Journal of Humanities 2009 Vol 1 No 1

Journal of
Humanities
Volume 1 ▫ Number 1
(2009)
JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES
Chief Editor
Dr. A. Kipacha University of Dodoma, Tanzania
Assistant Editor
Ms. G. Mosha University of Dodoma, Tanzania
Editorial Board:
Caplan, P Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
Condy, J Cape Peninsula University, SA
Gromova, N Moscow State University, Russia
Kapinga, M University of Dodoma, Tanzania
Kiango, J University of Dares salaam, Tanzania
Larsen, K University of Oslo, Norway
Lodhi, A Uppsala University, Sweden
Madumulla, J University of Dodoma, Tanzania
Maniacky, J Royal Museum of Centre Africa, Belgium
Mapunda, B University of Dar es salaam, Tanzania
Marten, L SOAS, University of London, UK
Mutiti, Y Egerton University, Kenya
Mwenda, M University of Nairobi, Kenya
Rubagumya, C University of Dodoma, Tanzania
Wendo, N Vienna University, Austria
Published bi-annually by the School of Humanities,

The University of Dodoma
ISSN 1821-7079
Volume 1, Number 1 (2009)
Orders to:
The Editor
Journal of Humanities
The University of Dodoma
P.O. Box 259
Dodoma
TANZANIA
E-mail: editorjh@udom.ac.tz
Website: www.udom.ac.tz
© Journal of Humanities (JH), The University of Dodoma
ii
Editorial Note
This is the maiden issue of the international peer-reviewed trilingual Journal of Humanitie (JH). This bi-
annual broad-focused journal aims to promote the exchange of ideas and foster interdisciplinary research
in the human sciences. It publishes scholarly articles and reviews on cultures, history, anthropology,
indigenous knowledge, literatures and languages, art and music, and other fields of the humanities that
appeal to an international audience.
Our primary goal is to generate intellectual dialogues between the traditional boundaries of knowledge and
culture; we also seek to redefine, transform, and conflate such boundaries.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and our many contributors to
make this maiden volume a reality. We entrust that you will continue to support this forum for the
foreseeable future.
Ahmad Kipacha
Chief Editor
iii
JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES
CONTENTS
A Note on a Shared Heritage: The Bread Culture of the Waswahili of Zanzibar 1

Assibi Amidu
Dunia kokwa ya furu: Amali ya Misemo ya KiPemba 12

Ahmad Kipacha & Ibun Kombo
The Politicisation of Popobawa: Changing Explanations of a Collective Panic in Zanzibar 23

Martin Walsh
La culture dansée : un trait d’union entre deux mondes différents. Cas du Burundi 34
Sylvie Hatungimana
Early Childhood Cultural Development in Tanzania: Reflections from Key Government Documents 43
Lyambwene Mtahabwa
Negotiating Boundaries of Womanhood: The Position of Women in Migrant Households in Rural 55

Ghana
Justina Dugbazah
Nadharia ya Mtazamo-Kike Katika Muktadha wa Kiafrika 66

Clara Mamanyi
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye: A White Woman’s Afrocentric Approach to Gender Politics in Africa 73
Mike Kuria
Taswira za Mwanamume katika Fasihi Simulizi ya Kiafrika: Mfano wa Nyimbo za Tohara Miongoni 84
mwa Waigembe
Irene Mbaabu & John Kobia
Guideline to Authors 96
iv
A. Amidu. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1(1) 2009, 1-11
A Note on a Shared Heritage: The Bread Culture of the Waswahili of Zanzibar
Assibi A. Amidu
Assibi.amidu@hf.ntnu.no
Trondheim University
Abstract
This study looks at the bread culture of the Waswahili of Zanzibar on the East African coast. We will list the
types of bread found among the Waswahili of Zanzibar and where possible indicate briefly what they consist of and
how they are made. We will contrast Kiswahili traditional bread in Zanzibar with other kinds of bread that have
been introduced to Zanzibar. Our study argues that the bread culture of the Waswahili of Zanzibar not only tells
us about the types of bread that they make and consume but also about the history of bread making among its
people. The Kiswahili bread culture of Zanzibar also tells us about how global and local cultures have interacted
over many centuries, if not millennia, on the East African coast. We also attempt to confirm that globalization is
an on-going process that began far back in historical time and is intensifying in the 21st century. We will conclude
by noting that the Kiswahili bread culture of Zanzibar is a fine example of positive globalization at work. It is
indicative of the advantages of communication between people, the exchange of cultural artifacts and food culture,
which reveal that we share more in common in this world than we often think we do.
1.0 Introduction
The debate surrounding globalization and localization among scholars working on these areas, such as
geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, culturalists and historians, makes interesting reading. In a
recent paper, Lie and Lund (2003) take issue with the terms global and globalization as used by experts of
the field. They argue that the term global seems to be used at the expense of the term local. For this
reason, they propose a balanced approach that weighs both terms against each other. In this connection,
they state that,
"We shall argue that to understand what is global you have to start with the local. The experiences of the
global takes [sic] place in particular local places, and it does not make sense to isolate the local from the
global. People's practices always take place in a physical and social context, in which they create and
recreate their livelihoods. Hence, practise [sic] and context are integrated concepts, as are the local and the
global. To study processes of change in a particular place we need to situate our study in such a way that
we can study the relationships between the local and the global. The local place is the receiving end, but at
the same time the arena where social practices are situated and where the new realities of people are
created." (Lie and Lund 2003: 102).
What I like about this citation is its conclusion, which would seem to be at variance with the title of my
paper that speaks of a shared heritage. This is just fine for me, because my paper hopes to confirm that
the distinction 'global' versus 'local' is artificial in many instances in our present world. It would appear
that a neutral term that refers to the interrelationship between both global and local would be of great
advantage in today's world. For example, in this paper, I will attempt, briefly, to show how local cultural
practices often contain global elements confirming the views of specialists that globalization and
localization go hand in hand and influence each other through time. Globalization and localization are
therefore not phenomena of the recent technological age or of mere social or cultural traditions. To
illustrate and confirm this relationship, I am going to write about the types of bread found among the
Waswahili of Zanzibar, a Bantu speaking people living on an island off the East African coast, some of
whom have spread into the African mainland and across the world.
1
© JH, The University of Dodoma ISSN 1821-7079
2.0 Kiswahili food culture

One of the experts on Kiswahili food culture is undoubtedly Abdulaziz Yusuf Lodhi of the University of
Uppsala. He has written about the subject since 1981 (see Lodhi 1981). In his doctoral dissertation, Lodhi
(2000: 83) states that,
"[...] from the port of Mogadishu in Somalia in the north to the coastal settlements of northern
Mozambique, the islands of the Comoros and coastal areas of northwestern Madagascar, the cuisine,
rightly described as Swahili, is part of the Indian Ocean food culture; it is a complex blend of Arabian,
Persian, Indian (from present day India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) and Indonesian dishes with
several items, especially fritters with kamba (< Ar., prawns and shrimps), that remind of the Chinese and
Japanese, albeit without pork or raw fish respectively."
Thus the term 'Kiswahili food culture' is often a broad term that covers a culinary culture that is also
claimed by other Indian Ocean towns in the North-Western Indian Ocean corridor as part of their own
culture. To avoid tackling such a large subject, I will focus, principally but not exclusively, on the bread
culture of the Waswahili of Zanzibar.
3.0 Varieties of Zanzibar bread

Shafi Adam Shafi is a novelist. Like Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, he is from Zanzibar. He lives, presently, in Dar es
Salaam on the mainland. One might call him the Charles Dickens of East African Kiswahili prose
literature. In one of his recent novels, Vuta n'kutute (1999), he focuses on the meeting points of four main
cultures on the Island of Zanzibar, namely, Kiswahili culture, Indian Culture, Arabian Culture and
European or English Culture. He discusses the clash of cultures and values that existed prior to Zanzibar
gaining independence from Great Britain. In this novel, his character Bwana Bashir attempts to list the
variety of bread, which he claims, belongs properly to Zanzibar, and not to the Indian Ocean people as a
whole. We have in this work, therefore, a chance to see how the Mswahili person views his/her bread
culture in relation to similar claims by others around him or her. Through his character Bwana Bashir, Shafi
(1999: 80) gives us a list of what he considers to be Zanzibar bread. Going through the list, my translations
and references provide us with a glimpse of Zanzibari thinking about bread and how opinions sometimes
differ about what goes into making them.1 The term for bread in Kiswahili is mkate. It belongs to noun
class 3 MU2 with a plural mikate in noun class 4 MI. It is derived from the verb -kata 'cut, slice'. Many
varieties of bread in Kiswahili are built on the noun mkate, which occurs as their noun head. Shafi's list of
the varieties of bread eaten in Zanzibar is given under my subsections below.
3.1 Pancake bread

Zanzibar bread includes different kinds of pancakes. These are given below.
1a. Mkate wa maji. 'Pancake.' According to Lodhi (2000: 84), it is made of wheat
flour. This bread has a variety given as (1b) below.
1b. Mkate wa gole. This is a variety of mkate wa maji in (1a).
Shafi Adam Shafi, in a personal communication (p.c.) dated 7/2/08 from Dar es Salaam, explains the
similarities and differences between the varieties as follows:
"Huu ni ule ule mkate wa maji isipokuwa ule unaoitwa wa gole hupakwa sukari au asali."
'This is the very same mkate wa maji (pancake), except that the variety called gole bread is smeared with
sugar or honey.'
Shafi's description suggests that the general name for the Zanzibar's pancake is mkate wa maji. It is called
gole bread or pancake when it is eaten with sugar or honey. This detail needs to be taken into account by
researchers, specialists and visitors to Zanzibar. There are other views about the gole bread in Zanzibar.
1 Except where indicated by double quotation marks, the translations are my work, and all shortcomings
are also my responsibility.
2
For example, Issak (1999: 169) describes it in Norwegian as "Et slags brød tilbredt med damp."2 In
English, it means 'A type of steamed bread.' No mention is made of its relation to mkate wa maji 'pancake.'
Lodhi (2000: 86), on the other hand refers to the gole bread as "a pancake containing minced meat, and
fried on the under side and steamed on the upper side by covering." He does not, however, say what kind
of spread is used with the pancake. For this reason, Shafi Adam Shafi's detail is very significant. Lodhi's
description is also different from that of Issak (1999). More importantly, however, since mkate wa maji is
another name for mkate wa gole, we would expect the same kinds of ingredient to be used in making the
pancakes. To clarify this point, I turned to Shafi Adam Shafi. In his communication dated 22/2/08, he
confirms that the pancakes may contain meat, but this is not obligatory. His explanation is as follows:
"Kuhusu mkate wa maji kutiwa nyama ni sawa. Mkate wa maji unaweza ukatiwa nyama ikitegemea
mapenzi ya mpikaji huo mkate."
'On whether the pancake mkate wa maji may contain meat, this is correct. The pancake may contain meat in
accordance with the taste of the baker.'
It is clear from the above information that mkate wa gole or mkate wa maji may be made in different ways by
bakers and eaten with different types of spread according to the taste of the consumer. It reveals just how
flexible and diverse the Waswahili of Zanzibar are in preparing and consuming their pancakes.
2. Mkate wa chila. 'Pancake of rice flour.' (see Lodhi 2000: 84)
Shafi's (1999) list recognizes it as a type of Zanzibar bread. Observe that it is another kind of pancake but
of Indian origin and so it is not related to the pancake mkate wa maji or mkate wa gole (p.c. from Shafi Adam
Shafi). Lodhi (2000: 84) is of the view that chila is a word from Cutchi in India. It is used to refer to any
kind of pancake in Cutchi. Among the Waswahili of Zanzibar, however, it is a specific type of pancake.
The word chila cannot be found in any past or current dictionary, to the best of my knowledge, and so
lexicographers might want to make a note of it.
3.2 Loaf bread

The principal term for loaf bread is given in (3a).
3a. Mkate wa boflo or bofulo. 'European bread, hence loaf bread, leavened bread.'
Johnson (1939: 37) describes it as "bread of European kind and make." Lodhi (2000: 84), says it is also
called pau, hence mkate wa pau. The word pau is also written pao. Johnson (1939: 359) describes it as a
Portuguese word that means "stick, cudgel, pole, wood." Lodhi (2000) confirms that the word pau or pao
comes from Portuguese. In discussions held with him on the 29th Novermber 2007, he also tells me that
the vowel [a] of pau is nasalized, hence [pãu] or [pão]. In Standard Kiswahili, the word is written without
the tilde. Lodhi (2000: 84, 146) maintains that the word bofulo or boflo comes from Sindhi or Cutchi in
India. In my discussions with him, he says his comment only refers to the etymology of the word and not
the source of the bread. In short, the bread, called mkate wa boflo or mkate wa pau/pao was introduced to
East Africa and Goa by the Portuguese.3
There are four main varieties of mkate wa boflo eaten by the Waswahili of Zanzibar which are not
mentioned in Shafi (1999) but which may be of interest to the reader. They are listed below as (3b, c, d, e).
2 Issak E. Issak is from Zanzibar.

3 It appears that Cutchi and Goan or Konkani people arrived in East Africa in the service of the
Portuguese administration very early during the Portuguese period between the middle of the 16th century
and the middle of the 17th century. They took a keen interest in baking European bread, which they called
fofilo or fofulo 'balloon, swollen object'. The Waswahili heard the word as bofulo or boflo. The Portuguese
term pãu/pão is also used in some Indian languages. Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi says that while growing up in
Zanzibar, he remembers clearly that two-thirds of the bakeries were owned and run by Zanzibaris of
Goan or Konkani origin and one-third by Zanzibaris of Cutchi origin. It is self-evident that this long
tradition of baking Euopean bread in Zanzibar explains how the word boflo or bofulo gained currency over
pãu/pão on the island and on the mainland.
3
3b. Mkate wa kibao. It is a variety of mkate wa boflo 'European bread', except that
the baking pan or tin called kibati is placed upside down in the
oven. The dough swells up and fills the pan or tin.
When the bread is baked, the pan is lifted and the bread has a block shape. It is wider at the base than at
the top and looks like a sitting stool. This is how it got the name kibao 'little stool, small bench'.
3c. Mkate wa peti. This is another variety of mkate wa boflo. This time, the pan
or tin is placed in the right position to allow the bread to expand
upwards and have a brown crust.
When it is baked, the bread has the shape of a wooden chest. The word peti 'chest, box' comes from
Cutchi, which in Kiswahili means sanduku 'box, chest.' The Waswahili of Zanzibar do not use the word
sanduku to describe this bread. They are content with the word peti, although, according to Abdulaziz Y.
Lodhi, today the words peti and kibao are not as widely used as in the past. Other kinds of bread named by
Shafi (1999) follow below:
3d. Mkate wa kisu. 'French loaf bread, thin long round thick bread introduced by
the French, lit. knife-like bread.'
Shafi Adam Shafi in his p.c. mentioned above also draws attention to the fact that mkate wa kisu is a variety
of mkate wa boflo in Kiswahili. He writes,
"Huu ni jamii ya mkate wa boflo ila tofauti ni kuwa boflo ni wa pembe nne na wa kisu una ncha pande
zake zote mbili."
'This is a variety of loaf bread, and the difference is that loaf bread has four corners (at both ends) whereas
the French type of loaf bread has a pointed end at each extremity.'
3e. Mkate wa ngumi. 'Round loaf bread, lit. fist bread.'
Information about this bread has come from Shafi Adam Shafi. In the email mentioned earlier he writes
that,
"Pia katika jamii ya mkate wa boflo kuna mkate wa ngumi ambao huu unakuwa duara."
'Among the varieties of loaf bread, there is 'fist (loaf) bread' which is round in shape.'
3.3 Flat bread

The Waswahili of Zanzibar have various types of flat bread and they are named by Shafi (1999). I list and
describe them as follows:
4. Mkate wa ufuta. 'Sesame cake or bread, lit. bread of sesame.'
5. Mkate wa mayai. 'Omelette, lit. bread of eggs.'
According to Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, p.c., the dough is shaped like a kind of junior pizza. Next, two or three
eggs are cracked, spread on the dough, then stirred and baked. It is therefore not an omelette in the
European sense, but rather flat bread with egg topping.
6a. Mkate wa kusukuma. 'Thin soft, Indian flat bread or pastry with a round shape.'
This is the most widely consumed flat bread of the Waswahili of Zanzibar. The Waswahili of Zanzibar
consider it to be part of traditional Kiswahili bread culture. Johnson (1939: 439) describes it as "a kind of
pastry made from dough which has been rolled out." Issak (1999:169) describes it in Norwegian as "[...]
ligner på potetlompe. Stekes i tørr panne eller med litt smør." In English this mean it '[...] resembles a thin,
flat (Norwegian) potato cake. It is baked in a dry pan or with a pan smeared with a little butter.'
6b. Mkate wa chapati. Same as (6a) above.
Kiango, et al. (2007: 192) define it as "Mkate mwembamba na bapa wa duara wa unga wa ngano." This
translates as follows: 'Thin flat bread with a round shape (made) of wheat flour.' Chapati is the Indian
name for the Indian round flat bread. It is widely eaten in East Africa and in other parts of the world.
According to Shafi Adam Shafi, p.c., the term mkate wa kusukuma is traditionally used in Zanzibar and the
4
Kiswahili islands, whereas the term mkate wa chapati is used along the coastal belt of the Waswahili. Shafi
Adam Shafi writes,
"Mkate wa chapati: Huu ni ule ule mkate wa kusukuma ila mara nyingi jina la mkate wa kusukuma
hutumika Zanzibar wakati watu wa mwambao huuita mkate wa chapati."
'Chapati bread: This is the same as kusukuma bread (rolled flat bread), except that often times the term
mkate wa kusukuma is used in Zanzibar while the people along the coastal belt call it chapati bread (Indian
flat bread).'
Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, p.c., nevertheless believes that there is some difference between the two types of
bread. Namely, for him at least, mkate wa kusukuma is made from whole wheat, whereas original mkate wa
chapati 'Indian flat bread' is made from white wheat flour. Whatever it is, this study reveals that mkate wa
chapati is simply another name for the Kiswahili flat bread of Zanzibar called mkate wa kusukuma.
7. Mkate wa parapata. 'Bread made from wheat flour.'
This is another type of Kiswahili bread named by Shafi (1999). According to Saida Yahya-Othman, p.c., it
is like the type of bread called nan or naan or mkate wa nan or naan 'a type of Iranian or persian bread' (also
described as "sweet saffron bread" by Lodhi 2000: 195) except that it is larger and thinner. The dough is
kneaded and divided into balls. Each ball of dough is pressed into a flat round shape then spun around the
fingers and cast into the air to allow it to broaden out, after which it is fixed or plastered on the wall of the
kiln, usually one fired by wood or coal. It is eaten with soup or khebabs. Saida Yahya-Othman says that it
is baked almost exclusively in Malindi in Zanzibar. The inhabitants of Malindi also eat the bread with
banana of the type kipukusa 'a yellow ripe banana'. The banana is pounded with the bread, which has been
sliced into small pieces, to create a mash/hotchpotch, called mseto in Kiswahili, which is then eaten. The
word parapata is not found in any existing dictionary.
8. Mkate wa Ajmi. 'Persian bread.'
Shafi (1999) regards this bread as Zanzibar bread. Lodhi (2000: 84) also refers to it as mkate wa ajemi and
says it is of Arabian origin. Lodhi, on the same page, describes it as "the small round Middle Eastern and
North Indian bread commonly known in Indian restaurants around the world as 'tandoori' bread."
Tandoori is called in Kiswahili tanuri or tanuru or tanuu 'kiln, oven', a word of Persian origin, which came to
the Kiswahili coast via Arabic. Note however that the word Ajmi or Ajemi means 'Persian' and so the
bread must have been introduced from Persia into Arabia and India and then to East Africa and other
Indian Ocean states. In discussions with Lodhi, he says that this bread is like pita (or pitta) bread. It is
about 15 cm in diameter but it does not leaven and so it cannot be split open. One side is flattened against
the wall of the kiln so that only the other side gets the heat and becomes flat and roasted. He adds that it is
mkate mdogo na mnene, that is to say 'a small but thick bread.'
3.4 Round cake-like or cake bread

9. Mkate wa mofa. Johnson (1939: 294) describes it as "Small, hard, round kind of
bread made from millet flour and baked in a mofa oven."
On the same page, Johnson defines a mofa as "a small oven made of clay used in some of the Arab
dhows." Lodhi (2000: 84) describes the bread simply as "brown bread." It is not clear whether Lodhi's
bread is the same kind of bread recorded by Johnson, even though both are baked in the same type of
oven. Issak's (1999: 175) entry supports Johnson's definition of mkate wa mofa. TUKI (2004: 265) also says
it is made from millet or bullrush millet or maize. If Lodhi (2000) is, nevertheless, right in his present
description of this bread, then it would imply that the term mkate wa mofa has acquired a semantic
extension to its meaning such that it may also be used to refer to modern brown bread made from wheat.
Two other types of bread found in Shafi's (1999) list are as follows:
10. Mkate wa kumimina. Johnson (1939: 178) describes it as "Cake made of batter,
fritter, etc."
Issak (1999: 169) describes mkate wa kumimina in Norwegian as "en type gjærbakst, laget av rismel med
kokosmelk." This translates into English as 'a type of yeast baked bread, made of rice flour mixed with
coconut milk.' Lodhi (2000: 84), on the other hand, describes it as "steamed bread or cake of fermented
5
rice flour dough." One thing that is certain about this bread or cake is that the basic ingredients used in
making it are rice and coconut milk. Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, p.c., also adds that this cake can be up to 5 cm
thick. He further says that, today, poverty has put coconut milk beyond the reach of many Zanzibaris and
so milk from animals, whether in liquid or powder form, is used in the making of the cake.4
In Shafi (1999), Bwana Bashir is told by one of his guests, a Comorian, that he has left out one type of
Kiswahili bread found in Zanzibar from his list. The bread is named below:
11. Mkate wa Kingazija. Comorian bread.

