Humor
Humor
This page was last updated on $Date: 1999/01/07 02:06:01 $.
"MOWOG",
I think I can shed a little light on this mystery about what, exactly, "MOWOG" means. It has been interesting to read the many interpretations and theories which all revolve around the quaint western paradigm of assuming that it is an acronym. Far from it.
Actually the word "mowog," or in its more accurate original form, "moh-wawg", traces its history to its original use by the Tutsi tribesmen on the eastern slopes of the Mitumbar Mountains in central Africa. Among the Tutsi, "Moh-Wawg!" was an exclamation pronounced at the end of a hunt when a prey had finally been fallen. The ritual evisceration of the prey, originally performed immediately after the kill to prevent the spirits from claiming the carcass, was accompanied by the tribesmen chanting "Moh-Wawg!" over and over as both a celebratory incantation as well as to warn away any hungry spirits who might be considering stealing their bounty.
Over time, the word Moh-Wawg became associated with the first sight of the entrails of the prey as it was being disemboweled, thus the exclamation, "Moh-Wawg!" was often heard not only when the animal's breast was split and the fear of losing it to the spirits had passed, but also when the prey was shared with other members of the tribe as a way of ritually connecting them to the kill.
The British connection to the word dates from the late 1880s and early 1890s when the "scramble for Africa" was in full swing, with several European colonial powers sending expeditions into Africa to stake claims in their competitive land-rush for new territories from which to extract natural resources, one of which was manpower, or as we might now say, "human resources."
The Viscount Abingdon, Great-Great-Uncle of Leonard Lord whom we would later meet as chief of Austin and then Managing Director of the fledgling British Motor Corporation in the early 1950s, was among the British expedition leaders sent to central Africa to thwart a German attempt to gain control of the headwaters of the Nile. While charting navigable waters in the extreme western portion of what would initially be known as the German colony of Tanganyika, but would later be ceded to Belgium's King Leopold and incorporated into the Belgian Congo, The Viscount encountered the Tutsi people.
Abingdon was so impressed with the skill of the Tutsi in fabricating watercraft (not to mention tools for eviscerating fallen prey), that he befriended their leader whose name defies transliteration into the Roman alphabet. This relationship eventually proved useful not only for countering potential German exploitation of the region, but also for furthering British claims that they could later barter for Belgian acquiescence in the Queen's establishment of key ports in the Gulf of Guinea on Africa's *western* littoral. These ports would later become indispensable as waypoints for British maritime trade with India and indeed the entire subcontinent, and the establishment of the Dunlop wire wheel industry, which is a story which shall have to wait for another time.
In any case, so deep was Abingdon's affection for his hosts, or, as the French might call them, "cooperants", in Tutsi-land, that he eventually gave his third son the middle name of "Mowog," which was simply Abingdon's not-quite-correct transliteration of the original Tutsi exclamation, q.v. above.
The name went little noticed for many years until that third son, having later led an ill-fated World War I mission that unfortunately delivered his mess kit maintenance platoon into the hands of a German Army field kitchen, was repatriated after the war. His heroic conduct as a prisoner, wherein he steadfastly refused to compromise British knowledge of field sanitation measures or of the impending deployment of "tanks" against the German lines, would earn him not only accolades in the home press, but would also bring him to the attention of the British industrialists who had manufactured those tanks used in the battle at Ypres (which the British mispronounced "wipers" and which, of course, later led to the Lucas connection to electrical accessories).
During this time it was, of course, quite fashionable among the gentry to assume off-beat nicknames related to British colonial exploits, (see, for example, the Duke Winston "Mombasa-man" Rutherfordshire) and so "Mowog" was a ready made natural for Abingdon's son.
Well, Mowog's popularity led him to a prestigious if not lucrative position in the nascent post-war British motor industry, and among his new corporate duties was securing markets for British motor products. Germany had, of course, been (temporarily) laid low by the war, and so Mowog struck out to ex-German colonies in Africa to attempt to establish British hegemony there as a supplier of motor transport for the colonial infrastructure.
Naturally he took several lorries with him to Africa to rove the land (...) and thereby prove their durability under the extreme conditions to which they would be subjected while serving with colonial administrators. Now, it seems that Mowog was also a bit of a history buff, as one might expect, and so he used the opportunity to attempt to retrace his father's route into the interior to Tutsi-land. The lorries proved amazingly resilient as roads were literally constructed as they proceeded, and eventually they did arrive on those eastern slopes of the Mitumbar. The trek had, of course, taken some toll, and only one of the original five lorries made it all the way, the others having been, um, cannibalized for parts and fuel en route.
As fate would have it, the exhausted but steadfast contingent finally did encounter Tutsi tribesmen just as their last lorry ran out of gas, upon which they opened the bonnet and the tribesmen were heard to exclaim, "Moh-Wawg, Moh-Wawg, Moh-Wawg..."
And the rest is history.
Ne cede malis, Reid
Please send comments, additions, and errors for the SOL Healey web pages to Bob Haskell.
[SOL
Web
][
Scions of Lucas
Home Page
][
SOL British Car Clubs Page
]