Nyati · buffalo
Nyati is the buffalo, listed among the Shona totem animals by a study note on totems. It is kept by the Nyati Chirombwe clan, greeted as Nyati, Shonga and Zvigarambabvu, the child of Muswere. The Mitupo 2025 collection prints its poem in a section headed Chirombowe, a name a Shona dictionary gives as another word for Changamire.
The Nyati poem is a poem of food and offering. It praises the clan for slaughtering cattle and counting goat meat as poverty, for refusing the meat of the back in favour of the chityu cut, and for making its offerings to the ancestors with a basket of rice. It greets the clan at Museso, Minanga, Mhinha, Masendeke, Homwe and Ungwe, names Makoni, and remembers Derere of Ungwe, who does not eat derere, okra.
Nyati mutupo wevanhu vanoera nyati. Dzinza reNyati Chirombwe rinorumbidzwa seShonga naZvigarambabvu, mwana waMuswere. Detembo ravo rinoti havadyi nyama yomusana, uye kudya mbudzi urombo. Rinovakwazisa vari Museso, Mhinha nomuUngwe.
The buffalo. A study note on Shona totems lists nyati, the buffalo, among the totem animals, and a Shona-English word list gives nyati as buffalo.
Their poem says their offerings to the ancestors are made with a basket of rice. It gives no reason, and neither do the other sources used here.
Nyati Chirombwe.
Traditionally, people of the same mutupo and chidawo do not marry: they are counted as one family. Between different Nyati clans some families allow it, often after a ceremony that cuts the kinship (kucheka ukama).
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