According to Saida Yahya-Othman, p.c., Comorian bread is suitable for long journeys, especially by ship.
It was therefore popular with seafarers in the past. It is made from rice flour, coconut, a little ghee, some
honey, sugar and spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, and whole turmeric. The ingredients
are mixed thoroughly together and it takes hours to blend them in very well. The mixture is then steamed
very much like in the preparation of caramel pudding. The actual process of cooking is intricate and
complex. We will not go into the details in this paper.
4.0 The paradox of indigenous versus foreign bread among the Waswahili of Zanzibar
One of the characters in Shafi's novel, Bwana Mohammed, enquires as to whether all the types of bread
named by Bwana Bashir are original Zanzibar bread since some obviously bear foreign names. Bwana Bashir
agrees that some of what is called Zanzibar bread came from outside Zanzibar. He lists the non-Zanzibari
ones as follows:
a. "Mkate wa mofa na parapata, asili yake huko Ushihirini." (Shafi 1999: 80). Namely, 'the round
millet bread (or brown bread) and the flat bread called parapata have their origins in Sheher in South
Arabia.'5
b. Mkate wa Ajmi is Persian bread and comes originally from Persia.
c. Mkate wa Kingazija is Comorian bread, and comes originally from the Comoros.
Observe that mkate wa boflo, mkate wa kusukuma, and mkate wa chila are not included in the list of Zanzibar
bread of foreign or non-Zanzibari origin by Shafi's character Bwana Bashir. Thus although these three types
of bread originate in foreign local cultures, they have become so much a part of Zanzibar's food culture
that they are treated as indigenous foods, or, at least, integral parts of Zanzibar's culture and civilization
and are no longer seen as foreign foods in the strict sense of the term 'foreign.'
In Shafi's novel, Bwana Bashir concludes his comments on Zanzibar bread, by noting that the adoption of
bread of foreign origin is positive for Zanizibar's social life. In his own words, "Hii inaonyesha jinsi
Unguja ilivyo mkorogo wa mataifa." (Shafi 1999: 80-81). It translates as follows: 'This shows how
Zanzibar is a melting pot of nations.' The conclusion of Bwana Bashir fits Lodhi's general comments on
Kiswahili cuisine noted in § 2.0 above. Shafi's objective for introducing a discussion about bread into his
novel is to show how multicultural and multinational or multiethnic Zanzibar society has become over
4 Imported animal milk is available everywhere these days and it is cheaper compared with coconut milk.
This is killing the coconut milk industry. Besides, the production of coconut milk is traditionally labour
intensive and so with cheap alternatives on the market fewer and fewer people invest time in its
production and this has pushed up prices. This development may be described as evidence of the effects
of negative globalization on a local industry in East Africa (see below for additional comments).
5 Arabs call Sheher Ash-Shihr and it is recorded as such in Issak (1999: 181). South Arabia is part of today's
Yemen, and Ash-Shihr is in the south of the country. See Johnson (1939: 303) on Mshihiri "an Arab from
Sheher in South Arabia [...]" Ushihirini is Sheher country or the country of Sheher. Note that Sheher is,
strictly speaking, just the port city of Sheher. Ushihirini in Kiswahili however refers to the whole of South
Yemen, commonly known as Hadramaut. The poorer or lower class members of this group in East Africa,
who run small shops, do petty trading and menial jobs are called derogatorily Washihiri, plural (Mshihiri,
singular), whereas those of them with high social and/or religious status and/or wealth are called
Wahadrami, plural (Mhadrami, singular).
6
centuries of taking in visitors and settlers from the Indian Ocean regions, such as, the Middle East, the
Indian subcontinent, the Far East, as far as China, and people from Europe and America. It is curious that
each group of visitors came to the Kiswahili coast and islands armed with its type of bread. Bread has,
therefore, been an indispensable part of the diet of travellers to and settlers in East Africa from as early as
200 BC or the first or second century AD. Globalization began in those early days around the Indian
Ocean and has become an inseparable part of the cultures of the Waswahili of Zanzibar and those on the
coast of East Africa. There is no doubt that this kind of globalization is positive globalization because it
provides additional food sources that strengthen the existing ones and diversifies the ways in which they
could be prepared and eaten. It is also a food culture that is shared by many groups of people in Zanzibar
all of whom, whatever the origins of their ancestors, grandparents and even parents, agree that it is a vital
and useful defining piece of their food culture. This is a far cry from negative globalization, such as we
witness today. Negative globalization rather takes (some will say robs) resources from poorer areas and
sends them to richer countries. In return, these poor nations are forced to buy finished products at high
prices since their own traditional production methods cannot compete with the mass production
techniques of powerful rich countries (see Kaplinsky 1979, on effects of pineapple cultivation in Kenya).
Over time, the impoverished people cannot even afford traditional bread and food items on their tables,
not to speak of global bread, which increasingly depends on high priced imported cereals. Negative
globalization stands, therefore, in stark contrast to positive globalization in many parts of the world.6
5.0 Other kinds of Zanzibar bread

Shafi's character Bwana Bashir does not exhaust the kinds of bread known to the Waswahili of Zanzibar.
For example, (12-13) below represent additonal types of bread found in Zanzibar:
12. Mkate wa jasho. Jasho means 'sweat', hence mkate wa jasho means literally
'sweating bread.'
Mkate wa jasho is a long and thin bread, about the size of a banana or like the European sausage bread.
According to Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, p.c., bakers place the kneaded dough close to each other on the baking
plate and so they often get stuck to each other when they are baked. They are usually sold in pairs.
13. Mkate wa maziwa. 'Milk or cream pudding.'
6 It has been observed by several scholars that, over time, what starts off as positive globalization also has
negative consequences for the economy and the well-being of the inhabitants of some countries, especially
developing countries (see footnote 4 above). For example, Andrae and Beckman (1985) have noted that in
Nigeria, the importation of wheat from Canada and the United States has tended to replace local foods,
which are cheaper. High prices also accompany bread production in some parts of the developing world
thus impacting negatively on its population. This often happens when large commercial bakeries replace or
supplant small scale bakeries such as family bakeries, especially in cities, without necessarily improving the
diets of consumers. While the findings above are informative and timely, in general, I take the view here
that bread culture has had a positive effect on the population of many countries of the world, particularly
in countries where, outside of cities and large towns, bread production is still in the hands of small family
bakeries that serve small local markets in rural areas and in small towns. For example, in Lamu, Mahmoud
Ahmed Abdul-Kadir, alias Mau, has baked bread for most of his life for Lamu's people in addition to
writing poetry in his spare time (Amidu 1990: 73-76). He is one of the small-scale bakers who has
improved his economic condition through his profession, fed many, and has also become a modest
celebrity as a topical political poet in Lamu. Most of the types of Zanzibar bread I refer to in this study are
not produced commercially, as the evidence indicates. For this reason, it is important that we weigh the
positive aspects of the bread culture against its emerging negative impact, especially in developing
countries. Amongst the Waswahili of Zanzibar, indeed all the Waswahili for that matter, bread is eaten
with a rich variety of dishes, locally produced ones as well as imported ones. As a result, we can affirm that
Zanzibar's bread culture still has positive benefits for its people despite the inroads being made by
commerical bakeries. I believe also that nutritionists and healthcare workers ought to educate consumers
more and more about the dangers of uncontrolled commercialization of bread and other products, if the
negative effects of commercialization are to be checked and eliminated.
7
There is a variety of this bread called barai. It is described by Lodhi (2000: 139) as "bee-sting pudding, a
delicious rare dish prepared by steaming raw milk, or curd of cows."
6.0 African bread of the Waswahili

Bread of African origin does not stand out clearly in the above discussion. The impression may therefore
be given that the Waswahili of African origin do not have any bread or did not have bread before the
advent of Orientals and Europeans to the Kiswahili coast and its islands. The Waswahili, whether from
Zanzibar or other parts of the East African coast and its off-shore islands, in fact, have their own
indigenous bread culture. Indeed, the term mkate 'bread' was used originally by the indigenous Waswahili
to describe their bread long before the advent of non-Africans to their lands. Sacleux (1939: 560) refers to
the general term used by the indigenous Waswahili for their bread as follows:
14. Mkate wa kusonga. Sacleux (1939) describes it as "Sorte de gâteau péparé avec
une bouillie épaisse." This translates into English as follows. 'A
type of cake made from thick dough.'
The dough for this bread is like ugali 'thick porridge' and it is commonly made from cassava, millet, rice or
maize flour. This gives us four basic varieties of bread as follows:
15. Mkate wa mhogo. 'Cassava bread.'
16. Mkate wa mtama. 'Millet bread.'
17. Mkate wa mahindi. 'Maize bread.'
18. Mkate wa manda. 'Small round baked bread of rice and strained grated coconunt.'
Shafi Adam Shafi, (p.c. of 27/10/08), says that "Kuhusu manda huu ni mkate wa watu wa pwani.
Hutengenezwa, nafikiri sana, kwa unga wa mchele na chicha za nazi zilizokamuliwa." This translates as
'With reference to manda, it is bread of coastal dwellers. It is prepared, I believe quite ofen, with rice flour
and strained grated coconut.'
6.1 The most famous African bread in Kiswahili historical records

There are also other kinds of indigenous African Kiswahili bread that are no longer eaten by the Waswahili
of Zanzibar, the coast and other islands, even if they can still make them. One type of indigenous millet
bread has become immortalized in Kiswahili literature. There are two names for this bread, and they are as
follows:
19. Mkate wa wishwa. 'Millet bran bread, made from chaff or husks.'
20. Mkate wa chachu. 'Bread of fermented millet bran dough.'
Johnson (1939: 531) describes wishwa or wiswa as "chaff, husks, bran." The word is also ushwa in some
dialects. The bread mkate wa wishwa is also described in other texts as mkate wa chachu (see Miehe, et al.
2007: 166). Sacleux (1939: 126) describes chachu ya mtama as "bouillie de son de sorgho fermentée, qu'on
donne comme remède dans le safura." This translates as 'dough of fermented millet bran, which is given as
a cure for jaundice/ ankylostomiasis.' Lodhi, p.c., says this bread is like mkate wa kisu 'French loaf bread'
but very much shorter in length. The bread entered the literal history of the Waswahili for all time because
it is inextricably linked with the historical account of Fumo Liyongo.7 Fumo Liyongo is described as "the
national hero of the Swahili" in Knappert (1979: 67) (see Harries 1962: 48-71, Amidu 1990: 3, 6, on
Liyongo). He is also described in Miehe et al. (2007: 5) as "[...] one of the most impressive personalities in
the oral and literary tradition of the Swahili Coast." The historical account of Fumo Liyongo has been
preserved in the epic poem Utendi wa Liyongo (Harries 1962, Knappert 1979) together with the name of the
bread, mkate wa wishwa or mkate wa chachu.
7 According to one account, Fumo Liyongo was born at Siu, a town or city on Rasini Island, lived in Pate,
also on Rasini Island, and died on the mainland in a city founded by him called Kwa Mwana. This city was
located in the region of the lower part of the river Ozi (Knappert 1979: 67).
8
7.0 The semantic extensions of the term mkate in Kiswahili

The bread types given by Shafi (1999) only refer to bread made from cereals and seeds. Note, for example,
that the term mkate wa ngano 'wheat bread' is used as a general term for many of the types of bread we have
named above, including pastries and even cakes, made from wheat. The kinds of bread referred to by
Lodhi (2000) refer mostly to those brought to the Kiswahili coast from the oriental nations of the Indian
Ocean regions. We have seen, however, that indigenous Kiswahili bread of African origins is made from
cereals and root crops. There are, however, other types of Kiswahili bread, which are edible but are neither
cereal, nor seed, nor root based. The following are some examples:
21. Mkate wa nyuki. 'Honeycomb or a piece of this, lit. bread of honey.' (see Johnson
1939: 178, Issak 1999: 169).
22. Mkate wa tumbaku. "A plug or cake of tobacco." (Johnson 1939: 178)
23. Mkate wa jivu. 'Dough of ash, lit. ash bread.' (see TUKI 2004: 251)
Note that the dough of ash or cake of ash is figuratively bread-like in the Kiswahili sense. It is, however,
not clear whether it is edible/chewable, e.g. with a piece of tobacco cake, or convertible into an ingredient
for cooking. It is, nevertheless, called a type of bread.
24. Mkate wa nyama. It is described as "pie with two layers of dough" by Lodhi
(2000: 84).
Lodhi (2000) goes on to comment that "This pie is made of fried meat, onions and boiled eggs, or it is
prepared with kima [...]" Kima is minced meat.
25. Mkate wa kima. It is described as "meat loaf" in Lodhi (2000: 84), hence it
means bread made of minced meat. Its shape is round because
of the bowl or dish in which it is prepared or placed.
7.1 The many senses of bread in Kiswahili

Several of the phrases above reveal that the term mkate has a primary sense, which is not really bread. Its
primary meaning is something that can be cut or sliced, e.g. with a knife, or broken into pieces, e.g. with
the fingers. Bread is not the only thing that can be cut or sliced or broken into pieces. As a result, it has
undergone what linguists call semantic extensions of its meaning to include any dough or dough-like
substance that is sliceabe or breakable after baking, steaming, cooking, or frying. Thus underlying the basic
meaning that runs through the word mkate is the notion that the sliceable or breakable object is normally
edible or chewable by human beings and other animate objects. As a result of this, a piece of tree or wood
may be sliceable, but it would not qualify as mkate.
7.1.1 Are all pastries bread in Zanzibar?

It is common these days for pastries generally to be described as types of bread on the analogy of the
more established kinds of bread. One example of this is as follows:
26. Kaimati. 'Deep fried ball of pastry.'
The pastry above is mentioned in Shafi (1999: 79). The phrase that Shafi (1999) uses in his book is
"kaimati zilizoshurubu shira vizuri." This means 'small balls of pastry well dipped in syrup, lit. small balls
of pastry that have absorbed syrup very well.' The word does not appear in the dictionaries of Johnson
(1939) and Kiango, et al. (2007). It is, however, recorded in Sacleux (1939: 318) and in the dictionaries of
Issak (1999: 93) and TUKI (2004: 139). Kaimati is described as a kind of andazi in Kiswahili, namely a
pastry or cake. Sacleux (1939) describes it as "Boulette de la grosseur d'un citron, faite de pâte pétrie avec
du vin de palme, frite au beurre et roulée dans du sucre." This translates as follows: 'A small ball about the
size of a lemon, made from dough impregnated with palm wine, fried in butter and rolled/dipped in
sugar.' According to Issak (1999: 93), however, the ingredients used are wheat flour, yoghourt, milk, sugar,
yeast, essence of vanilla and cardamom. When one looks up the word andazi, one finds that it is described
9
as a type of bread, e.g. "mkate mdogo kama kitumbua unaochomwa kwa mafuta" (TUKI 2004: 11). This
means in English 'a type of small bread like a fritter fried in oil/fat.' We find a similar description of andazi
'pastry' in Kiango, et al. (2007: 8). By logical extension, kaimati is a kind of bread in these definitions. I
turned to Shafi Adam Shafi for clarification of this point. In his electronic mail to me dated 2/7/2008, he
writes that,
"Kaimati si mkate. Ni aina ya chakula kama vile vitumbua. Kaimati hukaangwa ndani ya mafuta na baadaye
hurowekwa ndani ya shira. Ni chakula kitamu sana ambacho ni maarufu katika mwambao wa Afrika
Mashariki."
'Kaimati is not bread. It is food similar to kitumbua 'a fritter'. Kaimati is fried in oil and then soaked/dipped
into syrup. It is a very sweet dish that is popular along the coastal belt of East Africa.'
Johnson (1939: 211) defines kitumbua as "a small round fritter made of rice flour, fried in fat." It seems
that inhabitants of Zanzibar do not regard pastries of this kind as types of bread. Some scholars however
include them under the generic heading of mkate 'bread.' Another type of pastry introduced to Zanzibar by
the English not very long ago is as follows:
27. Donasi or donati 'Doughnut.'
Donasi is strictly speaking not bread but a pastry or cake, although some speakers classify it as a type of
bread (Kiango et al. 2007: 60). It has only recently been recorded in a Kiswahili dictionary (Kiango, et al.
2007: 60).
28. Mkate wa zabibu. 'Bread with raisins, a bun with raisins.'
Mkate wa zabibu in the sense of a bun is very popular among the Waswahili of Zanzibar today. According
to Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, p.c., buns are the only types of bread that the British introduced to Zanzibar and
East Africa around the middle of the 20th century. The term banzi derived from the English plural 'buns'
is widely used in the Kiswahili of Dar es Salaam as a synonym for mkate wa zabibu. Banzi has not yet found
its way into Kiswahili dictionaries. The extension of the term mkate to include buns is another illustration
of the semantic extension of the term mkate beyond its traditional domains.
8.0 Cultural shift: How European Bread surpassed African Bread

It is evident, to me at least, that historically, the word mkate referred to bread indigenous to Africa, East
Africa in particular, and to Hadramaut just across the Horn of Africa, in Yemen. In modern times, it
appears that these traditional and historically older types of bread occupy a secondary space on a hierarchy
of space for the Bantu speakers called Waswahili. My reason for making this claim is that, if you walk into
a shop or house or bakery owned by a native Kiswahili speaker in Zanzibar, Mombasa, Lamu or go into
any place for that matter where Kiswahili is spoken and ask for or about mkate, the first image of bread
that will come to the minds of its occupants will not be a traditional bread. What will be shown to you or
described to you will, in fact, be the European bread called mkate wa boflo or bofulo, commonly called mkate
for short. Thus mkate wa boflo or bofulo 'loaf bread' has become an important staple food for the Waswahili.
Indeed, so important is mkate wa boflo that Shafi (1999), through his character Bwana Bashir, describes it on
page 80 of his book as "mkate maarufu kuliko mikate yote [...]". This may be translated in two ways. The
first translation is as follows: 'the most renowned bread among all the types of bread.' The second
translation is as follows: 'the most eaten bread among all the types of bread.'8 I find the second
interpretation attractive because, as we have seen above, historically, mkate wa wishwa or mkate wa chachu is
the most renowned bread of the Waswahili and it is still the most renowned of the types of bread. As a
result, it seems reasonable that it should retain its position of fame unchallenged. Another reason for
preferring the second translation is that Shafi speaks with reference to the widespread use of mkate wa boflo
particularly in modern times whereas mkate wa wishwa is undoubtedly Kiswahili's famous bread.
Nothwithstanding these observations, we see in Shafi's description, a glimpse of a bread culture shift in
which the pride of place held by traditional Kiswahili bread has been superseded by the popularity of
another type of bread introduced with the advent of Europeans to the East African coast in the 15th
century. What is remarkable is that the word mkate 'bread' has undergone a slight cultural shift of emphasis
8 I am grateful to Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi for this alternative translation.

10
from millet bread, bran bread, and so on, to wheat bread. In this way, mkate 'bread' has acquired a new
generic meaning for many Kiswahili speakers. It is identifiable first and foremost with the European bread
mkate wa boflo or bofulo, also known as mkate wa pau/pao.9
9.0 Conclusion
In this study, we have looked at the varieties of bread produced in Zanzibar, which also form the core of
the bread culture of the Waswahili. Mkate 'bread' encompasses all varieties of local and foreign bread made
from dough. The ingredient of the dough is commonly a cereal. In reality, however, the sense of dough is
extended to doughy or dough-like substances that are sliceable or breakable when baked or steamed or
cooked or fried. This has given the Kiswahili word mkate a large semantic field of reference that should
interest semanticists, anthropologists and culturalists. The Kiswahili bread is usually edible or chewable, or
both, but there may be other semantic extensions of the term in which the sense may not be related to
edible objects at all but merely to the shape of the object. A visitor to the Kiswahili coast would be
forgiven for claiming or believing that the term mkate implies primarily the European type of bread. Our
study shows that such a belief is superficial.
We conclude by noting that many of the varieties of bread described by Shafi (1999) as Zanzibar bread are
also found in different parts of the Kiswahili coast and islands and in different parts of the Indian Ocean
and the world. As a result, the Waswahili of Zanzibar share their bread culture in common with many of
their neighbours and peoples of the world.
References
Amidu, A. (1990). Kimwondo: A Kiswahili Electoral Contest. Vienna: Afro-Pub.

