Ruhanga

Ruhanga, creator god of the Nkole (Nyankore) of modern western Uganda and the Haya of northwestern Tanzania. Ruhanga is the creator of both the world and human beings. He is also associated with fertility as well as disease and death.

One creation story relates that Ruhanga was hitherto living on Earth and decided to relocate to Heaven. To fill the vacuum of his absence, he decided to create human beings by putting three seeds in the Earth. Each of those three seeds germinated into a calabash within a day. From each of the first two calabashes he picked both a man and a woman, and in the last calabash he took just a man. Ruhanga named the men Kairu, Kahima, and Kakama. A test was needed to determine the rulers and the subjects of the world that he was about to create. The three men were to carry a pot full of milk for a night without sleeping or allowing the milk to spill out of the pot. During the test, Kairu slept and allowed his milk to spill out of the pot, thereby causing the ground to be littered with milk. Ruhanga got angry and decreed that Kairu would have to spend the rest of his life looking for food from the earth. Later, Kakama began to sleep and lost half of his milk. It was only Kahima who remained awake throughout the night of the test and did not spill any milk. However, when asked by Kakama for some milk to replace what he lost, Kahima obliged, leaving Kakama with more milk than Kahima. Ruhanga decreed that Kakama would be the ruler, whereas Kairu would work as an agriculturist and Kahima as a cattle keeper.

The Haya of Tanzania and the Nkole of western Uganda also believe that human beings once had the power to live on Earth forever. Ruhanga revoked that power when a custodian of a dead dog refused to perform the required rites that normally accompany the transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead.