Case file · Folklore / legend
Onyango Dunde and the serpent of the lake
In 1913 Onyango Dunde, a Luo man from near Lake Victoria, said a giant serpent called Mumbo had swallowed him and spat him out with a message: the Europeans would soon leave and followers should reject their ways.
1913 CE · -0.10, 34.53 · status: account
The account
Mumboism spread among the Luo and Gusii of western Kenya. Followers kept their hair long, refused to work for colonists and awaited the end of colonial rule. The British banned the movement and deported its leaders in the 1920s and again in 1934. Historians see it as an early anti-colonial movement. The point is approximate, near Kisumu.
The sceptical view
The serpent vision is a religious claim; the movement and its suppression are documented.