WUNI MOSHI or SITTING ON FIRE

Throughout the world, every community has its own rites and traditions which label its specificity in relation to others. In Tubu community, physical welfare and beautyare reserved a meaningful rank.
It is for that reason the Tubu woman performs from time to time the “winimoshi” which means sitting on afire. This proves to be a private affair that is to say the woman does it privately in her house. So she gets a mud–made stove called “Mukoor” full of embers, a few bits of “kourou”( wood used to make perfumed incense), a short stool called “EkeiGaido” and an animal leather blanket named “Dreuh”. When all these are secured, the naked woman sits on the “EkeiGaido” and sets the “Mukoor” beneath her legs and keeps on adding the bits of “Kourou” from which will stem a thick smoke that will be confined in the “Dreuh”, as soon as she wraps herself with the “Dreuh”. Her head will not be entirely covered for she needs to breathe.The stays in that position till sweat stems out of her body. When all is over, the woman takes a shower so as to clean up the sweat that sticks on her skin. Dear, readers when reading, these lines you will wonder why this ancestral practice. Indeed, it has a virtue which consists in rejuvenating the skin, in making softer and let the woman feel physically good at the same time. Besides, if this practice usually happens at sunset, it is not an unforeseeable occurrence but rather to meet conjugal needs which are to please the husband and to be attractive and beautiful. If we write this article, it is because we have been amazed by the growing number of persons who attend the steam or sauna room of the Hotel Marriott, Doha, Quatar( a room where stones are being heated at a high temperature in order to purify people’s skin by having them sweat in maximum).This opportunity lets us be proud of the Tubu who have been practicing that science for thousands of years in their own ways without much means.