Andrae, G. and B. Beckman. (1985). The Wheat Trap: Bread and Underdevelopment in Nigeria. London: Zed
Books Ltd.
Harries, L. (1962). Swahili Poetry. London: Oxford University Press.
Issak, I. (1999). Swahili-Norsk Ordbok. Oslo: Spartacus Forlag AS.
Johnson, F. (1939). A Standard Swahili-English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kaplinsky, R. (1979). 'Export-oriented Growth: A Large International Firm in a Small Developing
Country.' World Development 7(8): 825-834.
Kiango, J. G., A. Y. Lodhi, I. Ipara, and A. Nassir. (2007). Kamusi ya Shule ya Msingi. Nairobi: Oxford
University Press.
Knappert, J. (1979). Four Centuries of Swahili Verse. London: Heinemann.
Lie, M and R. Lund. (2003). 'Globalization, Place and Gender.' In Culture Studies: Themes and Perspectives:
Essays in Culture, Folklore, Linguistics, Aesthetics and Literary Criticism, ed. by Chandan Kr. Sharma, pp. 101-
125. Tezpur: NEACTAF, Tezpur University.
Lodhi, A. (1981). 'Swahili Kokkonst (Swahili Cuisine).' Habari 2: 10-11.
Lodhi, A. (2000). Oriental Influences in Swahili. A Study in Language and Culture Contacts. Ph.D. Thesis. In
Orientalia et Africana Gothoburgensis 15, ed. by J. Retsö, pp. 1-253. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis
Gothoburgensis..
Miehe, G., A. Abdalla, Ahmad N. J. Bhalo, A. Nabahany, A. Baschiera, C. Dittemer, F. Topan, Mohamed
A. Abdulaziz, Said A. Khamis, Yahya A. Omar, and Zeina M. F. Al-Bakary. (2007). Liyongo Songs. Poems
attributed to Fumo Liyongo. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Sacleux, Le P. Ch. (1939). Dictionnaire Swahili-Français. Paris: Institut D'Ethnologie, Place du Trocadero
16e.
Shafi, A. (1999). Vuta n'kuvute. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki wa Nyote Publishers.
Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili (TUKI). 2004. Kamusi ya Kiswahili Sanifu. Kenya: Oxford University
Press and Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili (TUKI).
9 Recall that researchers, such as Andrae and Beckman (1985) have found out that changes in comsurmer
choices have negative consequences for their diets and for the survival of indigenous crops in the long
run.
11
A. Kipacha and I. Kombo. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1(1) 2009, 12-22
Dunia kokwa ya furu: Amali ya Misemo ya KiPemba
Ahmad Kipacha na Ibun Kombo

Akipacha, kombo@udom.ac.tz
Chuo Kikuu cha Dodoma
Ikisiri
Jitihada za ukusanyaji na uchambuzi wa data za kifoklo za launi za Kipemba si jambo geni (angalia Whiteley
(1958) na Mlacha (1995:21-25). Lakini kadri, muda unavyopita jitihada hizo zinaelekea kupungua kasi. Suala la
uhifadhi wa ‘bohari la hekima ya wahenga wetu kimaandishi’1 ni la wajibu na halipaswi kusita. Katika mradi huu
unaoendelea2, tumeonelea kufanya mambo mawili makuu (a) kuorodhesha na kujadili data za kifoklo zenye kuweka
wazi umahususi wa launi za Kipemba. (b) Kuorodhesha na kuchambua kiethnografia data hizo3 kwa mujibu wa
mtazamo wa uchambuzi wa data za kifoklo kimuktadha (Hymes (1962).
1.0 Utangulizi
Uhifadhi na uchambuzi wa mapokezi ya ’bohari la hekima’ katika jamii ya Waswahili na makabila ya
Kitanzania kimaandishi ni jitihada zinazojidhihirisha katika kazi mbalimbali kama vile Steere (1870),
Taylor (1891), Farsi (1958), Omari na wenzie (1975), Ifedha (1987), Petrenko (1988), Mlacha na
Hurskainen (1995), Madumulla (1995),Wamitila (1999, 2001), Mauya (2006)n.k. Kila jamii zina hazina za
kifoklo. Hazina hizo husawiri namna ya jamii hizo zinavyoutizama ulimwengu na hujiumbia njia za
kuelezea namna wanavyouelewa ulimwengu huo kupitia kazi mbalimbali za kifoklo kama vile ngano,
michezo, sanaa, nyimbo, akida, mapishi,uchoraji, uzalishaji mali, ada nk.( Palmer1996:113-114) Kazi za
kifoklo zinafanya kazi katika mzunguko mzima wa maisha ya mwanajamii kuanzia mazazi, makuzi, hadi
umauti na hata baada ya umauti4 ambapo mara kadhaa tunaona wanajamii mbalimbali wanavyowasiliana
na mizimu5 na hata mizuka.
Kwa namna kila jamii inavyosawiri maisha yake ndipo tunapata umahususi au mfanano wa jamii hizo,
hivyo kazi za kifoklo si lazima zitofautiane kiutamaduni paweza kuwa na mfanano tunaoweza
kuulinganisha (Hatch and Brown 1995). Mpemba anapoamka asubuhi, mandhari yanayomzunguka,
shughuli zake za kiuchumi, namna anavyosafiri kutoka kijiji kimoja hadi kingine, namna anavyofurahi,
anavyohuzunika, anavyokabiliana na majanga, falsafa inayomwongoza, ibada, tekinolojia asili anayojiundia
na kurithishana, na mahusiano ya kijamii ndiyo huzua mazingira ya uibukaji wa data za kifoklo. Tuchukulia
kwa mfano Waswahili kwa ujumla wanavyoitazama dunia; Dunia kwao ni uwanja wa fujo au tambara bovu,
Kwa Mpemba huenda mbali zaidi na kufuatana na mazingira yake Dunia kwake ni kokwa ya furu/fuu. Furu
1 Jitihada hizi zinahimizwa katika kazi ya Omari C (na wenziwe)(1975) ya Misemo na Methali toka Tanzania
na Makala ya Semina ya Madumulla J yahusuyo ‘Kuchujuka na Kufifia kwa Fasihi Simulizi Chuo Kikuu cha
Dodoma, Januari 2009.
2 Makala haya ni sehemu ya mradi wa ukusanjaji wa amali za Kipemba ambazo hazipo katika maandishi
unaowashirikisha wenyeji wa Pemba, watafiti wa Chuo Kikuu cha Dodoma (Dkt Ahmad Kipacha Idara ya
Kiswahili na Dkt Ibun Kombo wa Idara ya Sosiolojia na mzaliwa wa Pemba Kusini). Mradi huu ni wa
kujitegemea na tunawashukuru wenyeji wa Pemba hususan Mzee Khamis Suleiman Bakar wa Pandani na
Dkt Ahmed Ame mzaliwa wa Kangani Pemba kwa michango yao. Kila mapungufu ya kazi hii ni yetu.
3 Finnegan (1970; 318) amezibainisha tafiti za data za kifoklo zikiwemo zile zilizopo kwenye hatari ya
kupotea. Ameaidhi pawepo na umakini wa kuchambua data hizo kwa kuzingatia mazingira
yaliyochimbukiza data hizo.
4 Angalia Marealle Petro (2002) Maisha ya Mchagga hapa Duniani na Ahera Mkuki na Nyota Publishers.
5 Angalia Giles Linda (1987:239)
12
ni tunda linalopendelewa na watoto na huliwa zaidi wakati wa njaa. Baada ya kuliwa na mwanadamu mara
nyingi kokwa yake hutupwa na hapo fungo, kuku, popo na wanyama wengine hujilia kokwa hiyo na si
lazima isagike tumboni, hivyo yaweza kutoka kwa njia ya kinyesi na kuendelea kugugunwa na vinyama vya
kila aina. Hii ndiyo dunia kwa mtazamo wa Mpemba. Kila mmoja anaitumia kivyake na kuiacha. Dunia si
tunda lenye thamani sana, kama ilivyo kokwa ya furu unalazimika kuila kutokana na njaa. Hakuna
aliyeomba kuja duniani kila mmoja anajistukizia amefika na hana budi kuondoka na kuiacha dunia.
Tunachoweza kufanya duniani kwa kila mmoja wetu ni ‘kuguguna’ kokwa ya furu. Maisha kwa ujumla kwa
Mpemba ni mbio za chumbani ziishiao ukutani yaani Dunia ni Duara! au Lomhlaba Unzima, Lohmhlaba ‘Dunia
ni fujo tu’ chembilecho Wazulu.
1.1 Kisiwa cha Pemba

Eneo la utafiti ni kisiwa cha Pemba ambacho pamoja na kisiwa cha Unguja huunda Zanzibari kama
sehemu ya Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania. Kina ukubwa wa kilometa za mraba 1000 na wakazi
takriban 413, 3861(Sensa 2002). Kimegawanyika katika mikoa miwili ya Kaskazini na Kusini Pemba. Mkoa
wa Kaskazini una wilaya mbili za Wete na Micheweni na hali kadhalika mkoa wa kusini una wilaya mbili za
mkoa wa Kusini na Chakechake. Vipo visiwa vidogovidogo visivyopungua saba na vina wakazi wapatao
2683. Moja ya kisiwa kikubwa ni Kojani chenye watu wasiopungua 3976 (Sensa 2002).Vipo visiwa
visivyokaliwa watu vya Misali na Kokota bali vina utajiri mkubwa wa maliasili na ambavyo kwa sasa
hupendelewa kutembelewa na watalii.
Kisiwa cha Pemba kinamsitu maarufu uitwao msitu wa Ngezi katika eneo la ngezi wilaya ya mkoani kusini
Pemba. Pia kuna upwa au fukwe la kupendeza liitwalo Vumawimbi6 ambayo ni sehemu watu hupendelea
kutembelea na kufaidika na mandhari ya bahari. Historia ya Pemba haitoshi bila kutaja eneo la Pujini katika
wilaya ya Chakechake mkoa wa kusini ambapo kuna eneo mashuhuri la makumbusho ya kihistoria liitwalo
mkamandume.7.
1.1.1 Shughuli za Kiuchumi na kijamii

Wapemba hujishughulisha na kilimo, uvuvi na ufugaji. Mazao makuu yalimwayo ni kama vile muhogo,
mpunga, viazi, migomba8, mtama na mbogamboga. Zao kuu la biashara ni karafuu. Wapemba pia ni
wafugaji wa wanyama kama vile ngombe, mbuzi, kuku na bata.
Idadi kubwa ya Wapemba ni waumini ya dini ya Kiislamu ingawa imani na tiba za jadi na hata pungwa9
zingali hai. Upo msemo kama vile gae ni chombo siku za homa na nyimbo ya wavuvi wa Pemba kaskazini
isemayo:
(1) Nimpe mwanangu nahoza kombo,
Nimpe kigae na ubani moto.
6 Angalia Ngezi-Vumawimbi Forest Reserves Biodiversity Inventory Report. (2005).

7 ‘Mkama waume’ yasemekana kuwa ni kiongozi mmoja katili aliyekuwa akiwasulubu na kuwatesa
wananchi Wapemba hasa wanaume kwa kuwavuta kwa nguvu tupu zao za mbele na hatimae kuwaua na
kuwatumbukiza katika kisima kirefu kilichoungana na bahari. Huko Mafia hadi leo kuna kumbukumbu za
mateso kutoka kwa kiongozi aitwaye Mohamed Masunda kupitia dhana ya ‘mwembe makojo’ sehemu za
kisimani Kanga.
8 Martin Walsh ( Mawasiliano binafsi 2008) ametuhabarisha juu ya mazao mbalimbali ya wakati wa neema
hadi nyakati za njaa ambayo hutumika kisiwani Pemba.
9 Hili ni eneo linalohitaji utafiti zaidi kwani tumegundua kuwa ipo hazina mahsusi ya misamiati na
misimbo inayoambatana na shughuli za pungwa; mfano mdoe ‘jina la pepo’; kwamvi ‘mchawi’, mkongwepare
‘mtu mzima’, kihoka ‘shetani’, pomi ‘damu’, kembe/kidigudi ‘mtoto’, mkenyuwe ‘kafara la kuku’ (tuyuri) nk.
Rejea pia kazi ya Ghassany.(2003 :4) Kheri ya Ruhani kuliko Subiani Dira (Zanzibar), 26 (30 Mei – 5 Juni),
uk. 4.
13
Msemo na nyimbo hiyo zinadokeza utabibu wa jadi kupitia taswira ya vigae na mafusho. Wapemba
hutumia tiba za jadi ya kuchoma mafusho ili kumpa mgonjwa afueni aondokane na homa au hata
kuondoa mkosi wa kukosa samaki baharini. Zipo data za Kifoklo zinazoambatana na michezo ya jadi kama
vile mchezo wa ng’ombe haswa sehemu za Chwale10 (Ingrams 1931 : 422), nyemi na kiumbizi michezo ya
sherehe za mwaka-kogwa, mashindano ya ngarawa, mchezo wa watoto uitwao kipalepale na hata mchezo
wa wanawake pekee sehemu za Kojani uitwao mwanda. Hayo ni maeneo ya chimbuko na uhifadhi wa data
za kifoklo.
2.0 Nadharia za Uchambuzi wa data za Kifoklo

Uchambuzi wa data za kifoklo umepitia mikondo yenye mitazamo mbalimbali: kidini, kitamaduni, kijamii,
kipragmatiki, kiutambuzi nk Mtazamo wa kiutambuzi unaruhusu kuibua sifa za kiubia za utambuzi wa
kumbo mbalimbali za kifoklo. Mtazamo wa kijamii na ule wa kipragmatiki unaruhusu kuchambua
mazingira na itikadi zilizozusha kumbo mbalimbali za kifoklo zaidi ya kuangalia muundo wa kiisimu wa
kumbo hizo.
Aina ya kumbo tunayokusudia kuishughulikia katika kazi hii ni ile ya misemo. Kwa mujibu wa Mulokozi
(1996:35) ‘semi ni tungo au kauli fupifupi za kisanaa zenye kubeba maana au mafunzo muhimu ya kijamii’.
Semi zaweza kuwa methali, vitendawili, potominia nk. Kiutambuzi, semi huhusisha usitiari na uhamishaji
wa maana au sifa ya kitu kimoja na kukihamishia katika mazingira mengine (Lakoff na Johnson 1980).
Tendo hilo linapelekea kuunda skema ya kisitiari (Lakoff na Turner (1989: 193-194). Tunaweza kuhamisha
mawanda ya maisha ya viumbe vinavyotuzunguka katika mazingira yetu na kuyatumia mawanda hayo kwa
kutanabaisha wanadamu. Sungura ni mnyama mjanja; Simba mtumia maguvu na mwenye utawala na hata
ubabe; nyoka kiumbe asiyeaminika na msaliti; punda mtumishi au ‘mtwana’ mbeba mizigo; Pono mlala
hovyo n.k Inakuwa rahisi kwa wanajamii kubandika sifa za uanadamu kwa viumbe wasio wanadamu kama
kwamba hiyo ndiyo hali halisi ya mambo ilivyo hali ya kuwa huo ni ulinganifu wa kisitiari tu (Lakoff &
Turner (1989: 194).
Ieleweke kwamba ingawaje mara nyingi tunadhani misemo hujinasibisha na tamaduni za jamii fulani tu,
uoni huo unatokana na ufinyu wa kutokujishughulisha kuangaza katika jamii mbalimbali na kuibua visawe
vya semi katika jamii mbalimbali. Hatch and Brown (1995) wanadai kuwa hata kama hatuna semi za aina
moja katika jamii mbalimbali, bado tunaweza kupata misemo ifananayo na yenye kusudio au dhima ya aina
moja kwa vile wanadamu wana michakato ya kiumilisi ifafanayo dunia nzima (kiubia). Misemo ya ‘mtoto
wa nyoka ni nyoka’ au ‘wema hauozi’ unathibitisha ubia wa kiumilisi katika jamii mbalimbali kwa kule
kutapakaa katika jamii mbalimbali. Hali hii inapelekea kuwa na misemo ya aina mbili (i) yenye sifa za kiubia
za kuadabisha walimwengu kidhima na si lazima iwe kimaumbo. (ii) misemo mahususi iliyozuka kufuatana
na matukio maalumu ya kihistoria, desturi mahsusi za wanajamii fulani, au tukio maalumu lisilo na sifa za
ubia. Hivyo hutokea jamii fulani ikawa na vibandiko au alama zao mahsusi zinazoelezea umahali, tukio au
usuli binafsi.wa jamii husika.
Misemo ni zao la jamii, na ili kuitafsiri itakiwavyo hakuna budi kuzingatia muktadha. Tunajifunza
utamaduni na ada za jamii husika kwa kuchambua misemo yao. Kwa mujibu wa Hymes (1962) ipo haja
kwa wanaethnografia na (hata Wanalahajia) kujiingiza katika kazi za uchambuzi wa data za kifoklo
ikiwemo misemo kama wafanyavyo katika uchambuzi wa data za lugha asilia. Data zote zina uwiano
kwani zote zina vipengele vya kijamii vyenye ruwaza mahsusi. Huo ni mtazamo unaopelekea kuchambua
data za kifoklo kama msimbo maalumu. Mtazamo huo unapendekeza kuwa iwapo lugha inaweza
kuchambuliwa kimuundo basi na data za kifoklo nazo hazina budi kufuata mkondo huo11. Wapo
walioitikia wito huo hususani kazi mashuhuri, ingawa ya kitambo kidogo, ya Arewa na Dundes (1964)
ambayo ilichambua methali za Kiyoruba kiethnographia kwa kuzingatia kipengele cha muktadha.. Data
waliyochagua ya methali za Kiyoruba ni zile zihusuzo malezi ya watoto tu. Hivyo walichagua mifano 12 ya
10 Wapo wachezaji maarufu kama vile Omar Mbwana, Omar Haji Hamad, na Bakar Sharifu. Nyimbo
mbalimbali huimbwa katika shughuli hiyo.
11 Mara kadhaa semi zimekuwa na ugumu wa kufasiri kwa kule kuambatana na maneno yasiyo rasmi au
ya kilahaja na hata sarufi ‘mbovu’
14
methali za Kiyoruba zihusuzo malezi ya watoto ikiwemo ile methali mashuhuri ya ‘asiyefunzwa na mamaye
hufunzwa na ulimwengu’ ambapo wayoruba wao husema:
(2) ‘mtoto mtukutu na aliyekosa malezi basi atafunzwa na wasio wazazi’ (tafsiri ni yetu).
Tumekusudia kufuata mtindo12 wa Arewa na Dundes katika kuchambua amali ya misemo mahsusi ya
Kipemba kwa kuzingatia muktadha wa shughuli za Uvuvi na ule unaohusu Kilimo. Shughuli hizi mbili za
Kiuchumi ndizo zinazowashughulisha wenyeji zaidi kuliko shughuli nyengine yeyote kisiwani hapo.
Tutaangalia ni kwa namna gani taswira za uvuvi na kilimo zimeibusha misemo na hata leksimu mahsusi za
launi mbalimbali za Kipemba. Kwa mujibu wa Lakoff na Johnson (1980: 14-17) dhana zitokanazo na
mazingira na tamaduni zetu hujenga sitiari na fikra za kimetonimia tuzitumiazo kwenye kuunda misemo.
Mbali ya kuchambua misemo kwa kuzingatia muktadha, Evelyne Brouzeng (1984) ametushauri katika
"Stylistique comparée de la traduction de proverbes anglais et français" kwamba iko haja ya kufafanua
misemo kwa kulinganisha visawe vya misemo katika lugha mbalimbali kama njia ya kufasiri misemo bila
kujali utofauti wa miundo ya misemo hiyo katika lugha mbalimbali. Mfanano wa misemo katika lugha mbili
au zaidi hutoa picha ya uoni na fikra za mwanadamu.kwa ujumla. Tumezingatia hilo katika uchambuzi wa
baadhi ya misemo mahsusi ya Kipemba § 4.0.
3.0 Data za Kifoklo za Kisiwani Pemba

