchamba because her ancestors were involved in the slave trade.

Serving the Mama Tchamba by the descendants who enslaved them is not a punishment, for it is understood that they are not personally responsible. However, by being called to serve the Mama Tchamba, those enslaved ancestors are compensated; she (the priestess above) is rewarded with their spiritual gifts, protection and blessings, and her ancestral lineage is vindicated, which allows them all to elevate and assist in bringing peace, stability and blessings to the land.

Photo: John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (also known as John Brown's raid or The Raid on Harpers Ferry) was an attempt by white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt in 1859 by seizing a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

It is important to note that the Mama Tchamba ancestral clans in which all the enslaved dead (and those who enslaved them are held accountable) can involve any ethnic/racial/religious group.

In the West, many Europeans ("whites") supported the Africans' efforts toward freedom. Many participated in the Underground Railroad and other "slave revolts". Although they receive little attention or credit, the Ancestors who relied heavily upon them, have not forgotten them.

African slavery with the "white Arabs" is more extensive than that of Europe. Many of these Arabs are responsible for the destruction of the pre-Mohammedan Islam originally laid down by the 300 African clan systems that originally founded it. Islam was perverted the way that Christianity perverted the original systems of ancient Kemet, Chaldea, Judea, etc.

The Mama Tchamba tradition is as old as African slavery and servitude, beginning in the royal clans of ancient Kemet. These dead are grouped into multi-ethnic, racial, cultural and spiritual clans, depending on how they lived, died and were served.

Those "white" descendants who are the heirs of the wealth gained from the enslavement of Africans, or who brutalized, exploited, etc. are also held accountable. They too are not "punished" in the African system of compensation. They might be asked to have initiation into the Mama Tchamba in order to free their ancestors, who are now spiritual captives from their wrongful deeds. In doing so, they are protected by the [African] Mama Tchamba for compensating them for what their ancestors have done.

The Mama Tchamba possess great spiritual powers, knowledge and wisdom which are highly valued and is passed down to their own progeny. They also hold all of the benefits from the wealth that was exploited from their forced labor. This spiritual and material wealth is eventually bequeathed to their families once someone is born or chosen to serve them.

According to the Ancestors, atonement, peace and justice is obtained in both the physical and material world when this is done. In the end, no one elevates until compensation and atonement is made through service to them.

Above: Mama Tchamba as part of a grand Petatrotro [ceremony] in Togo, West Africa.

Tchamba ancestral spirits are some of the most powerful and ancient African Ancestors who subsume all Africans enslaved across the world. It is they who are responsible for some of the most important tools of divination, healing and individual paths toward “enlightenment.” It is they who actually possess the wealth and the blessings to bestow on all of their biological kin. They also possess the divine power of judgment of one's life at the moment of death.

When the Mama Tchamba “come down” to “ride their horse”
(descend )during ceremonial possessions, they come to mainly have [serious] fun and to dance as well as to celebrate their divine union with their kin. And other devotees in the community. They also come to bring awareness and warnings of any danger to the family, healing and messages from other deceased kin and also prophecy.

In many respects, the Tchamba are more important than the Vodou, because they are the direct bio-cosmogenetic link to African people since the beginning of African civilization.

West African Vodoun is dominated by the Tchamba ancestral clans, due to Africa’s long history of slavery, and in more recent times, chattel slavery, where so many of their descendants have been scattered to America and to other lands.

Today, within the Vodoun tradition, nearly of the major songs, and dances are dominated by the Tchamba. They have been calling their enslaved children around the world to return back to them and their legitimate ancient gods.

Today, many in the Diaspora are heeding that call, and are now learning and being initiated to the Tchamba. Many report they have found the divine connection that they have been missing. The power of the Tchamba is that they cross all African Traditional spiritual systems, and are a testament to the antiquity of both Africa and its peoples.