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they were the aroons of the congo...
<span style="color: #FF0000">The name
The word Azande means the people who possess much land, and refers to their history as conquering warriors.
There are many variant spellings of Azande, including: Zande, Zandeh, A-Zandeh, Sandeh, etc.
The name Niam-Niam (or Nyam-Nyam) was frequently used by foreigners to refer to the Azande in the 19th and early 20th century. This name is probably of Dinka origin, and means great eaters in that language (as well as being an onomatopoeia), supposedly referring to cannibalistic propensities. This name for the Azande was in use by other tribes in Sudan, and later adopted by westerners. Naturally, today the name Niam-Niam is considered pejorative.
Another tribe called the Niam-Niams were a tribe from ancient legend, said to have short tails.
[edit]Notes
History and traditional beliefs
Most Azande traditionally practiced an animist religion but this has been supplanted to large extent by Christianity. Their remaining traditional beliefs were around magic and what is referred to as witchcraft. Witchcraft, among the Azande, is believed to be an inherited substance in the belly, which lives a fairly autonomous life, including performing bad magic on the person's enemies. Witches can sometimes be unaware of their powers, and can accidentally strike people to whom the witch wishes no evil. Because witchcraft is believed to always be present, there are several rituals connected to protection from and cancelling of witchcraft that are performed almost daily. When something out of the ordinary occurs, usually something bad, to an individual, they may blame witchcraft, just as non-Zande people may say "bad luck".
Oracles are a way of determining from where the suspected witchcraft is coming and they were for a long time the ultimate legal authority, the main determining factor in how one would respond to the threats.
There was also a social institution similar to pederasty in Ancient Greece. As E. E. Evans-Pritchard recorded, male Zande warriors between 20 and 30 years of age, in the northern Congo, routinely took on young male lovers between the ages of twelve and twenty, who participated in intercrural sex and sex with their older partners. The practice largely died out by the mid-20th century, after imperialist Europeans had gained colonial control of African countries, but was still surviving to sufficient degree that the practice was recounted in some detail to Evans-Pritchard by the elders with whom he spoke.[1]</span>