Katika kila nyanja za kimaisha ya Wapemba tunaweza kuibua na kubainisha data za kifoklo. Mfano mzuri
ni pale tunapoona wavuvi kama wale wa Maziwang’ombe na Chwale (Pemba–kaskazini) walivyo na
nyimbo mahsusi13 za kutiana moyo wanapokosa samaki, wanapoona samaki baharini, wanaporudi
baharini na nyakati wanapovuwa. Siajabu kusikia wavuvi wakiimba:
(3) dadee14 tukavue ngogo maji yajara
sebu wee nguo yangu ndogo
kutiliwa vumba.
Wavuvi na wanajamii kwa ujumla hutiana moyo kuwa mwenda kende hakosi japo guotenge, sawa na Waswahili
wasemavyo kuwa mgaagaa na upwa hali wali mkavu, ni usemi maarufu sehemu za Pemba kaskazini.
Mintarafu ya usemi huo ni kuwa iwe isiwe ajitoae kutafuta basi hawezi kuula wa chuya’. Wavuvi na
wanajamii wengine pia huhimizana kumtegemea Mungu katika kazi zao kwani msafiri ni ndi pwani.
Shughuli nyengine kubwa inayowashughulisha wakazi waliowengi wa Pemba ni Kilimo. Umuhimu wa
kilimo unadhihirishwa na usemi wa achanikae kwenye mpini hafi njaa. Wenyeji waliowengi hujishughulisha na
kilimo cha kawaida cha jembe la mkononi katika makonde. Huko makondeni kuna kazi mbalimbali za
kifoklo zinazoendana na shughuli hizo za kilimo.Upo usemi usemao ungepiga teo mtama waliwa, na nyimbo
ihamasishao kulinda mpunga:
(4) Kamange mambo ni mpayo
Yamuemeza mambo mengine
Mwinyiwi nbalozi tayatengenza
Kuna njiwa esha mpunga ngwa, hebu kuruza
Siku ya leo tampiga ndifu tamuumiza
12 Mtindo mwingine mashuhuri wa uchambuzi wa semi ni pale nathari au shairi linapotumika kufafanua
usemi mmoja tu. Mtindo kama huu ulitumika katika kazi ya Taylor (1827) Old English Sayings newly expounded
in Prose and Verse.
13 Makusanyo ya nyimbo za uvuvi yamefanywa na Bi Hadia Ali Said (2008) mkazi na mzaliwa wa
Chwale.Kaskazini Pemba.. Tunamshukuru Bi Hadia kwa msaada wake.
14 Wanawake aghalabu kuvua bahari kubwa au ‘mwambani’, shughuli zao haswa ni za uchokoaji pweza na
utandazaji dagaa kwenye maji madogo.
15
Hoja kuu hapa ni kuhakikisha kuwa ndege waharibifu kama njiwa au chechele hashambulii mazao kama ya
mpunga au mtama na kuisababishia jamii hiyo kuambulia kazi ya ‘kijungu meko’ au ‘bwaganchagase’.
Mpemba ‘halisi’ kapambwaje kimisemo?; mpemba akipata gogo! hanyi chini; mpemba hakimbii mvua ndogo. Hii
inamaanisha kuwa Mpemba halisi anahulka zake nazo si ajabu kujitokeza apatapo maisha mazuri na
huweza kujidhihirisha kwa hilo kwa namna ya mabadiliko ya tabia, hulka, migoko na hata vitimbwi.
Je, Pemba kunasifa gani? Kwa vile Pemba ni kisiwa kidogo, ujaji wa wageni haukwepeki haswa kutokana
na mahitaji ya wahudumiaji mikarafuu katika kipindi cha uchumaji wa karafuu (Gray 1962 :63). Baadhi ya
wageni mashuhuru tunaodokezwa kwenye nyimbo za bembezi za kinamama wa KiPemba walikuwa ni
Wanyamwezi15.
(5) Nilisafiri na bwana akanitupa malezi
Hashinda nchana kutwa nami njaa siiwezi
Hatamani kujiuza kwa Songoro mnyamwezi
Songoro16 Mnyamwezi imetumika kama taswira ya ‘jitu’ (la bara) lifanyalo kazi na lenye mafao ambalo
mlalamikaji hakustahili (mke wa mtu) kujiuza kwake ili ajikimu kwa chakula kutokana na mumewe
(mzawa) kutomuwajibikia.
Katika uga wa ngano za Kipemba nako kuna hazina kubwa inayohitajia kufanyiwa kazi za kitaaluma. Ni
sehemu ya mradi huu kulishughulikia hilo kwa siku za karibuni. Makusanyo yetu ya awali hususani sehemu
za Micheweni yamedhihirisha utajiri wa ngano za Kipemba. Hata namna ya ufunguzi wa vigano upo kwa
namna yake pale tunapoona fanani na hadhira (kwenye mabano) kuwasiliana kwa mtindo ufuatao:
(6) Paukwa (Pakawa)
Mwana wa kasa (Hutakasa)
Ukiwa nalo (Pasha)
Ukitakua nalo (Pashua)
Mwisho17 wa kigano huishia na ‘hadithi yangu insozea hapo’. Vipo vigano mashuhuri kama vile Kanlola na
Kinyangaa, Hamad na Hamad, Harudiki n.k ambavyo ndani yake kuna utajiri na maki ya misamiati mahsusi ya
Kipemba yenye faida kubwa katika taaluma ya Lahajia na Isimu-ethnografia.
Pengine mchango mkubwa wa data za kifoklo za Kipemba kimaandishi ni kazi ya kitoponimia au fumbo-
jina ya Mlacha (1995:21-25) yenye kubainisha etimolojia na usuli wa majina ya maeneo mbalimbali ya
kisiwa cha Pemba. Kuna mfanano wa mtindo wa uwasilishaji wake na ule wa kazi mashuhuri ya Webb
Garrison (2007) iitwayo Why you say it yenye kuonyesha vyanzo vya misemo ya Kiingereza inayotumika
kwa sasa. Tumeonelea ni vyema tuifupishe kazi ya Mlacha (1995) kwa njia ya jedwali la kimatriksi .kama
inavyoonyeshwa katika Jedwali 1.
Hili eneo la potonimia linahitaji kuendelezwa zaidi ili jamii ifaidike na hazina ya kihistoria iliyojifumbata
ndani ya majina hayo. Majina yaliyoorodheshwa katika Jedwali la 1 ni sehemu ndogo tu ya hazina
inayosubiri utafiti zaidi. Je, vyanzo vya majina ya Chakechake, Wete, Maziwa Ng’ombe, Micheweni,
Kivumoni, Mitundafumoni, Majimbuta, Mkilindini n.k ni vipi? Mpemba anaposema enzi za chochoni au mibie
ni matukio gani katika tarikhi za wenyeji yalizuka hadi kipindi hicho kuitwa enzi za mibie?18 Utafiti wa
aina hii unastahili pia kushughulikiwa kama sehemu ya Isimu-Jiografia hususani tawi linaloinukia la Isimu
Sura-Nchi (Linguistic Landscaping).
15 Yasemekana Wanyamwezi walihamia Pemba Kaskazini sehemu za Makangale katika karne ya 19 (angalia
Sherriff A 1990:57 Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House).
16 Jina la ‘Songoro’ limejitokeza kama mtwana katika masimulizi ya Kipemba katika Mlacha (1995:22).
17 Vigano vya Kimtang’ata huishia na ‘kigano na uongo kikeshilia hapo’ (Whiteley 1956:51).
18 Hiki ni kipindi maalumu cha njaa iliyowalazimu wenyeji kula chochoni au mibie ambazo ni ndizi pori zenye
sumu na madhara kwa baadhi ya wao. Chochoni au Mibie inatumika kama taswira ya shida au njaa.
16
Jedwali 1
Eneo Etimolojia Chanzo chake

Pango la Wake pango la wakwe sehemu waliyohifadhiwa wanawake na watoto
Uvuani mwavuani? swali lilihusu aina ya uvuvi
Chelea mbuzi chelea mbuzi kulisha mbuzi baada ya kuwateremsha kwenye
chombo
Kecha Ng’amba kiche ng’amba kuleni nyama ya ng’amba
Kwelezani kwelezani kwea juu au pandeni juu
Kikunwa kan kunywa maji amekunywa maji (nani?)
Kilindini lindi palipochimbwa shimo au lindi
Mazikwa nazikwe tu hapa Sehemu ya kuzikia
Mavua Jongwe makazi ya majongwe Maficho ya nyoka
Kisima cha Wivu kisima cha wivu Mume ‘kumchungulia’ mkewe awapo kisimani
Midengeni dengua ?
Kiuyu kibibi kiuyu Bibi karudi
Kiuyu-mbuyuni kiuyu mbuyuni Amerudi mbuyuni
Pwana wenzenu pwanani Endeleeni wenzenu wametangulia
Kwa namna tulivyoziangalia data za awali za kifoklo za Kipemba tunashawishika kuunga mkono usemi
maarafu wa mwanaisimu wa Kijerumani Hugo Schuchardt kwamba ‘kila neno lina historia yake’. Hivyo
kila hadhari tumeichukua kufuatilia etimolojia na usuli wa maneno mbalimbali ya Kipemba kama
yanavyojitokeza katika semi tunazozishughulikia katika makala haya.
4.0 Misemo ya Kipemba katika Muktadha wa Shughuli za Uzalishaji Mali (Uchumi)

Kama tulivyoona katika § 1.1.1 shughuli kuu za kiuchumi kisiwani Pemba ni uvuvi na kilimo. Tunakusudia
kuainisha na kuchambua misemo inayotokana na shughuli hizo. Tutazingatia ubainishaji wa sifa za kiubia
na zile mahsusi kwa kujaribu kufafanua au kufasiri misemo ya Kipemba na visawe vyake katika jamii
mbalimbali duniani19. Tutazingatia pia umahususi wa misemo ya Kipemba kwa kubainisha leksikoni
mahsusi na mazingira yaliyopeleka kuibuka kwake.
4.1 Misemo katika muktadha wa Uvuvi na Shughuli za Bahari

(i) Mgeni hachomi pweza akanuka
Pweza (Octopus) samaki wa baharini mwenye minywiri minane (mikia minane) anapokauka akachomwa
harufu yake hufika mbali sana. Lakini kwa mujibu wa mafundisho ya usemi huu mgeni ni mtu wa
kuvumiliwa iwapo atafanya jambo lolote lile hata la kukerehesha mithili ya ‘harufu ya pweza’. Wenyeji
hawana budi kuvumilia na kumsitiri hadi mgeni huyo aondoke. Lakini iwapo hataondoka na akawa wa
kuishi milele basi ndipo wanajamii wanakumbushwa kuwa Pemba peremba ukienda na joho utarudi na kilemba.
Wazawa wanakumbushwa na usemi huo kuwa wasiingie hofu na wageni kuwa pengine watazua kizaazaa
kwa kuleta mila na hulka faafu. Hivyo kwa usemi huo, wenyeji wanaaswa kuwavumilia wageni hata kama
atakuwa barobaro wa kupindukia kwani kadri muda unavyopita silsila za kipemba ‘zitamnyoosha’ na
tabiai zake zitalandana na desturi maridhawa za wenyeji. Hivyo harufu ya pweza ni taswira ya kero ya
mgeni inayoweza kuvumilika. Katika kipindi hiki cha maingiliano ya watalii na wageni usemi huu waweza
kutumika pale wenyeji wawaonapo mfano watalii ‘wakizungu’ wakiwa na taratibu tofauti za mavazi au hata
malaji. Si ajabu kuwaona wageni wajinsia mbili wakikumbatiana hadharani. Jambo kama hilo ni mwiko kwa
wenyeji kulitenda hadharani. Kwa vile, mgeni ni kuku mweupe hivyo kingiacho mjini si haramu. Mbali ya pweza,
19 Mauya (2006) ametumia mbinu ya kuchambua semi za Kiswahili kwa kulinganisha na visawe vilivyomo
ndani ya lugha hiyo hiyo ya Kiswahili. Tunakusudia kuboresha mbinu hiyo kwa kutanua mawanda na
kuhusisha jamii zaidi ya zile za Kiswahili ili kushadidia sifa ya dhima za kiubia.
17
Mauya (2006: 2) ameonyesha kuwa jamii ya waswahili wamemtumia ‘nguru’ kwani naye anayo harufu
isiyofichika sawa na ile ya pweza. Tunawasiwasi kuwa taswira ya nguru yaweza kupotea kwani kwa sasa
uvundikaji wa ‘nguru’ si biashara yenye umaarufu. Samaki wamekuwa hadimu kiasi kwamba ubanikaji
badala ya uvundikaji ndio mbinu ya haraka ya kuzalisha ng’onda badala ya nguru. Upo msemo wa Kirusi
unaoshadidia hali hiyo kwa kusema kuwa ‘kama umekubali kuwa mwenyeji wa mgeni wako basi na pia ukubali
kuwa mwenyeji wa mbwa wake’.
(ii) Papa akipea mafuta huwapa wanawe
Papa ni simba wa baharini. Hupendelea kukaa bahari kuu iitwayo mweza. Mbali ya kuwa ni samaki
aogopwaye lakini anafaida nyingi licha ya kuwa na uwezo wa kumjeruhi na hata kumuua mvuvi baharini.
Kila kiungo cha papa kinaliwa, kuanzia mapezi hadi utemba/chisha (utumbo). Hali hii inapelekea kuwepo
kwa msemo wa Kiswahili usemao avumaye baharini papa ingawa wengine wapo. Hivyo taswira ya ukubwa na
mabavu ya papa bado inaendelea pale inapotegemewa kuwa angalau wanadamu au viumbe wengine
wangefaidika na mafuta ya papa yanapomzidia haswa baada ya kuwala samaki wengine na hivyo
kujitengenezea ziada ya mafuta mwilini. Katika hali isiyotegemewa, papa anawagaiya wanawe mafuta hayo.
Ukweli juu ya usemi huu unadhihirishwa na vitendo vya wabadhirifu wa mali na ‘mafisadi’, ambao baada
ya kuwanyonya wanyonge faida ipatikanayo wanatumia kwa maslahi yao na watoto au ndugu zao. Usemi
huu unamaanisha kuwa ‘kwa kila mtafutaji manufaa basi hula na wakwao’ na pengine hata ‘ukichuma
janga basi utawaponzea nduguzo’. Usemi huu husemwa na wanyonge pale wanapokumbushana kwamba
wasijihangaishe kuwabembeleza walionacho kwani hawatakumbukwa kamwe.
(iii) Kuvua na kuvuvuga
Kuvuvuguka ni kuwatunga samaki hali yakuwa bado wapo chomboni huku ukiendelea na shughuli za
uvuvi. Wavuvi huko Pemba hupendelea kuwahifadhi hao samaki waliotungwa katika chombo maalumu
kiitwacho mkajasi. Usemi huu unatoa tahadhari kuwa unapowavua samaki hakikisha umewatunga kwani
dau laweza pigwa wimbi na chombo kikaenda mrama hadi kuparaganisha samaki chomboni na
kutumbukia majini ukawa umepata hasara kwani ulishawavua na hivyo kujikuta umeambulia patupu.
Iwapo umewadunga kwenye mtungo, basi inakuwa rahisi kuwadhibiti inapotokea mushkeli.Upo usemi
unaoendana na huo kwa Waswahili: ‘Usiache kunanua kwa kutega’. Iwapo umewakamata ndege usiache
kuwadhibiti kwa kutegemea mtego ambao haujanasa wengine. Msemo wa Kiswidishi unasema kuwa
‘Usitupe ndoo ya zamani kabla hujajua iwapo ndoo mpya inaweza kuzuia maji (haina tundu)’. Waairishi
nao wao wanausemi usemao kuwa ‘si samaki mpaka kafikishwa kwenye upwa’ sawa na ‘pesa iliyo kibindoni
ni ile iliyochumwa’ (msemo wa Kiskotishi) au kwa Waswahili tunakuta usemi wa Hamadi kibindoni silaha
iliyomkononi. Dhima ya ubia ya kudhibiti kile ulichokipata kwanza kabla ya kutoka kwenda kutafuta kingine
inajitokeza katka jamii mbalimbali na si Pemba peke yake. Tofauti iliyopo hapa ni ya kifani tu na muktadha
ulioibusha dhana ya kuelezea haja ya kudhibiti kile ulichokwisha kitia kibindoni.
(iv) Lishalo vuusha si dau?
Dau ni chombo kikuu kitumikacho kwa uvuvi katika ‘ukanda wa Waswahili’ (Swahili corridor). Wavuvi
wengi hawana uwezo wa kiuchumi kuwa na vyombo vikubwa kama vile majahazi na hata meli. Hivyo
madau hutumika kwa shughuli za uvuvi na hata usafiri. Ingawa kuna vyombo vingine kama vile mtumbwi
au mchoo ambavyo wavuvi wadogowadogo wanavimudu kuvimiliki. Katika mazingira ya ukanda huu wa
pwani, siajabu kusikia pia majina ya watu kama vile Mwandau au Dau yanayotokana na chombo hicho.
Mbali ya usemi huo kuna usemi mashuhuru katika ukanda wa uswahili usemao Dau la mnyonge haliendi joshi.
Jina la Dau linawakilisha vyombo mbalimbali vitembeavyo kama vile gari au jahazi.
Usemi wa lishalo vuusha si dau? Ni kauli-swali (rhetoric) inayokusudia kuonyesha kuwa dau likishakuvusha
basi faida yake haipo tena waliacha hapohapo na kuendelea na safari. Usemi huu una kisawe chake katika
Kiswahili sanifu nacho ni ‘pema si japo pema ukipema si pema tena’. Shauku ya jambo ni pale ambapo
hujalitambua au kulionja lakini ukifanikiwa huwi na shauku kama ile ya mwanzo. Hutokea katika jamii ya
zetu mwanaume akafanya jitihada kubwa kumgombea binti kigoli lakini anapomnasa na kumweka katika
himaya yake basi vitimbi vinaanza na sasa anamkalifu kwa vitendo vya kupunguza pendo kutokana na
kuchujuka kwa pendo. Wanawake wa Pemba huwaimbia watoto wao nyimbo ya bembezi ilalamikayo
kuhusu kupungua kwa thamani kwa waume zao:
(7) Ulipo ukinitaka habarí zefika Wete
Wepita ukitangaza madawani na nkote,
18
sasa hunitaki tena hitajwa watema mate.

Mwimbaji amemtumia mtoto kama njia ya kufikishia malalamiko yake kwa mumewe kuwa thamani yake
imepungua kwa vile yeye dau (mke) lishamvuusha yule mume. Mume hana abarrí naye tena bali yuangalia
mbele tu na safari yake, pengine yuko njiani kumletea mke wa pili kama si kumtaliki kabisa.
(v) Mwenda tezi na omo hurejea ngamani.
Dau au ngarawa linavijisehemu ndani yake vyenye majina maalumu. Omo ni sehemu ya mbele. Ngamani ni
katikati na tezi ni mwishoni mwa dau. Katika shughuli za uvuvi na hata kuliendesha dau lenyewe,
mabaharia wataenda mbele na nyuma lakini hatimae wataishia katikati au ngamani. Usemi huu ni sawa na
usemao ivunjikayo ondo hurejea zizini au ng’ombe akiumia mguu malishoni hurejea zizini kulelewa. Usemi huu
unakumbusha kuwa ‘uwende kusini au kaskazini nyumbani ni nyumbani tu’ utarejea kulelewa pale mtu
akiharibikiwa kimaisha au kupata maradhi ugenini. Hivyo wapemba na wanajamii kwa ujumla wanaasana
kuwa usisahau kitovu chako au usisahau ubaharia kwa sababu ya unahodha.
(vii) Mtu huapa na bamvua haapi na bahari
Shughuli za uvuvi hufanyika baharini. Kisiwa cha Pemba kimezungukwa na bahari. Shughuli za baharini
mara nyingi hutegemea pepo. Zipo aina mbalimbali za pepo kama vile kusi, kaskazi au matlai. Pepo hizo
huwaongoza wavuvi katika shughuli zao. Nyakati zote bahari ipo tu kinachobadilika ni nyakati za pepo.
Hivyo kinachotakiwa kwa mvuvi na watu mbalimbali kuangalia zaidi ni nyakati hizo za pepo katika
kupanga shughuli zao za uvuvi na usafiri. Hivyo kuapa ni sawa na kupanga ratiba ya shughuli za baharini.
Nyakati za pepo zimezua semi mbalimbali kama vile usichezee kusi kwa tanga bovu. Nyakati za kusi
kunakuwa na upepo mkali hivyo uwapo utakuwa na tanga bovu linaweza kuchanika na chombo kikaenda
mrama na pengine kupotea baharini na kupata madhara kwa wavuvi au abiria. Kusi huweza kusababisha
muja yaani mawimbi makubwa. Mara nyingi wavuvi hukutwa na ajali za baharini na inapotokea kuwa tu
wamekumbwa na maafa baharini na hivyo kuzama, pale maiti ipatikanapo huwa muhali kwa muda mrefu
hivyo mazoea yamekuwa ni kuwazika haraka maiti hao mara tu wapatikanapo. Kutokana na hali hiyo
usemi ukazuka usemao maiti wa maji halazwi. Hii inamaanisha kuwa kwa vile maiti wa maji anakuwa
ameharibika sana haiswihi kumweka kwa muda mrefu pengine kungojea ndugu zake katika hali hiyo ya
kuharibika. Ni kawaida kwa waliofiwa kuangalia hali ya maiti na iwapo itagundulika kuwa hawezi kuendelea
kuwekwa ili ndugu wajikusanye basi huzikwa mara moja. Ujumbe uliopo katika usemi huo ni kuwa yapo
mambo ambayo hayatakiwi kucheleweshwa yanapotokea. Kuna aina ya mchele ukipikwa unatakiwa uliwe
ukiwa bado mmotomoto kwani mkiuchelewesha unakuwa unatawanyika na hivyo kutokupendeza. Iwapo
mwanamali ametokea kupata mchumba nanyi mmeridhika nae basi msicheleweshe harusi kwa kisingizio
cha kujitayarisha kwa muda ili mfanye harusi ya kujinaki. Katika ngojangoja hiyo paweza kutokea madhara
au uharibifu mkakosa mwana na maji ya moto. Hivyo taswira za bahari na pepo (bamvua, kusi) zake
zimetumika kimetonimia kuzalisha misemo mbalimbali.
(vii) . Mcha maago hanyele huenda akauya papo.
‘ago’, ‘yago’au ‘dago’ ni kambi ya muda mfupi ya wavuvi ambayo hutumika kwa ajili ya kufanyia shughuli
zao, huweza pia kuwa ni kambi ya kuchuma karafuu au kwenda shamba baada ya bamvua au mavuno.
Shughuli zinapokwisha watu huhama, hivyo inashauriwa kutokuichafua au kuiharibu kwani huenda
mkarudi tena papo. Sehemu nyingi za pwani au hata visiwa visivyokaliwa vatu huanzishwa aga au madago.
Wavuvi hulazimika kuhama makwao kutegemea na misimu na upatikanaji wa samaki. Wavuvi wa Pemba
huweza kupiga dago Mafia au Kunduchi. Hali hii wakati mwengine imeanzisha mitala. Wavuvi wengi
wanakawaida ya kuwa na wake zaidi ya mmoja kutegemeana na pwani wanapofikilia. Wavuvi wa Ununio
huweza kuoa Unguja na wale wa Unguja kuwa na wake pwani ya bara. Sababu ya msingi ya kukaa katika
madago ni upunguzaji wa gharama hasa ya pango katika miji ya ugenini. Madago huwa ni ya wanaume
pekee. Usemi huu unaungwa mkono na ule usemao ‘usihadaliwe na usiku wa kiza ukanya njiani’ au pale
Waswahili wasemapo ‘usitukane wakunga na uzazi ungalipo’. Lile jambo linalokusitiri basi huna budi
kuliheshimu hata kama laweza kuonekana thamani yake imepitwa na wakati. Dago ni ‘nyumba’ iliyombali
na nyumba halisi hivyo haina budi kuachwa katika mazingira mazuri huenda ukarudia papo kuendana na
mazingira ya bahari na upatikanaji wa samaki.
19
4.2 Misemo katika muktadha wa Kilimo na Ufugaji

