Kindling the Ebony: Divination, Diagnosis, and Treatment

Abstract The Uduk have many uses for the wood they call cir, and which is commonly known in the Sudan as babanus, translated normally as ebony, though strictly an ebony substitute. 1 It grows straight and slender when young, and hard and gnarled when old. The young wood is white, but the older branches and trunks develop a black core. The straight young growths may be used for fire dril1s, and the iron-hard black wood for arrow tips. A popular style of throwing-stick is cunningly fashioned with a pointed dark head of the core wood, and a curving handle of black and white, from the natural shape and colour of the ebony branch. The wood burns bright and sharp, and is a first-class fuel, increasingly marketable in Chali. The older trees may still be found in thickets well away from settlements, and near the hills. Trees near the hamlets have usually been culled, but younger whippy growths are often spotted around old stumps. It is this new growth which is used for oracular consultation.