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This collection of sources offer a rare insight into the everyday concerns of African Christian converts. They centre on a well-documented figure, the Revd Apolo Kivebulaya (c.1865 -1933). Kivebulaya was a teacher and clergyman in the Native Anglican Church of Uganda. His writing offers insight into a literate Christian identity formed away from centres of power. Oral and written accounts about Kivebulaya illustrate how African admirers responded to him and how their societies were influenced by Christianity. Kivebulaya’s diaries, notebooks, correspondence, reports and autobiography show his missionary work in western Uganda and eastern Congo. Kivebulaya was not a man of letters. He was a clerk in holy orders, keeping the books, noting life’s activities, listing his journeys, acquaintances and biblical texts for sermons. His diaries show him making a path for Christian advancement beyond the metropole. The value of his writings is recognized by scholars examining early Islam in Buganda, politics and witchcraft in Toro and dissent in East Africa. This collection includes short biographies of Kivebulaya originally written in Luganda and Runyoro-Rutoro and texts of interviews conducted in the 1950s with his followers in Congo. The interviews contrast with published biographies by portraying Kivebulaya as a spiritual expert able to slay kings, bring rain and heal the sick. The sources are supported by essays on their context, a comprehensive introduction to each section and thorough annotation.

In recent years, alcohol abuse and dependence have become topics of increasing concern in Uganda, but the chronic relapsing brain disease model of addiction remains only one of many ways of understanding and addressing alcohol-related problems there. For many Ugandan Pentecostals and spirit mediums to be addicted is to be under the control of a being that comes from outside the self. Where these two groups differ, and here they differ strongly, is in regard to the moral valence of these external spirits and what ought to be done about them. This article draws on four years of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork to explore the affordances of these ways of viewing and experiencing addiction and recovery for Ugandans attempting to leave alcohol behind. While the idioms of bondage, dedication, and possession are at times severe, this article argues that they contain within them concepts and practices that point away from models of addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease and towards the possibility of release.

Excessive alcohol consumption often appears as an issue of great concern for the friends and family members of drinkers in Uganda, where per capita consumption rates among drinkers are among the highest in the world. In many cases, these families seek care for their loved ones in small shops run by herbalists, in the shrines of spirit mediums, in the pews of churches, or in one of several newly established inpatient rehabilitation centres. Yet, acts of intervention come not only from living family members or friends, but also from an array of spiritual beings who may arrive uninvited and outside intentional therapeutic contexts. In this article, we consider a case in which a mother's spirit intervenes in the life of her son, first by possessing his body and then by continuing to dwell there in ways that make it impossible for him to drink. This case highlights the importance of forces experienced as non-self in life-transforming processes, and demands that we give attention to a moment in a person's life when the work of care is achieved through an act of physical force.