(i) Msitu mpya na komba wapya
Shughuli za kilimo kisiwani Pemba zina hatua mbalimbali. Kilimo kinaanzia na utayarishaji wa mashamba.
Katika hali ya kutayarisha mashamba mkulima anaweza kujikuta amechomwa na mwiba na hivyo
anashauriwa utoe wa tako ndio utoe wa guu. Iwapo umechomwa na mwiba mmoja ukiwa matakoni na
mwengine mguuni basi washauriwa uutoe ule wa matakoni kabla ya ule wa miguuni. Mantiki yake hapa ni
kuwa ukifanya hivyo utajipa urahisi wa kujihudumia vyema badala ya kukimbilia kutoa mwiba wa mguuuni.
Kila jambo lazima lifuate hatua kutoka chini hadi kulekea juu. Usemi huo unafanana na ule wa Kiswahili
sanifu usemao kabla ya ‘kutoa kibanzi katika jicho la mwenzio ondoa boriti jichoni mwako’. Mara kadhaa
katika mashamba au hata karibu na majumba ya watu huweza kutokea nyoka. Mara aonekapo nyoka
huuliwa mara moja. Ingawaje nyoka mdudu asiyetakiwa na karibu kila mwanajamii, yawezekana akatokea
msamaria mmoja akawasihi au kuwaomba watu wamwachie atokomee porini asaidie kula panya. Hivyo
Wapemba wanaamini kuwa pauliwapo nyoka hapakosi ndombezi. Hali hii inatokea katika jamii zetu haswa
pale tunapomkamata mwizi na pakatokea makundi yanataka kumuua kabisa na wengine kutaka apelekwe
polisi ili sheria ichukuwe mkondo wake.
Shughuli za uandaaji mashamba hupelekea kusafisha misitu na vichaka. Pemba kuna misita kadhaa kama
vile msitu maarufu wa Ngezi. Kwa vile misitu hiyo inakaliwa na vinyama kama vile komba., wakati wa
kusafisha misitu hiyo, komba nao hutokomea. Mara baada ya msitu kurudia upya, vinyama vipya navyo
hurudia. Hivyo usemi wa msitu mpya na komba wapya twaweza kuulinganisha na wa Waswahili usemao
‘hakuna masika yasiyokuwa na mbu’. Masika inapoondoka na kuja nyakati zingine huondoka na mbu wake.
Katika maisha yetu ya kila siku tunashuhudia mabadiliko ya kisiasa ambapo viongozi wapya na mawaziri
wapya wanachagulia katika vipindi fulani fulani. Watu wanaweza kufurahi mabadiliko hayo kwa kuondokea
na adha fulani iliyokuwa ikiambatana na uongozi wa zamani lakini pengine matatizo mapya yanaweza
kuzuka na hivyo matumaini yetu ya hali bora yakafifia. Tunatahadharishwa kuwa ingawa ni msitu mpya
‘uongozi mpya’ waharibifu nao ni wapya.
Taswira ya ‘msitu’ imetumika katika usemi mwingine wa Kipemba usemao msitu hawishi jengo. Mantiki ya
usemi huo ni kuwa katika msitu kuna kawaida ya kujizalisha miti hata kama tutakata baadhi yake kwa
kujengea. Muktadha wa usemi huu nipale ambapo mzazi anaweza kumwambia mwanawe wa kiume au hata
wa kike asihuzunike anapokuwa amemkosa mtu aliyemtaka kumuoa au kumposa kwani msitu hawishi jengo
utampata mwingine na kila situ wazuri wanazaliwa.
(ii) Udongo upate uli maji.
Kazi ya kuandaaa mashamba inakuwa rahisi iwapo udongo umelainika. Hali ya udongo wa Pemba
hutegemea mvua. Vipindi vya mvua vya vuli na masika hufuatana na shughuli za uandaji mashamba na
upandaji. Hivyo, wakulima wanashauriwa kwamba udongo upate uli maji. Anza kushughulikia utifuaji wa
ardhi nyakati zile ambazo udongo uko majimaji. Jamii za wafugaji wao badala ya kutumia taswira ya
udongo hutumia taswaira ya ngozi ndipo usemi wa Ngozi ivute ili maji hutumika. Waswahili nao husema
‘samaki mkunje angali mbichi’ haswa wanapotaka kuasa kumpa mafunzo mtoto mapema ili kuepuka hatari
ya kushindwa kumbadilisha tabia ukubwani.
(iii). Usitafunwe na nyuvi ukaonea tumba:
Miongoni mwa mazao yanayotegemewa na wakulima wa Pemba ni uzalishaji wa asali misituni. Nyuki
huzalisha asali katika tumba au mizinga. Usemi wa usitafunwe na nyuvi ukaonea tumba unaonya kuwa iwapo
umekerwa na mkeo au mumeo jizuie kupeleka hasira yako kwa watoto. Kwa upande wa Waswahili
wanashauri kuwa Usimlaumu mwewe, kipanga yuwesha kuku, au usigombe na mkwezi, nazi imeliwa na mwezi. Nae
Lakoff na Turner (1989: 162) anasema kuwa hayo ni mazingira ya kipofu kulaumu dimbwi (Blind blames the
ditch). Kipofu anaweza kulaumu dimbwi alilotumbukia akasahau kuwa sababu ya kuliingia dimbwi hilo ni
kushindwa kuliona hivyo makosa ni kukosa macho na si kuwepo kwa dimbwi.
(iv) Kanda laikwa mpeto
Mazao yanapovunwa huwekwa katika kanda au ‘gunia’. Hata hivyo wapemba wanavigunia au mifuko
midogomidogo iitwayo peto. Usemi huu unatuasa kuwa tusidharau peto kwa vile tuna kanda. Hii ni sawa
na waswahili wasemavyo usiache mbachao kwa msala upitao. Istilahi za kanda na peto ni mahususi kwa lahaja ya
Kipemba.
20
(vi) Ndama ndama ndio ngombe

Kisiwa cha Pemba ni maarufu kwa ufugaji wa ng’ombe. Msemo wa ndama ndama ndio ng’ombe umezingatia
shughuli za mifugo iliyomaarufu kisiwani hapo. Usemi huo unamaana iliyosawa na ule usemao haba na haba
hujaza kibaba au kupacha pacha wajaza pakacha.
Taswira ya uchungaji inaendelea kujitokeza katika usemi mwngine usemao hala hala mchungao ng’ombe usije
mpiga huyoo? kwa kawaida ng’ombe anakuwa hampigi mchungawe, lakini kuna baadhi ya wakati ngombe
huweza kumpiga mchungawe. Upo usemi usemao usicheze na simba, ukamtia mkono kinywani au anayefikiri
amesimama, aangalie asianguke. Semi zote hizo zina dhima ya kuhadharisha kutokujiamini sana kwa lile
jambo tulilolizoea. Tunatahadharishwa kutokujiamini kupita kiasi na kuacha kuchukua tahadhari. Katika
jamii za wafuga ngamia kama vile Wairani wao badala ya ‘ng’ombe’ wanausemi wao tunaoweza
kuulinganisha na semi zilizotangulia za Kipemba kuwa ‘Mwamini Mungu lakini mfunge ngamia wako’. Hapa
wanamaainsha kuwa ingawa umezoa au umemzowesha mnyama wako iwe kwenye malisho au kwenye
mchezo wa sarakasi basi uchukuwe tahadhari kwani yaweza kutokea madhara makubwa..
5.0 Hitimisho
Kazi hii imegusia kwa uchache misemo mahususi ya Kipemba. Si nia ya makala haya kuainisha misemo
yote tuliyokusanya katika makala haya. Tumekusudia kugusia maeneo muhimu ya kinadharia
yanayodhihirisha ufanano wa kidhima na uoni wa wanadamu kiubia duniani. Zipo tofauti za mazingira
yanayozua misemo hiyo na hivyo sitiari na metonomia zinatumika kifani tu lakini ujumbe unaokusudiwa
ukawa na malengo yaliyosawia. Kimsingi sitiari na misemo (au fani) hubeba historia ya jamii husika.
Tunaweza kuchora mazingira, mfumo wa uzalishaji mali, ibada na itikadi, na uoni na falsafa ya maisha ya
wanajamii kwa kuchambua na kuaninisha sitiari na metonomia zilizotumika. Mazingira ya bahari na Kilimo
huko Pemba yamechangia katika kuunda misemo na data mbalimbali za kifoklo. Uchambuzi wa semi za
Kipemba umepelekea kuonyesha ni kwa kiasi gani tunaweza kubainisha umahususi na ulinganifu wa
misemo ya Kipemba na ile ya jamii nyenginezo duniani. Matokeo awali ya uchambuzi wa misemo ya
Kipemba ni ushahidi wa ukweli na udhibati wa hoja za Evelyne Brouzeng (1984)na Hatch na Brown
(1995) katika uchambuzi wa data za kifoklo kimuktadha.
Marejeo
Arewa, E na A. Dundes. (1964) Proverbs and the Ethnography of Speaking Folklore katika Gumperz, J na
D. Hymes. (Wah) American Anthropologist: The ethnography of communication Vol 66(6) 70-85
CARE Tanzania and Department of Commercial Crops, Fruits and Forestry (2005). Ngezi-Vumawimbi
Forest Reserves Biodiversity Inventory Report Zanzibar :.
Evelyne, B. (1984) Stylistique comparée de la traduction de proverbes anglais et français katika Richesse du
proverbe, études réunies par François Suard et Claude: Typologie et Fonctions Jarida la (2):162-275 Université de
Lille.
Farsi, S. (1958) Swahili Sayings from Zanzibar . Juzuu.1: Proverbs. Arusha: Eastern Africa Publications
Limited.
Finnegan, R. (1970) Oral literature in Africa Oxford at the Clanderon Press.
Ghassany.(2003) Kheri ya Ruhani kuliko Subiani Dira (Zanzibar), 26 (30 Mei – 5 Juni), uk. 4.
Giles, L. (1987) Possession Cults on the Swahili Coast: A reexamination of theories of marginality katika
Africa 57(2) 234-258
Gray, J. (1962) History of Zanzibar from the Middle Ages to 1856. London : Oxford University Press.
Gray, J. (1980) Bull-baiting in Pemba , Azania, 15, pp. 121-132
Hatch, E na Brown, Cl (1995). Vocabulary, Semantics and Language Education.
Hymes, D. (1972) The ethnography of speaking. Katika Anthropology and Human behavior, Gladwin T
na W Sturtevant (Wah) Washington, Anthropological Society of Washington Uk 13-53.
Ifedha, A. (1987) Semi za Kiswahili Maana na Matumizi. Oxford University Press Eastern Africa.
Ingrams, W. (1931) Zanzibar : Its History and People. London : H. F. & G. Witherby.
Lakoff, G na M. Turner. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, Georg and Turner, Mark. 1989. More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor.Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
21
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.London:
Whitman and Cramp.
Madumulla, J. (1995) Proverbs and Sayings: Theory and Practice TUKI
Manyo, A. (2006) Semi: Maana na Matumizi . Dar es salaam TUKI
Mlacha, S. (1995) Fasihi Simulizi na Usuli wa Historia ya Pemba katika Mlacha S na A Hurskainen (Wah)
Lugha , Utamaduni na Fasihi simulizi ya Kiswahili TUKI na Chuo Kikuu cha Helsinki 16-26.
Mlacha, S na A. Hurskainen (1995) (Wah) Lugha , Utamaduni na Fasihi simulizi ya Kiswahili TUKI na Chuo
Kikuu cha Helsinki
Mulokozi, M (1996) Fasihi ya Kiswahili OSW 105. Chuo Kikuu Huria cha Tanzania
Omari, C, E. Kezilahabi na W. Kamera (1975) Misemo na Methali Toka Tanzania. Arusha: Eastern Africa
Publications limited
Orbaneja, Y na E. Majada,. 1998. El saber del pueblo o ramillete. Madrid: Cie Inversiones Editoriales
Palmer, G. (1996) Toward a theory of Cultural Linguistics Austin: University of Texas Press.
Panati, C. (1999). Words to live by: The origins of conventional wisdom and
Petrenko, N. (1988) Nahau za Kiswahili Kiswahili Juzuu 53 : 21-32 Publishers.
Sheriff, A (1990) Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar,. Tanzania Publishing House.
Steere, E. (1870) Swahili Tales as Told by the Natives of Zanzibar. London: Bell and Daldy.
Taylor, J. (1827) Old English Sayings newly expounded in Prose and Verse
Taylor W 1891 African Aphorisms London
Wamitila, W. (1999) Kamusi ya Misemo na Nahau. Nairobi: Longhorn
Wamitila, W (2001) Kamusi ya Methali. Nairobi: Longhorn Publishers
Webb, G. (2007) Why You Say It. Grant Press.
Whiteley, W. (1958) The Dialects and Verse of Pemba. Kampala: An introduction East African Swahili
Committee.
Whiteley, W. (1959) Mtang’ata. Kampala: An introduction East African Swahili Committee.
22
M. Walsh. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1(1) 2009, 23-33
The Politicisation of Popobawa:
Changing Explanations of a Collective Panic in Zanzibar
Martin Walsh
mtw30@cam.ac.uk
University of Cambridge
Abstract
One of the most remarkable features of recent Zanzibar history has been the occurrence of periodic episodes of collective
panic associated with fear of a spiritual entity called Popobawa. The first and most widespread of the modern panics took
place in 1995, spreading from Pemba to Unguja and across to the mainland coast. This was in the months before
Tanzania’s first multiparty elections, and many Zanzibaris, in particular opponents of the ruling party, settled on a
political reading of Popobawa’s rude intrusion into their lives. Subsequent panics have been similarly interpreted, and
external observers have also been influenced by these politicised understandings of Popobawa. This paper examines the
development of the 1995 panic, and shows that different local explanations for the crisis were put forward before the
political interpretation came to the fore. But there is also evidence to suggest that political history and collective memory have
played an important part in shaping the content of Popobawa narratives, and the paper concludes by highlighting this.
1.0 Introduction
In the first half of 1995 an extraordinary collective panic swept across the Zanzibar archipelago. It started
on the island of Pemba and later spread from there to Unguja and Zanzibar town. Men, women and
children described being assaulted by a shape-shifting spirit, Popobawa, and on the larger island reports
were rife that adults of both sexes had been sodomised by this malevolent entity. In order to avert its
nocturnal attacks many people resorted to spending the night huddled together in anxious groups outside
of their homes. On both islands the panic produced incidents of collective violence, when strangers
suspected of being manifestations of Popobawa were attacked, beaten, and in some cases killed by the
angry mob. Government efforts to calm things down were largely ineffectual, not least because most
Pembans and supporters of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) believed that the ruling CCM
(Chama cha Mapinduzi) party was itself responsible for bringing Popobawa to the islands in order to
divert attention away from politics in the run-up to the country’s first multiparty elections in October
1995.
In this paper, based primarily on ethnographic research undertaken in Zanzibar, I will outline both the
evolution of the 1995 panic and the development of different local explanations for the spiritual assaults
which caused it. When these assaults proliferated on Pemba people struggled to understand why this was
happening, and initially a number of different explanations were put forward, none of them overtly
political. As local accounts make clear, the political interpretation of Popobawa’s brute intrusion into
island life took time to develop. It subsequently came to dominate, particularly on Pemba and among
CUF supporters. And although apolitical interpretations of Popobawa’s evil deeds can still be heard in
Zanzibar, especially on Unguja island, external commentators continue to reiterate the view that the 1995
panic and others like it are inextricably linked to the political process, reflecting the deep and enduring
divisions in Zanzibari society and the anxieties that they generate. This may be so, but a closer
examination of the events of 1995 suggests that this cannot simply be asserted on the basis of one set of
local interpretations and the coincidence of timing between some Popobawa panics and political elections.
2.0 The political context

Before examining the 1995 panic in detail, let me outline the broader political and historical context in
which this and related episodes have taken place. Zanzibar has been through a series of colonialisms,
23
Portuguese, Omani Arab, and British, and is now a semi-autonomous territory within the United Republic
of Tanzania. The British abolished slavery but retained the sultanate that had built its success on the back
of slave trading and slave labour. When the British departed they handed power over to an Arab-
dominated government which was overthrown the following month in a bloody revolution, the defining
event of Zanzibar’s modern history. Zanzibar became a quasi-socialist state ruled by President Abeid
Amani Karume and his Afro-Shirazi Party, originally named for the islands’ mixed indigenous and ex-
mainland (including ex-slave) population.
Shortly after the Revolution Karume agreed to the union of Zanzibar with Nyerere’s Tanganyika,
establishing what some Zanzibaris see as colonialism. But Karume and his immediate successors retained
a tight grip on the internal affairs of Zanzibar. The islands remained largely closed to outsiders (including
foreign researchers) until economic liberalisation began to take effect and the government started to
welcome significant numbers of western aid workers and tourists in the 1990s. Zanzibar’s economic and
political transition has, however, been a troubled one, and the islands remain deeply divided between
supporters of CCM, the “Revolutionary Party” that has ruled all of Tanzania since the one-party era, and
CUF, which dominates Pemban politics and is now the nation’s main opposition party.
Published sources make muddled reference to different episodes of diabolical terror and panic in post-
Revolutionary Zanzibar. There have been at least five Popobawa panics, the most widespread of which
was the 1995 episode described in this paper, others rather more localised. Table 1 shows these panics in
the context of other notable events in the recent political history of Zanzibar.
Table 1: Popobawa panics in historical context
mid-19th century heyday of Omani Arab rule

1890 British Protectorate declared
1897 slavery abolished
10 December 1963 independence from the British
12 January 1964 Zanzibar Revolution
26 April 1964 Union with Tanganyika to form Tanzania
Late 1960s or early 1970s? first Popobawa panic on Pemba
7 April 1972 President Karume assassinated
1984 economic liberalisation begun
1992 multiparty politics introduced
February-May 1995 major Popobawa panic on both islands (with episodes
also in Dar es Salaam and other mainland towns)
22 October 1995 first nationwide multiparty elections
9 June 1999 Commonwealth-brokered accord (‘Muafaka’)
October 2000 minor Popobawa panic on Pemba
29 October 2000 second multiparty elections
27 January 2001 mass protests and violence
July 2001 minor Popobawa panic on both islands
10 October 2001 second ‘Muafaka’ accord between CCM and CUF
30 October 2005 third multiparty elections
February-March 2007 minor Popobawa panic on Unguja (and in Dar)
3.0 The development of the 1995 panic

In early February 1995, during the first week of Ramadhan, the Muslim month of fasting, men and women
in and around the southern Pemban port town of Mkoani began to complain of nocturnal spiritual
assaults. The culprit was subsequently identified as a spirit (Swahili sheitani) and given the name
Popobawa, a label which people remembered from a similar panic in the years following the Revolution.
24
A typical assault involved someone waking in the night to find themselves being attacked by an
amorphous or shape-shifting intruder, which was most frequently described as “pressing” or “crushing”
their chest and ribs, and of suffocating them until they had difficulty in breathing and passed out. Other
unusual events might precede or accompany or perhaps replace this standard experience: including
strange sights, sounds, smells and other sensations. Sometimes the victims were children, subjected to the
kinds of abuse that westerners might associate with a poltergeist. In general all of the victims experienced
extreme terror, and were often frozen speechless when they were assaulted.
Their plight might be recognised by their sleeping partners, who might also be attacked in turn. This
happened to people who did not ordinarily have possessory spirits as well as those who did.1 However,
household members and neighbours who did have possessory spirits were liable to go into trance when
Popobawa was about, and when they did so their spirits would identify and challenge Popobawa and cry
out to alert others of the intruder’s presence. The general scene was often one of pandemonium breaking
out until Popobawa moved on. The spirit or spirits (pl. mapopobawa) might attack many homes
simultaneously, in the same or different parts of the town or countryside.
Table 2: Chronology of the 1995 panic
Pemba
2 February holy month of Ramadhan begins
First week of February Popobawa attacks in Mkoani
3 March Idd ul Fitr begins, fast ends
12 March night of crisis in Limbani, Wete
29 March only sporadic incidents
Unguja
3 April ‘Popobawa’ killed at night in Zanzibar town
4 April body of ‘Popobawa’ exhibited in town hospital
6 April mob takes ‘Popobawa’ to police in Mazizini
14 April Popobawa moves out of Zanzibar town
28 April another ‘Popobawa’ killed in Nungwi
2 May the last dated report (possibly relating to the Nungwi incident)
Dar es Salaam undated incidents following those on Unguja
Tanga, Mombasa unconfirmed reports of incidents
The attacks spread across Pemba and people began spending the nights outside of their houses, trying to
stay awake huddled around open fires. At first, because it was Ramadhan and association with unholy
practices was frowned upon, people were unable to resort to local doctors (waganga, sg. mganga), to divine
their troubles or help protect them. In some cases - and I am not sure whether this was during or after
Ramadhan - individual communities were believed to have successfully repelled Popobawa because they
possessed superior guardian spirits. Occasionally people took matters into their own hands, and local
mobs beat up suspected manifestations of Popobawa - often unkempt and inarticulate men with mental
health problems who were found wandering about at night.
After two months the panic was dying down on Pemba. By then it had spread to Zanzibar town on the
main island of Unguja. Here both the assaults and the popular response took a more violent turn.
Popobawa began to sodomise its male and female victims, and several alleged mapopobawa were killed by
angry mobs. The most notorious of these incidents took place in Zanzibar town. The body of the victim
was displayed for all to see in the government hospital and his parents were interviewed on state television
to verify that he was a mainlander who had come to Zanzibar to seek treatment for a mental health
1 For spirit possession in Zanzibar see Giles 1989; Goldman 1996; Nisula 1999; Larsen 2008. Zanzibar is
in the middle of a spirit possession ‘complex’ that spreads from Somalia in the north to northern
Madagascar in the south. Key references include Lewis 1966; Lienhardt 1968; Gray 1969; Gomm 1975;
Lambek 1981; 1993; Giles 1987; Sharp 1993; Caplan 1997.
25
problem. The crowds of people that filed past his body were generally unconvinced by this explanation:
the government had no doubt substituted Popobawa with a real corpse and persuaded the alleged parents
to say it was their son’s (Jansen 1996).
Within a couple of weeks of this incident Popobawa - or all 70 of them on some counts - had moved
north out of town, and eventually the attacks fizzled out without spreading to villages on the south and
east of the island. They did, however, spread to at least one quarter in Dar es Salaam (where many
Zanzibaris live), and perhaps also to Tanga and Mombasa, though I could not confirm this at the time.
On Pemba the episode lasted about two months, before ravaging Zanzibar town and north-west Unguja
for a third month. The terror ended on the islands almost six months before the October 1995 elections
took place.
4.0 Research on Popobawa

At the time of these events I was living in Pemba, at Limbani on the outskirts of the northern town of
Wete.2 However, when Popobawa was working his way up the island I was away from Zanzibar, and did
not hear about it until my return after the end of Ramadhan. My first impression on Pemba was of the
intensity of talk about Popobawa. This was, after all, the main means by which Popobawa narratives
spread: there were then no newspapers on Pemba and, as far as I am aware, no mention of Popobawa on
state radio until the first killing in Zanzibar town.
I was fast asleep on the night that Limbani suffered its greatest crisis. I learned afterwards that the whole
community had been in an uproar, and that Popobawa had even come calling on me. One of my
watchmen, Salim, told me how in the middle of the night he had been confronted by the sight of a
quivering white dog at the open entrance to the compound. It ran off but Salim’s suspicions were raised.
Shortly afterwards another strange animal, unknown to Salim, appeared in the same place, and shook in
the same odd way before departing. The third and last visitor was a diminutive man, a dwarf who
trembled like his predecessors. When Salim made to move towards this goblin it danced and hopped
around the project Land Rovers parked in the garden before making off. This was too much for Salim
and he too bolted off into the night, making a beeline for the nearby main road and the houses on the
other side of it. In his somewhat sheepish account of these events he told me that he had run off to check
that his own wife and children were alright. My neighbours, who were up and outside their own house at
the time, later confirmed that Salim had indeed sprinted across the road in the dead of night,. Their first
reaction was to panic, thinking that the fleeing Salim was Popobawa.
Following this incident I resolved to find out more, and recruited a research assistant, a married woman in
her early 30s, who asked not to be identified because of the political content of this and subsequent work
that we did together. In less than a fortnight in April 1995 Jamila filled a series of exercise books with
Popobawa incidents and related commentary based on her own interviews with colleagues, friends and
relatives in Wete. I have used this material as the basis of this paper, though I have also woven in material
from other interviews and sources on both islands, including information gathered since. Jamila’s
compilation was by far the most comprehensive, though it clearly gives a Wete point of view and there is
understandably less detail on incidents in Zanzibar town and elsewhere on Unguja.
5.0 Early explanations of Popobawa

One of the many striking features of Jamila’s meta-narrative was her account of how explanations for
what was happening during the 1995 episode developed over time, and I will run through these now.
2 I was employed as a social anthropologist on the ODA-funded Zanzibar Cash Crops Farming Systems
Project (ZCCFSP), working with farmers’ groups and promoting participatory agricultural development
on both islands. I had already lived for some years on the East African coast and was a fluent speaker of
Swahili when I arrived in Zanzibar in August 1994. I have been a regular visitor to Unguja and Zanzibar
town since leaving Pemba in June 1996.
26
The Swahili name Popobawa (p’opo-bawa) translates literally as ‘wing-bat’ or ‘winged bat’, said to be a
reference to the ominous outline or dark shadow cast by this malevolent spirit at night. People trace the
name (and in some cases the spirit) back to an earlier episode of panic that took place in the south of
Pemba following the 1964 Revolution. This Popobawa sodomised both men and women, terrorising
Mkoani and its environs for a month or more, until, on some accounts, Karume himself came to the
island and challenged the spirit to come to him at night (it did not). I have yet to find contemporary
reports of these events and there is little agreement in recent published accounts regarding the details of
this episode including its dating during Karume’s rule.
Jamila gave the year as 1965. A neighbour told her that as many as ten people were then being assaulted
every night in Mkoani. Diviners attributed this to a sheitani but the placatory offerings that they
recommended had no effect. Then one diviner declared that the real culprit was not a kind of spirit (jini or
sheitani) but a person using ‘medicines’ to perform sorcery. Some people accepted this interpretation but
others ridiculed it. The government intervened and a group of elders appointed by the President
determined that the cause of the problem was a man of Makonde (Mozambican) origin who had resorted
to sorcery to take revenge on Pemba for being forced to divorce his estranged Pemban wife. He was
caught and brought before Karume before being paraded around Pemba on a lorry and then gaoled for
life.
To Jamila and another informant, the only significance of this first Popobawa panic was that it provided
an analogy and therefore a name for whatever it was that was assaulting the residents of Mkoani in 1995.
The two modes of assault were quite different: whereas the earlier Popobawa sodomised his male and
female victims, the Popobawa that attacked Pembans in 1995 merely crushed and frightened them,
penetrating their bedrooms but not their bodies. Some informants from Unguja doubted this asexual
account of Pembans’ recent suffering, suspecting that they were too coy to reveal that they had been anally
raped. The narratives recorded by Jamila’s made it clear that this was not the case, but provided a reason
for the switch to sexual violence on Unguja (see below).
This labelling of Popobawa in 1995 did not explain why it was happening and who or what was behind it.
According to Jamila people in southern Pemba considered a number of possibilities. The most alluring
explanation to emerge was that Popobawa was the work of a spurned witch-finder known as Tekelo.
Tekelo had plied his trade on the mainland since at least the early 1980s, moving from community to
community with a team of assistants and rooting out witches in classic fashion. In the early 1990s he
came across to Zanzibar and was invited to Pemba by the inhabitants of Chokocho, a village in the south.
However, his visit to the island, widely reputed to be a powerful centre of witchcraft and wizardry, was not
entirely successful. In Pemba alleged witches are generally not accused openly or subjected to any
sanctions: they are merely the subject of gossip and a mixture of fear and admiration for their powers (cf.
Goldman 1996). Seeing their grandmothers turned out of their homes and humiliated in public was too
much for some communities and they sent Tekelo packing without paying his fees. Others were dismayed
that when he left Pemba there was no apparent reduction in the total sum of illness and misfortune, and
they too branded him a charlatan. So when Popobawa went on the rampage people speculated that the
malevolent spirit had been sent from the mainland by Tekelo, either in revenge for his own humiliation or
as a ruse to create more work for himself on Pemba.
This explanation did not follow Popobawa as the panic travelled northwards. In the central town of
Chake Chake a different theory was revealed as follows. During a spiritual assault on a married couple
one of their neighbours went into a possession trance and her possessory spirit struggled violently with the
phantom intruder until it fled. The spirit then called for a local mganga and explained to him what the
cause of the island’s current miseries really was. A couple of years before a whale had been found beached
on the shore and people came from far and wide to cut out portions of its flesh and blubber. At the same
time a woman in Chake Chake had gone into trance and her possessory spirit declared that this whale was
in fact the child of a greater spirit, warning people not to eat it or else they would suffer the consequences.
Needless to say a lot of people took no notice. Returning now to the 1995: the possessory spirit that had
just repelled a spiritual intruder identified the earlier transgression against the whale’s mother as the cause
of contemporary attacks that people were labelling Popobawa. And it went on to suggest that people
should take special offerings of food down to the shore to placate the dead whale’s spirit-mother.
27
This revelation rejected any identification with the original Popobawa because the former had sodomised
its victims whereas the phantom of 1995 did not. But the whale’s revenge was never more than another
localised explanation.
6.0 The politicisation of Popobawa

In Jamila’s narrative - and the accounts of everyone else I asked on Pemba - the ‘real’ explanation for
Popobawa did not emerge until the panic had reached Wete in the north. During one of many incidents
in the town the possessory spirit of a local woman announced that the culprits were certain unnamed
politicians, members of the ruling party (CCM), who had brought 70 spirits to the island to harass people
and distract them from talking about and becoming involved in politics. Wete and the surrounding district
was the stronghold of the opposition CUF party, supported by the great majority of Pembans and at that
time engaged in a bitter struggle with the CCM-controlled administration to be allowed to operate freely
and prepare for the coming national elections. Indeed when the Wete District Commissioner (DC) heard
that people were speculating about the identity of the CCM politicians alluded to by the spirit, he locked
nine people up and charged them with insulting government leaders. People refused the DC’s suggestion
that they recruit a mganga to prepare medicines to counteract Popobawa, and thereafter the number of
nocturnal assaults in and around the town increased.
On the night of the 12th of March there was a major incident in Limbani, with multiple assaults and a
frenzy of spirit possession that saw the possessed running wildly through the village and down into the
surrounding rice valleys. (This was the night that Salim fled from my home compound). The immediate
cause of this was afterwards thought to have been the actions of a group of local youths who were
prominent among the victims of assault that night. They had hurled insults at a passing vehicle whose
erratic movements back and forth over the previous three days had led villagers to suspect that it was
being used to transport nocturnal assailants. (The youths had actually cried out “There go the bats
(mipopo), there they go! God will curse you!”). This vehicle belonged to a CCM member of parliament
(MP), and after Limbani’s worst night speculation grew in Wete that another vehicle, belonging to a CCM
member of the Zanzibar House of Representatives, was also being used to spread Popobawa along the
road in this way. According to Jamila the idea that CCM politicians were responsible for this whole affair
then spread throughout the island.
A collective response was organised in Wete. Residents of the town contributed to a fund to pay for the
services of waganga, who were called out to capture the spirits as soon as people became aware of their
presence in a home or neighbourhood. Special prayers were also read in the Friday mosque and a variety
of other prayers and ritual offerings were organised by the elders of Wete. Consequently numerous
mapopobawa were trapped and in some cases interrogated with the help of possessory spirits. On a number
of occasions the malevolent spirits identified themselves as having been sent by Pemba’s leading CCM
politician, who was Zanzibar’s Chief Minister, and thereafter in many people’s eyes the chief cause of
Popobawa. He was alleged to have brought Popobawa from the mainland, and the wide extent of the
political conspiracy appeared to be confirmed when some of the trapped spirits declared that they had
come from ex-President Nyerere’s home village in northern Tanzania.
When reports came back to Pemba that Popobawa had begun to sodomise its victims in Zanzibar town,
some people interpreted this as just revenge on the CCM-supporting population that had sent the spirits
to them in the first place. The spirits had been expelled from Pemba and were now turning against their
owners, punishing them with a sexual violence that had been absent on the smaller island.
Otherwise the theory that Popobawa had begun as a CCM conspiracy spread everywhere that there was
strong support for CUF, and that meant throughout Pemba (cf. Cameron 2002a) and also across to
Zanzibar town and north-west Unguja, where there were many Pembans living as well as other supporters
of CUF (likewise particular neighbourhoods in Dar es Salaam on the mainland). Although this became the
explanation for Popobawa in most Pemban narratives, it was not the only one. In the heart of Zanzibar’s
Stone Town, a notorious focus of CUF activism, it was widely believed that the multiple mapopobawa were
spirits that had possessed the first President Karume during his lifetime, and that they had come to remind
people of their existence and chastise them for neglect. Their sodomising of mainly male victims was
linked to persistent rumours about the late Karume’s sexual prowess: it was averred that he was endowed
28
with a larger than average penis and that women who slept with him (there were rumoured to be many of
them) would no longer desire other men.3
Despite the fact that Zanzibar town was the seat of government, the administration and other CCM
supporters there failed to counter the Popobawa narratives that worked against them, including the
widespread belief that they had spirited away the first Popobawa that people had killed. With the help of
religious leaders and the state-controlled media the government tried to curb the spread of the panic and
the outbreaks of mob violence that went with it. It is possible that this did play a part in shortening the
career and minimising the impact of Popobawa on Unguja. But neither the government nor conservative
Muslim clerics there came up with a counter-narrative that could match the power of the conspiracy
theory from Pemba.
In Wete and elsewhere on Pemba it was easy to believe that CCM’s campaign of spiritual assault had
ended because people and their companion spirits had recognised it for what it really was and taken
appropriate counter-steps. For some time afterwards I myself was beguiled by an agnostic version of the
same thesis, and suspected that the panic had indeed ended on Pemba once people came up with a
convincing and widely-agreed explanation for it - as though the conspiracy theory functioned like a kind of
scaled-up collective ‘talking cure’. But I am not so sure now, and find it equally possible that the panic
metaphorically burned itself out as it spread from community to community and quarter to quarter,
exhausting the pool of potential victims and witnesses in each one as it passed through (that is, the pool of
people susceptible, for whatever reasons, to experiencing or reporting the appropriate experiences).
The narratives of Popobawa were explained in terms of existing discourses that could be convincingly
related to them, that could swallow them up and be nourished by them in turn. Most of these
explanations were localised, restricted to and reflecting particular histories in particular areas: Popobawa
as a witch-finder’s trick or revenge; a spirit-whale’s revenge; or the anger of Karume’s neglected and
oversexed spirits. On Pemba and among Pembans everywhere it was ultimately folded up into the
political discourse that was then dominating Pemban life, one that could now explain their spiritual and
moral suffering as well as their economic and other woes.
Appropriately enough, this explanation seems to have emerged through the intended and unintended
participation of a large number of ordinary men and women: among them victims, witnesses, both male
and female spirits, local waganga and other interpreters and narrators, an apparently democratic genealogy
that underlay Jamila’s composite narrative and now informs mine. The role of women and their
possessory spirits is especially noticeable, though the gender of these spirits as well as of other actors in
the narratives recorded by Jamila is often erased by the lack of male/female gender markers in Swahili, the
language of their telling. As it first unfolded on Pemba this was a people’s panic which resisted official
attempts to control it and was not consciously engineered by opposition politicians, though CUF
supporters were later able to make good use of a conspiracy theory that stigmatised CCM and bolstered
their own political narrative.
This kind of manipulation was much more evident following the 1995 episode and especially in the run-up
to the general elections in 2000. By this time the idea that Popobawa was a political phenomenon linked
to election campaigns had become firmly established. It was widely rumoured that Tanzania’s President
Mkapa had been forced to abandon campaigning and flee Zanzibar after spending a painful night in the
company of a number of vengeful spirits. And photocopies of a newspaper cartoon that showed half-clad
CCM members in desperate flight from Popobawa were widely distributed at CUF rallies (Cameron
2002b). Otherwise the implicit prophecy that Popobawa would return during these elections was barely
fulfilled. A few incidents were reported from east-central Pemba, but that was about it. Likewise
Popobawa’s minor appearances in mid-2001 and early 2007, and failure to turn up immediately before or
after the troubled 2005 elections, cast doubt on the thesis that the periodic spiritual crises were necessarily
bound to the trials and tribulations of the political process in Zanzibar.
3 In October 2007, during production of the documentary film The Nightmare (Gray Brothers 2008), I
elicited a number of apolitical explanations for the past activities of Popobawa in Zanzibar town and
thereabouts. The presence of a government representative during filming evidently made many
interviewees reluctant to discuss well-known political interpretations of events.
29
7.0 The political thesis amplified

The politicised Popobawa of mid-1995 was readily incorporated into meta-narratives in the international
media and on the internet. An article in the British newspaper The Guardian in October 1995 set the ball
rolling (McGreal 1995). Among other things this reported the connection that some people were then
making between the appearance of Popobawa and periods of political tension. But this statement and
many of the details in the article were progressively amplified and distorted as they were copied by other
journalists and writers (e.g. Anon. 1996). This was especially so as the internet grew in importance, and
items about Popobawa proliferated after the 2000 elections (e.g. Russell 2001; Saleh 2001; Anon. 2004-08;
Maclean 2005; Anon. 2007).4 An article in The Economist in December 2003, with the sub-heading
‘Superstition as a political barometer’, presented a particularly topical version of the political thesis,
suggesting that the periodic Popobawa panics functioned not only as a mirror of social anxiety but also as
a predictor of political terror – referring in this context to known connections between Al-Qaeda and
Zanzibar, and the possibility of terrorist attacks in this tourist mecca (Anon. 2003).
A sophisticated version of the same thesis is argued by the anthropologist David Parkin, discussing
“Provenances in the Making of Zanzibari Politics”:
“What are such extensive spirit movements about? If spirits are sometimes mnemonics recalling
the past, does Popobawa recreate the fears and terror of the oppression and brutality suffered by
the people of Zanzibar during and since slavery, a subject normally too delicate to be mentioned?
If we regard the Popobawa movement as part of the political election in Zanzibar and not just as an
accidental prelude to it, then it can indeed be regarded as a continuing trajectory of communal
violence that continues into the present.
During the 1995 election campaign, a surfeit of past events was worked into rhetorical promises
of a better future, bringing together old fears and new possibilities. Would there be another
massacre, not just of political parties against each other but of ‘racial’ groups or kabila? This fear
was presented not as a formulaic political argument, but as what we translate as imagined suffering
and terror, a kind of emotional pre-emptive strike, clearing the spiritual ground before the argument
of political campaign began. It as if people knew that issues of power are not settled by rational
debate but by past and present resentments of privation and oppression.” (2004: 115-116)
Having listened to various accounts of oppression and brutality, I do not entirely agree with the suggestion
that Zanzibaris find this “a subject normally too delicate to be mentioned” (my emphasis). Reluctance to
talk about such matters publicly often stems from the fear of government surveillance and its consequences,
and it was for this very reason that my research assistant Jamila asked not to be identified in print. Since
the Revolution the authorities have actively used censorship and the security services to discourage open
discussion of politically sensitive topics, in particular the events of the Revolution itself. Not surprisingly
therefore people readily saw Popobawa as another means by which the government was trying to silence
them.
More importantly I disagree with the implication that Popobawa was in some sense an integral and
inevitable component of the intense politicking of 1995. Elsewhere Parkin refers to Popobawa as “a spirit
that has a habit of sweeping across large areas of the Zanzibar islands of Unguja … and Pemba at times of
political crisis” (2004: 114). As we have seen this statement is incorrect. And in 1995 Popobawa was not
initially interpreted as a party political phenomenon, and the politicisation of the panic did not take hold
until it reached the stronghold of CUF support in the north of Pemba.
4 As well as being a readymade subject for (often ethnocentric) political comment and quirky ‘human
interest’ stories, Popobawa was also admitted into the global pantheon of occult beings. Many of the
websites that have lists of strange and mythical creatures now include passages about this hybrid
Popobawa, sometimes fancifully depicted in an artist’s image (the first of these was based on McGreal’s
description of how Popobawa was drawn in a Zanzibar market). Perhaps not surprisingly, the sexual
content of Popobawa narratives has also excited widespread interest, while the phenomenology of the
nocturnal attacks has attracted the attention of students of sleep paralysis and its cultural manifestations
(see Nickell 1995; Gray Brothers 2008).
30
However, I do agree with Parkin’s argument that historical memories of suffering have infused
understandings of Popobawa, and would argue that this has happened both directly and indirectly as
different narrators have consciously or unconsciously made use of these earlier narratives in producing
their own. Parkin draws particular attention to the role of memories of slavery and the deep ethnic
divisions that stem from this period and continue to mark Zanzibaris’ different perceptions of themselves
and others. I think that an equal and perhaps stronger case can be made for the role of memories of the
Revolution of 1964, because this was the event which more than any other crystallised previous conflicts
and continues to dominate the political landscape of Zanzibar.
Indeed some Popobawa narratives seem to echo the terrors that the Revolution brought. I have already
mentioned that in Jamila’s account the violent Popobawa episode that followed shortly after the
Revolution was eventually blamed on a Makonde man. The Makonde were originally slaves and
immigrant labourers from Mozambique and to many Zanzibaris they are represented as archetypal
savages, non-believers traditionally marked by deep facial scarification and the wearing of large lip-plugs.
In the early days of the Revolution a number of Makonde were employed to do the dirty work of the
Revolution’s unexpected leader, the self-styled Field Marshal Okello. Okello’s Makonde henchmen spent
some time on Pemba, where they are said to have terrorised the inhabitants of Mkoani and the south in
particular. Is it a coincidence that the first Popobawa, a brutalising spirit that also ravaged Mkoani, was
blamed (in Jamila’s narrative) on a Makonde? There are too many ifs and buts here, but nonetheless a
possible link with the political terror, if not just everyday representations of savagery.
Another possible connection can be drawn with the widely reported story that during the 1995 panic the
inhabitants of the village of Vitongoji on Pemba were beaten with sticks by a phantom assailant despite
the fact that they were awake and sitting up outside their houses. The first few years of the Revolution are
known to Pembans as “siku za bakora”, “the days of the stick”, a reference to the frequent beatings that
they received and the public humiliations, imprisonment, torture and unexplained disappearances that
occurred at the time. Vitongoji was the location of an army camp that was established in 1964, one of
three designed to help quell opposition to the Revolution. Soldiers based there reported being beaten by
invisible sticks as well as suffering numerous other kinds of spiritual assault. These were blamed on the
fact that the camp had been built adjacent to a traditional witches’ meeting-place, where the local spirits
had already been angered by the construction of a new school. The caning and other unpleasant
experiences were their revenge (Arnold 2003). Were then the 1995 beatings themselves revenge for these
earlier phantom assaults on the military? Or did they represent a memory of the violence and beatings
that Pembans had really suffered in the 1960s? Again, we have no way of being certain, but the evidence
is suggestive.
8.0 Conclusion
Detailed consideration of these arguments is beyond the scope of this paper, whose purpose has been not
to explain the 1995 panic and its constituent narratives, but to outline the basic sequence of events and in
particular the way in which local explanations of these were politicised, subsequently influencing the
accounts of journalists and others, including Parkin’s anthropological thesis. Of course I am not arguing
for the depoliticisation of interpretation in this and other cases, but for careful analysis and especially an
understanding of when and where the political agendas and narratives of others have infected our own.
Contemporary anxieties may or may not help to generate experiences that lend themselves to ‘occult’
interpretation. But historical and other social memories, phobias, terrors, and related anxieties most likely
do and have influenced the content of narratives like those of Popobawa, and some of these narratives
seem to have prefigured their subsequent explanation in narrow political terms. Whatever imaginary
flapping or flickering shadow of a bat’s wing conjured up Popobawa in 1995, local accounts suggest that
the panic was not at first explained with reference to party politics. But it surely reflected and refracted
political and other discourses more generally as individual nightmares were converted – through the
memories and voices of victims, the spirits of the possessed and their various interpreters – into a
terrifying episode in Zanzibar’s collective political nightmare. At the same time I have no doubt that this
episode, like the history it contains, will never be repeated in quite the same way.
31
Acknowledgements
This paper could not have been written without the help of many Zanzibaris, including my research
assistant ‘Jamila’ and long-term collaborator Asha Fakhi Khamis. It is an edited version of a seminar
paper read to the University of Cambridge Department of Social Anthropology in February 2005 and
available until 2007 on the internet. I am grateful to a number of colleagues for their critical observations
and other inputs into my research on Popobawa: they include Ray Abrahams, Al Cheyne, Harri Englund,
Helle Goldman, Adam and Andrew Gray, Bethan Rees Jones, Nick Long, David Parkin, Amy Rowe (and
the editorial board of Cambridge Anthropology), Malcolm Ruel, Rob Spence, Marilyn Strathern, Adrian
Walsh, and Konstantinos Zorbas. I would also like to thank the editors of the Journal of Humanities for
inviting me to contribute to their inaugural issue, and the anonymous reviewers for their incisive
comments. None of them is of course responsible for the final result.
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33
S. Hatungimana. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1(1) 2009, 34-42
La culture dansée : un trait d’union entre deux mondes différents. Cas du Burundi
Sylvie Hatungimana
hatungasy@yahoo.fr
Université du Burundi
Résumé
La pratique des danses est un fait très important au Burundi et pour le Burundais évoluant au pays. Elle constitue, non
seulement le miroir d’un pays et celui d’un peuple, mais également elle en est l’âme. Les chants et les danses font partie
intégrante de la vie quotidienne. Ils contribuent au rythme journalier et celui, plus singulier, des moments festifs. Les
danses revêtent des sens, des significations propres en fonction des contextes locaux et des objectifs précis
Avec la transposition en des lieux « autres », des questions surgissent. Les significations et les sens changent. Certains
codes propres au terroir ne sont plus valables en dehors de celui-ci. Beaucoup de divergences apparaissent mais des points de
convergences apparaissent également. Nous admettons que la danse burundaise se perpétue et que, dans les milieux
urbains, les membres de la communauté s’intéressent à leur culture et, en l’occurrence, aux rituels dansés. Concrètement,
les Burundais dansent hors de leur contexte culturel d’origine. Ils portent en eux les différentes expériences. Pour certains,
ces expériences correspondraient à une réalité oubliée ou qui sommeille dans leur subconscient. Pour d’autres.
1.0 Introduction
Pour les Africains en général, pour le peuple burundais en particulier, s’exprimer en chantant et en dansant
(gutamba et kuvyina), c’est tout simplement «vivre». On chante et on danse pour s’encourager au labeur ;
parfois, on dit « merci » ou « bonjour » en dansant ou en chantant. On exprime sa joie par un pas de danse
et on chante son bonheur comme son chagrin. Le passage des différentes étapes de la vie de l’individu est
ponctué par des danses. Le rituel religieux se fait en dansant ; les grands moments de la vie politique
nationale sont marqués par la danse, etc. L’adulte danse, l’enfant s’y exerce, le non scolarisé sait exécuter
ses pas de danse, le scolarisé aussi s’y met. Et pourtant, on pourrait se demander si le sens donné à la
culture dansée est le même chez des personnes appartenant à des générations différentes ou évoluant dans
des cadres contextuels culturels différents, et si les codes qui régissent cette culture dansée est restée la
même dans le temps et dans l’espace. Nous estimons ainsi que différents cadres culturels sont réels et que
l’acte dansé fait le pont.
2.0 Méthodologie
Pour produire cet article, nous nous sommes inspirée de notre travail de thèse de doctorat intitulé : « Les
danses rundi en terre étrangère. Une étude menée auprès des Barundi de Belgique » (Hatungimana 2005). La
problématique de l’identité des personnes déplacées d’une culture vers une autre se trouve au centre de
cette étude. Les résultats qui y sont présentés sont le fruit d’un long travail de terrain effectué au sein de la
communauté burundaise de Belgique, combinant observations, participations, participations observantes,
et entretiens semi-directifs.
Selon Laplantine (1987 : 13), aller sur le terrain suppose « faire l’expérience qui consiste à nous étonner de
ce qui nous est le plus familier, et à rendre familier ce qui nous paraissait étrange et étranger ». Pour cela,
nous avons dansé et chanté, participé à des manifestations culturelles que les Burundais de Belgique
organisaient. Cette intense « activité sur terrain » a constitué une étape importante de notre recherche. Ce
contact nous a permis d’établir des relations de confiance avec nos futurs interviewés. Nous avons bien dit
« participation observante ». En utilisant ce terme, nous nous plaçons personnellement du point de vue du
chercheur indigène qui est né, a grandi dans sa société et qui a participé tant consciemment
qu’inconsciemment à l’édification de sa culture (Camara et al 1996 : 49-56).
L’interview constitue le second outil méthodologique qui a guidé notre recherche. Avec l’observation sur
le terrain, menée selon les modèles de Mayer (2000) et Peretz (1980 : 84-85), bien des aspects du problème
(Où ? Qui ? Quoi ? Quand ? Comment ? Qu’en pense X en tant que participant ? Qu’en pense Y, en
34
l’occurrence moi, en tant qu’observateur), sont élucidés. Mais, pour celui qui veut découvrir les raisons
profondes, il reste sur sa soif malgré les recoupements. Ainsi, des tranches de vie de quelques sujets
apportent un nouvel éclairage. De tels récits, il faut les solliciter et les recueillir méthodiquement. La
démarche a été faite sur trente cinq sujets adultes triés sur le volet parmi « une population diversifiée et
non homogène » (Albarello et al 1997 : 47).
L’article que nous présentons au lecteur contient un des aspects de notre problématique à savoir : « La
culture dansée prise comme un trait d’union entre deux mondes différents ».
3.0 Entre tradition et modernité

Le thème de la modernité renvoie directement au « projet développementaliste » en ce qui s’inscrit, en fin
de compte, dans un cadre global au niveau spatial et humain : l’avancée des populations des pays du tiers-
monde vers la mondialisation. Le développementalisme s’est traduit dans l’action coloniale et s’est
prolongé ensuite dans l’action des « développeurs » (missionnaires, nationaux, expatriés, coopérants,
experts etc.).
Il y a eu donc « une dynamique de l’échange entre deux niveaux du local et du global, du particulier au
général, de la tradition et de la modernité, du passé et du présent » (Kilani 1992 : 300-302).
Avec la rencontre des deux cultures (celle issue des traditions burundaises et celle issue de l’Occident),
tous les domaines de la vie des Burundais ont été touchés. Cette rencontre a entraîné d’importants
changements aussi bien au niveau socio-économique, religieux, politique et culturel qu’au niveau des
mentalités (Feltz 1987 : 229-329 et Nsanze 1980). Ces modifications ont créé (et créent encore) des
situations ambiguës et complexes ; elles transparaissent dans les relations de communication et d’échange
depuis la cellule familiale de base, en passant par les institutions intermédiaires, jusqu’au niveau le plus
élevé de l’organisation de la société.
D’une part, dans le domaine de l’éducation « scolaire », par exemple, les réactions de certains parents de
nouveaux écoliers se passent de commentaire : « Si ta sœur va à l’école, tu mangeras ton porte-plume »
(Dumont 1962 : 79). Majambo, un de nos interviewé l’a entendu de la bouche de son père en proie au
désespoir : « Mon fils, ne va pas à l’école ! Si tu vas à l’école, je sais que tu ne reviendras pas ! »
(Hatungimana 2005 : 77). Ces anecdotes relatées respectivement par René Dumont et par Majambo à
propos de l’Afrique des années 60, traduisent une réaction vraie et encore vivace actuellement au Burundi.
D’autre part, les formules de dédicace qu’on trouve fréquemment dans les travaux de fin d’études
universitaires expriment explicitement la difficile « intégration du nouveau » : « A mes parents qui m’ont envoyé
à l’école malgré moi… ». En effet, parents et enfants vivent la contradiction des statuts et des rôles de
l’enfant/main-d’œuvre (à la disposition de la famille) et celui de « l’enfant/futur diplômé et civilisé » qui,
physiquement mais aussi sur le plan culturel, s’éloignera de plus en plus des siens. Le premier statut est une
réalité traditionnelle intelligible. Tandis que le second constitue une problématique pour les parents et pour
toute la société. Pour le colonisateur, l’école constitue assurément un facteur de développement et « son
absence était vue comme la cause majeure du sous-développement » (Mwila Mavinga 1994 : 45).
Pour l’individu, le problème ne réside pas tellement dans l’acceptation de l’un ou de l’autre statut ; ses
choix sont par ailleurs très limités. Mais ses inquiétudes se situeraient plutôt dans la pression exercée par
cet environnement physique et humain dans lequel il évolue. Il voudrait profiter pleinement des apports de
la modernité mais il se heurte à bien des contraintes sociales. En effet, il existe des tabous et coutumes
qu’il ne peut pas et ne doit pas transgresser au risque de se voir mis en marge du groupe. Une rupture
s’établit entre le scolarisé et la communauté qui voit en lui un étranger qui reste éloigné des réalités
culturelles partagées par tous les membres de l’entité. Le scolarisé n’est-il pas couramment appelé
umuzungu, umunyabulaya, « le blanc(hi) », « le civilisé », « l’occidentalisé », « l’européen » ou « l’européanisé » ?
Cette appellation n’est pas gratuite. Le scolarisé subit des transformations en adoptant consciemment ou
inconsciemment la culture de l’école (occidentale). Parfois, voire souvent, l’échelle des valeurs culturelles
se trouve inversée et, partant, génère inévitablement des tiraillements.
Le « temps », par exemple, n’est plus évalué en fonction de l’ombre solaire, ni en fonction du « rythme
bovin » (moments où l’on conduit les vaches aux pâturages ou à l’abreuvoir, moments de leur retour à
l’étable, etc.) ; non plus, le chant du coq ou des oiseaux n’est plus le signal de réveil pour le scolarisé. Le
35
rythme des saisons structurait les activités de la vie rurale ; il a été remplacé par le rythme mécanique du
temps physique marqué par la montre et les sonneries diverses. Cependant, nous constatons que le «
temps ancien » est tellement incrusté, ancré dans la mentalité des gens que le contact avec une culture qui a
une gestion différente du temps ne suffit pas pour en modifier les habitudes. Dans le Burundi
contemporain, le principe de la demi-heure africaine est généralement admis et est couramment appliqué
au risque de contrarier les non avertis. L’école a donc bousculé ce temps social ancien mais ne l’a pas
occulté.
Tout comme le temps, « la notion d’espace » est culturellement vécue par les scolarisés dans des rapports
conflictuels. D’un côté, l’école lui offre un espace ouvert sur le monde par l’intermédiaire de la lecture et
de l’écriture ; de l’autre côté, il retrouve l’espace traditionnel d’accueil après la classe (pour l’élève du
primaire). Cet espace qui est celui de ses origines ne demande à l’individu que de s’y fondre pour ne faire
qu’un avec lui. Pour l’individu, le passage du premier milieu, plutôt « artificiel », « pré- fabriqué », au
second plus « habituel » et où il vit en symbiose avec l’élément naturel et « en convenance avec le monde »
(Robert 2004 : 114), ne peut pas se passer sans heurts. Cette évolution devient d’autant plus dramatique
que tous les membres de la société ne se situent pas, comme ce scolarisé, dans les deux espaces culturels.
Pendant que les uns vaquent par exemple dans les champs, un espace socio-économique où des buts
concrets sont poursuivis, le scolarisé, lui, explore un espace qui n’est rentable qu’à long terme ou pas du
tout (en tout cas dans le concret). Qu’on en soit conscient ou non, un conflit latent existe, dans ce cas
présent, entre cet individu qui évolue dans le nouvel « espace moderne » et les membres qui sont restés
dans leur espace socio-économique du monde rural. La continuité de la vie dans son harmonie avec les
hommes, la nature et les animaux, cette continuité qui inonde les pratiques sociales, s’est en quelque sorte
estompée. Naguère, les veillées nocturnes étaient animées par les danses et les chants, les contes et les
notes de la cithare. Aujourd’hui, ces veillées sont animées par la radio, la télévision (pour les citadins), la
lecture et autres loisirs nocturnes, issus de la technologie moderne.
Les relations humaines qui étaient basées sur l’échange de biens et de services ont été modifiées.
Dorénavant, elles sont liées à la circulation de la monnaie ; l’évolution des moyens de transports et de
télécommunications, et plus récemment encore, la vulgarisation du téléphone mobile et la communication
par Internet les a fait exploser. Les habitants des deux pôles du globe peuvent aujourd’hui établir des
contacts. Ce fait devient étrange, en l’occurrence pour le Burundais qui est habitué à voir les gens limiter
leurs relations à l’horizon de leur colline natale, lui qui ne connaît que « la marche à pied » comme moyen
de déplacement et la parole en face à face comme moyen de communication.
Face aux nouvelles valeurs que le mouvement de l’occidentalisation porte, les générations anciennes, celles
du monde rural en particulier, restent stupéfaites. Les plus jeunes s’en imprègnent avec un plus ou moins
grand enthousiasme.
4.0 Adultes et enfants. Entre utilité, futilité et puérilité

Le contact de la culture burundaise avec les cultures étrangères, particulièrement avec la culture
occidentale, génère des valeurs et des contre-valeurs qui influencent la vie sociale dans son ensemble. Les
générations adultes gardent alors à l’esprit, l’idée d’asphyxie et de destruction vis-à-vis de ce face-à-face
culturel. Ils ont peur de « perdre leur âme ». Une quelconque ouverture aux influences étrangères paraît
difficile pour eux. Elle est vécue très douloureusement. Par contre, les jeunes générations, quant à elles,
sont émerveillées par les nouveautés, par les changements ; elles sont attirées par « la civilisation ». Leur
conditionnement passe principalement à travers la formation scolaire. Le pouvoir informationnel et
coercitif du système scolaire fait que les parents (adultes) se trouvent désemparés face à une situation
dramatique pour eux.
Le conflit de génération se fait sentir dans tous les domaines. Dans les « Nouvelles Nations » du Tiers-
Monde (anciennement colonisées), « le conflit » est d’un nouveau genre : il engendre de forts tiraillements
au niveau de l’entité « ensemble social », ainsi qu’au niveau de l’entité « individu ».
Par exemple, quel parent de la campagne ne s’est pas indigné, jusqu’il y a quelques années seulement,
d’entendre, pour la première fois, son enfant parler cette langue baptisée ikinyamazuru (« le parlé-du-nez »),
le français. Ceci est aussi vrai pour le swahili introduit au départ par les Noirs islamisés venus de l’Est
africain et qui vivent sur les bords du lac Tanganyika (Sirven 1984 : 102). Avec l’entrée du Burundi dans la
36
Communauté Est Africaine en 2005, cette attitude est en phase de changement. En effet, l’introduction du
kiswahili et de l’anglais à l’école primaire au Burundi va assurément révolutionner les mentalités. Et
maintenant, quelle déception pour les parents dont l’enfant ne peut pas évoluer en umuzungu (le blanc)
accompli ! En effet, le scolarisé devenu fonctionnaire salarié devient l’espoir pour les membres de sa
famille restés en milieu rural. Ces derniers savent qu’ils peuvent compter sur lui pour satisfaire certains
besoins d’ordre financier. Il est craint et respecté pour ce rôle social qu’il joue.
Au niveau de la représentation du corps, « la tradition se vêt du moderne » : Avec l’habit importé, le corps
est passé de la situation de « non habillé » (ou à peine) à « couvert depuis les pieds jusqu’à la tête ». Cet état
de fait va se répercuter sur les activités corporelles artistiques. Si nous considérons le cas des danses, nous
réalisons que les danses du Burundi, celles des femmes essentiellement, ont perdu un peu de leur saveur à
cause des habits qui voilent tout le mouvement des pieds et des jambes. Le costume actuel, imvutano, fait à
base de pagnes en longs tissus (de coton ou de nylon), ne prend pas la forme du corps ; il s’en détache
plutôt. Toutefois, la manipulation de ces pagnes fait aussi partie du mouvement dansé pour certaines
évolutions. C’est sans doute cela qui constitue la dynamique de l’évolution des danses : le pouvoir de
s’adapter aux différentes périodes de la vie d’une société.
Les scolarisés ont payé un lourd tribut pour leur nouveau statut. Ils ont joué un rôle important dans la
dévalorisation des traditions au moment des indépendances. Mais, ce sont les mêmes scolarisés qui
procèdent à leur re-valorisation aujourd’hui. Ce n’est pas pour rien que lors des prestations de danses
traditionnelles, les petites filles qui font les danses féminines et les petits tambourinaires sont très
applaudis, comparés aux jeunes et aux adultes, même talentueux. Les petits « artistes-danseurs » sont
accueillis avec beaucoup d’émotion et d’enthousiasme, leurs erreurs de scènes deviennent « mignonnes ».
En fait, c’est pour le plaisir qu’éprouvent les parents de voir leur identité culturelle, l’identité burundaise
sauvegardée et leur mort culturelle évitée.
Le terrain de rencontre et d’entente entre la permanence et la continuité, la médiation des différents
conflits que vivent les générations différentes peut être assurée par les activités artistiques. La pratique
dansée peut, en particulier, jouer ce rôle de passerelle. En effet, au Burundi, la pratique dansée constitue
une des activités ludiques et de fête qui est acceptée dans les normes de pratique du monde adulte. Nous
savons que traditionnellement, la coutume interdit aux adultes le droit de jouer. « Le jeu est puérilité
tolérée pour l’enfant et futilité pour l’adulte » (Nahimana 1999 : 141-142). La pratique dansée se situe à la
fois dans le monde des adultes et celui des jeunes ; elle se trouve à la fois dans le monde de la tradition et
celui de la modernité ; elle est à cheval entre le temps passé et le temps présent.
La pratique dansée utilise un langage universel : le langage du corps comme outil. Cette caractéristique est
un atout qui en fait une activité de médiation valable et efficace entre les générations qui se suivent mais
qui ne se comprennent plus tellement. La pratique des danses pourrait transcender les situations
conflictuelles qui surviennent entre les générations, pourvu que son message soit livré dans un cadre
adéquat.
5.0 Entre rupture et changement, permanence et continuité

Au Burundi comme ailleurs dans d’autres sociétés acquises au « mouvement développementaliste »,
particulièrement dans les milieux urbains, la pratique dansée ne puise plus sa force et sa motivation dans sa
fonctionnalité. Son rôle social s’est glissé subtilement vers d’autres buts : les traditions dansées sont
maintenant orientées vers l’animation, le spectacle, les curiosités exotiques et touristiques. Dans les milieux
de la modernité, les danses ont été coupées des rituels qui leur donnaient leur sens : les fêtes où toute la
communauté partageait la joie de se retrouver ensemble, de rompre le train-train quotidien. En saison
sèche, lors de la transhumance par exemple, c’était une occasion de fêtes et de danses. On déclamait des
éloges à l’endroit des bovins et des bergers ; on fêtait les retrouvailles après plus de deux mois d’absence
au foyer (le temps que dure la saison sèche). De même, une danse des potiers « batwa » trouvait son sens
dans leurs techniques de survie dans la forêt et dans leur travail de l’argile. L’opinion populaire atteste bien
que la communauté des Batwa garde la réputation d’abriter d’excellents musiciens et d’excellents danseurs.
En fait, dans leur isolement, ils sont restés proches de leurs activités traditionnelles. C’est à cela que tient,
comme dirait G. Rouget (2004 : 27-28), leur « efficacité musicale » dans le domaine des croyances et dans
le « cadre socio-somatique » : « musiquer » traduit l’union du symbolique et du pratique.
37
Chez les agriculteurs, la bénédiction et la redistribution des semences par le mwami (roi) servaient de cadre
contextuel à diverses danses agraires des semailles. Si, aujourd’hui, de telles danses sont exécutées par les
scolarisés, elles ne sont pas motivées « du dedans » : elles sont désormais situées en dehors de leur
contexte originel, elles sont devenues théâtrales : il s’agit plus de faire du spectacle que de produire ou de
métaphoriser du sens. Quel sens se dégage par exemple des chants et danses de mariage lorsqu’ils sont
faits pour un spectacle monté sur scène et payant ? Nul doute que de cette intégration presque forcée de la
modernité se dégagent des moments forts et positifs. Ce sont essentiellement les jeunes qui en tirent les
bénéfices. Ces moments sont liés à la gestion du corps de l’individu selon des nouveaux rythmes et dans
un nouvel espace social. Quels sont, dès lors, les différents moments qui font la force de rencontre entre
les danses à la base, en milieu rural et cette forme théâtrale des danses rundi ?
5.1. Espace festif et modernité des danses burundaises

L’espace des danses burundaises étaient et (« est toujours », à l’intérieur du pays, dans les collines)
souplement géré par les danseurs. Ce cercle lâche pouvait se rétrécir ou s’élargir en fonction de la danse et
des danseurs en présence. Nous savons que les danseurs émergent de la foule par couples et dansent deux
à deux, exception faite des danses du rituel sacré de kubandwa où les danseurs sont pêle-mêle. C’est à l’aide
de petits pas glissés qu’ils aménagent leur espace de danse au milieu de la foule.
Parallèlement à cette gestion traditionnelle de l’espace dansé, il s’est créé, au niveau des programmes
scolaires, une pratique des danses intégrée à l’animation culturelle et au cours d’éducation physique et
sportive. Il existe aussi dans ce même cadre une transposition des danses traditionnelles sur « la scène »
dans les villes, particulièrement à Bujumbura la Capitale et à Gitega l’ancienne Capitale royale et ville
dauphine du Burundi ainsi que dans les milieux scolaires. C’est une façon pour certaines associations sans
but lucratif de chercher un financement à l’aide des représentations de danses. Celles-ci mêlent des
numéros de « danses modernes » ou plutôt des imitations de « clips vidéo » de la télévision et autres
variétés avec des danses traditionnelles, devenues folkloriques par cette circonstance.
Les danseurs les plus enthousiastes sont des enfants de l’enseignement primaire autant au niveau des
danses à l’école que dans les associations. Une manière sans doute de correspondre aux nouveaux modes
de vie communautaires en milieu urbain1 et en milieu scolaire !
Dans les écoles secondaires aussi sont organisées des fêtes ponctuelles où les danses traditionnelles
trouvent une place parmi une multitude d’autres danses étrangères en vogue, copiées à la télévision ou en
Occident par l’un ou l’autre au cours de son voyage.
Le constat général est que les encadreurs de ces groupes ne sont pas nécessairement des pédagogues
spécialisés dans l’enseignement des danses. Ce sont, pour la plupart, des personnes qui ont une maîtrise
des pas de danses de leur région pour les avoir exécutées depuis l’enfance et qui les font passer aux autres
par le système de « l’imitation du modèle ». Le résultat de l’apprentissage donne une image de danses
édulcorées par manque de l’émotion originelle et de qualités pédagogiques. De temps en temps, on
remarque quelques variations spatiales qui sont motivées par la préparation d’une représentation festive.
Ces remarques concernent particulièrement les danses des femmes. Il en est autrement des danses des
hommes qui relèvent plutôt du professionnalisme. Ainsi, pour la transmission, certains chefs
d’établissement des écoles pour garçons invitent parfois des spécialistes des danses d’hommes : ingoma (les
tambours) et intoore (les parades guerrières) sont les plus prisées. Viennent ensuite les danses acrobatiques
d’agasimbo et umuyebe - « la danse des grelots » - qui sont moins vulgarisées, donc moins connues en milieu
scolaire. De ce fait, intoore et ingoma sont devenues populaires, tandis que les danses agasimbo et umuyebe se
limitent aux écoles implantées dans les régions d’origine de ces danses.
Pour ces responsables, il est souvent question d’une volonté de vouloir partager ce qu’ils ont vécu eux-
mêmes dans leur enfance et qui leur a laissé des souvenirs agréables. Le cadre de pratique des danses invite
au dialogue, au partage et à la communication, contribuant ainsi, dans la plupart des cas, à réduire les
tensions entre les jeunes scolaires qui sont inhérentes à la période d’adolescence. Mais aussi, ces
responsables scolaires savent que ces danses appellent au dépassement de soi. Notons à l’occasion la force
38
musculaire qu’exigent les sauts lors de la danse des tambours ingoma, la souplesse que nécessite
l’apprentissage des danses intoore. Quant aux figures acrobatiques de base de la danse agasimbo, elles exigent
une souplesse particulière du haut du corps pour leur réalisation effective. D’où découlent la joie et
l’intérêt que font naître l’apprentissage du geste dans toute sa pureté. Ces danses procurent également un
état de bien être général. Au cours de leurs exhibitions, certains danseurs (notamment ceux des tambours)
se rapprochent même de l’état de transe.
La notion de l’espace fait appel à celle du temps qui, elle aussi, a subi d’importantes mutations au cours de
l’histoire des Burundais.
5.2. Le temps en danse

Le temps est une réalité complexe. En paraphrasant l’idée de Edward Twitchell Hall (1984 : 23), nous
dirons qu’ « il existe un large écart entre le temps tel qu’il est vécu et le temps tel qu’il est conçu ». Ainsi
distingue-t-il le temps biologique qu’il définit comme la variation périodique d’énergie de l’activité
intellectuelle et sociale (exemple de l’alternance des saisons ou du jour et de la nuit). Ce temps est
inconscient ; le temps physique, mesuré, conscient, qui reflète un certain ordre dans l’univers ; le temps
individuel qui porte sur la façon dont un individu perçoit le temps dans différents contextes, cadres, états
émotionnels ou psychologiques. Ce dernier aspect du temps tel que traité par Hall mérite que nous nous y
attardions pour sa relation avec les danseurs burundais. Quelle est sa structuration ? Comment est-il utilisé
et quelles sont les conséquences qui en découlent ? En bref, comment le danseur burundais gère-t-il le
temps ?
Pour le Burundais, le temps est géré dans un rythme « polychrone » (Hall 1984 : 56-72). Il constitue une
réalité plastique, flexible à l’opposé du « temps occidental » qui est plutôt une réalité tangible qu’on peut «
gagner », « créer », « passer », « tuer » ou « gaspiller ». Le Burundais contemporain, le scolaire en particulier,
se trouve à cheval entre les deux formes de gestion du temps. Il doit par conséquent apprendre à s’adapter
au « temps moderne », tout en veillant à ne pas perdre son identité.
Pour le temps tel qu’appliqué en danse, le temps exprimé en valeur rythmique de durée, les danses et les
activités en milieu rural en sont imprégnées. Et c’est par un contact permanent avec ces rythmes qu’on
peut se permettre de dire que tel « a le rythme dans la peau », à condition qu’il en soit conscient. Or, les
individus issus des milieux urbains et dont l’éducation a été assurée dans des conditions matérielles mises
en place par la technologie moderne, autrement dit « les enfants du berceau (et de la poussette pour ceux qui
sont nés en Europe) » ont eu peu de contact avec les « activités à rythme ». Le cadre de vie moderne leur
offre d’autres modes de vie et d’expression. Pour eux, l’expérience rythmique sera le résultat d’un éveil
d’une certaine curiosité et d’un apprentissage à travers le mouvement. Tandis que pour ceux qui sont
restés longtemps en contact avec le milieu rural, le rythme naît de l’intérieur ; il naît d’une certaine
émotion. Il n’est pas extérieur à eux.
Parler de rythme ici revient également à mettre en évidence l’importance que revêt la pulsation dans « le
chant de danse burundais ». Le rythme, une des composantes du temps dansé, est scandé en suivant les
chants tels qu’ils sont entonnés par les meneurs. Simples dans l’ensemble, cela suppose que les accents
sont sur les temps forts, ils sont parfois déplacés pour se mettre sur les temps faibles suivant les
battements des mains qui donnent le rythme des pas exécutés.
Il faut noter que les rythmes sont très répétitifs autant que le sont les pas de danses. Ces derniers diffèrent
parfois pour une même danse selon les partenaires.
Au regard des différents rythmes, ce qui fait leur particularité repose plus sur l’accentuation que sur la
division du tempo. Les accents qui donnent en même temps la pulsation au rythme, sont placés de sorte à
faire ressortir une musicalité spécifique aux chants burundais si on devait les comparer aux autres chants
africains ou européens.
5.3. Le corps en danse

Dès la naissance, le corps de l’enfant est l’objet de préoccupation de la part de la mère. Ce corps qu’on
enduit de graisse pour le rendre tendre et souple, ce corps que la mère observe avec minutie pour mieux le
39
connaître ou tout simplement pour le plaisir du contact, ce corps-là s’imprègne vite des rythmes
vibratoires. D’ailleurs, aussitôt que les muscles du cou arrivent à tenir la tête droite, l’enfant exécute « ses
premières danses ». On aime cajoler le bébé en lui faisant faire de petits sautillements « gusimbagiza ». La
maman ou toute autre personne de l’entourage de l’enfant fait sautiller ce dernier qui reprend appui sur les
cuisses de l’adulte. Dès le tout jeune âge, l’enfant est régulièrement initié aux rythmes par pulsation des
jambes, et à la musicalité.
Ainsi, ces éléments prennent naissance dans son corps, et non de l’extérieur ; toutefois, de temps en
temps, on l’accompagne aussi par un chant. Lentement mais sûrement, le petit intériorise tout. Dès que
l’enfant peut se tenir debout, on le verra monter le bras, faire des tentatives d’impulsion (flexion -
extension des jambes par les genoux et les chevilles) pour réclamer « sa danse ». C’est sans doute le résultat
de cette pratique de début d’enfance, et bien d’autres activités rythmées, qui font dire à certains théoriciens
et poètes que « les Africains ont le rythme dans le sang ». Ces activités à rythme constituent la vie même de
l’enfant. Tout ce qu’il voit, tout ce qu’il fait, tout ce qui passe par ses sens est rythme. Et ce rythme s’inscrit
dans sa mémoire corporelle depuis qu’il est dans le ventre de sa mère et quand il est porté sur le dos
durant la petite enfance. Plus tard, quand il sera plus autonome, les travaux des champs et d’élevage
auxquels l’enfant est appelé à participer ne feront que concrétiser cette notion de vie rythmée et rendre
indélébile son imprégnation.
Jusqu’ici, nous avons évoqué l’enfant qui est encore à l’âge des manipulations posturales et motrices. Leur
but indirect est celui d’acheminer l’enfant vers sa vie adulte. La transmission du mouvement artistique ne
sera effective que dans la mesure où l’on en prend conscience. Un danseur est reconnu comme tel grâce à
la conscience qu’il a de son corps lorsque celui-ci décrit des trajets ou figures, en statique ou en évolution.
Le corps constitue le siège de tous les éléments techniques utilisés par la danse. C’est le corps qui se
déploie dans l’espace (en totalité ou par segments) en dégageant une certaine énergie selon un certain
rythme ; c’est ce corps encore qui indique les références de la personnalité d’un danseur et de son style de
danse en lui assignant des caractéristiques spécifiques (jazz ou moderne, funk ou rap, classique ou
contemporaine, africaine ou indienne, etc.). C’est aussi à travers le corps que la danse exprimera les
notions de poids en rapport avec la qualité du mouvement dansé, les formes corporelles (ou volumes),
l’émotion dramatique ou toute autre forme d’émotion.
Le mouvement dansé du Burundais n’est pas encore arrivé à cette conscience, il est encore fonctionnel ou
imitation. Le corps est le siège de nos émotions. Les danses traditionnelles hors de leurs contextes
n’offrent plus au danseur la reconnaissance du corps dans toute sa sensualité, dans tous ses sens. Sur les
collines, le contact permanent avec la nature assure au corps une grande part de son équilibre relationnel.
Il contribue à affiner les sens. En milieu rural, l’odorat est aiguisé. Les ruraux reconnaissent ainsi l’odeur de
la terre, des plantes. Le contact se fait aussi par le toucher. Le sens kinesthésique est constamment mis à
rude épreuve par le relief accidenté des collines. Tandis que les danses constituent le prolongement de
cette vie dans la nature. Quand les filles ont glané suffisamment de bois mort ou d’herbe tendre, elles
cherchent un endroit assez bien aménagé et exécutent quelques pas de danse. Cet exercice tient lieu de
répétition des danses à exhiber éventuellement lors d’une fête.
Quand le corps est en fête, l’individu s’exprime par « ses tripes ». Il est vrai, comme le note bien à propos
Françoise Loux (1979 : 114), qu’on reproche souvent aux fêtes actuelles d’être des spectacles, de se donner
à voir plutôt qu’à participer. Les fêtes actuelles ont perdu une part de cette joie collective. Nous
comprenons que les contextes et les mobiles de fêtes ont changé. Une chose est sûre, c’est que la fête,
qu’elle soit rurale ou motivée par une représentation théâtrale, constitue un moment indispensable de
rupture de la routine de la quotidienneté, un temps de détente et d’évasion. Pour le danseur en spectacle, la
participation à une représentation publique constitue une grande motivation. Une occasion lui est offerte
pour communiquer son émotion au public. C’est cela aussi le rôle des danses : pouvoir exprimer par le
corps tout ce qu’on ne peut (veut) pas traduire par la parole.
6.0 Conclusion
L’activité dansée représente une partie de la vie culturelle des Burundais vivant en dehors de leur contexte
culturel d’origine. Le nouveau milieu devient comme un arbre à palabre sous lequel ils peuvent se
rencontrer et se ressourcer. Mais à l’intérieur du pays, dans les collines, ces manifestations étaient et restent
liées à une certaine philosophie et à une dynamique de la vie quotidienne partagée entre la permanence et
40
des ruptures sociales ; elles ont trait à des croyances et des architectures qui constituent des piliers de la
société dont les membres partagent un passé commun.
Est-ce que le sens des chants de danse change dans le contexte culturel autre que le contexte d’origine ?
Quel sens pouvons-nous donner aux différents rituels qui se passent en milieu urbain ?
Une confrontation de nos connaissances de la tradition avec les enregistrements déjà existants nous mène
à un constat. A l’écoute des chants issus de notre enregistrement sur terrain, nous constatons que les
mélodies ne changent pas dans le contexte culturel non originel. Néanmoins, nous constatons une
adaptation subtile des chants au contexte festif du moment. Mais également, la configuration acteurs-
public assis fait retomber l’enthousiasme lors de certaines représentations structurées. Ce n’est plus,
comme dirait Nkulikiyinka (2002 : 23), « le théâtre traditionnel de participation où le public est tout à la
fois spectateur et acteur, chanteur et danseur ».
Grâce à une participation active sur le terrain, nous avons pu étayer la formulation de notre hypothèse
forte. Cependant, il est clair que le seul outil d’observation s’est avéré réducteur. Un outil complémentaire
était donc nécessaire. Ainsi nous avons eu recours à l’entretien, outil qui nous a permis de tirer des
conclusions que nous estimons pertinentes. Ils concernent les problèmes identitaires que peut occasionner
le fait d’être déraciné de son milieu culturel d’origine. Et c’est à ce niveau que le sens et les significations de
la pratique des danses d’origine se sont révélés dans toute leur profondeur et leur importance.
A l’issu de l’approche descriptive du vécu des Burundais issus du fruit de la modernité, tel qu’ils le
racontent eux-mêmes, nous avons constaté qu’ils vivent une situation fort complexe selon les différentes
catégories d’acteurs et selon leurs motivations respectives. Le milieu associatif constitue un cadre où les
uns et les autres, en fonction des besoins ponctuels ou à long terme, trouvent l’expression adaptée à leur
situation. Pour les uns, l’urgence est à l’expression nostalgique des souvenirs dansés. D’autres y trouvent
un cadre d’apprentissage de l’élément symbolique dansé. Mais aussi, donner de son temps et de son
expérience aux autres, plus particulièrement aux plus jeunes que soi, devient un plaisir qui conduit vers
l’épanouissement.
Références
Albarello L. (1997). Pratiques et méthodes de recherche en sciences humaines, Paris, Armand Colin.
Camara, S. et B. Traimond. (1996). « Entretien avec Sory Camara » in : L’ethnologie indigène. Cahiers
ethnologiques, Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux II, 24ème année, n° 18, Presses Universitaires de
Bordeaux ; pp. 49-56.
Dumont, R. (1962). L’Afrique noire est mal partie, Paris, Edition du Seuil.
Feltz, G. (1987). « L’impact missionnaire : au carrefour des mentalités rurale et d’une modernité » in :
Université du Burundi/Centre des Recherches Africaines (C.R.A.), Questions sur la paysannerie au Burundi,
Actes des la Table Ronde sur ‘‘Sciences sociales et humaines et développement rural ’’ (Bujumbura, du 7 au 11 Mai
1985), Bujumbura, pp. 229-329.
Hall, E. T. (1984). La danse de la vie, Paris, Seuil.
Hatungimana, S. (2005). Les danses rundi en terre étrangère. Une étude menée auprès des Barundi de Belgique, Thèse
de Doctorat, Louvain-la-Neuve.
Kilani, M. (1992) (1ère Edition, 1989). Introduction à l’anthropologie, Lausanne, Editions Lausanne, 2ème édition
revue et corrigée/Payot.
Laplantine, F. (1987). Clefs pour l’anthropologie, Paris, Editions Seghers.
Loux, F. (1979). Pratiques et savoirs populaires. Le corps dans les sociétés traditionnelles, Paris, Berger-Levrault.
Mayer, R. (2000). Méthodes de recherche en intervention sociale, Montréal, Paris, Gaëtan Morin Editeur.
Mwila, M. (1994). « L’école en Afrique facteur de développement ou illusion ? » in : Institut de
Philosophie, Philosophie et vie. Actes des premières journées philosophiques de Boma, du 26 au 29 Mai 1993,
Boma, Grand Séminaire « Abbé Ngidi » de Boma / L’Institut.
Nahimana, S. (1999). Techniques du corps et développement. La pratique et les représentations sociales du sport au
Burundi, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Thèse à la carte, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
Nkulikiyinka, J. (2002). Introduction à la danse rwandaise traditionnelle, Tervuren (Belgique), Musée Royal
d’Afrique Centrale, Vol. 166.
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Peretz, H. (1980). « Grille d’observation » in : La méthode sociologique, l’observation, Paris, la Découverte, pp.
84-85.
Robert, A. (2004). « En convenance avec le monde », in : L’Afrique au secours de l’Occident, Paris, Les
Editions de l’Atelier / Les Editions Ouvrières, pp. 114-116.
Rouget, G. (2004). « L’efficacité musicale : musiquer pour survivre. Le cas des pygmées » in : L’Homme,
Revue Française d’Anthropologie, n° 171-172, juillet - décembre, pp. 27-52.
Sirven, P. (1984). La sous urbanisation et les villes du Rwanda et du Burundi, Thèse, Université de Bordeaux III.
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L. Mtahabwa. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1(1) 2009, 43-54
Early Childhood Cultural Development in Tanzania: Reflections from Key Government

Documents
Lyabwene Mtahabwa
lrwr2003@udom.ac.tz
The University of Dodoma,
Abstract
This study examined the extent to which the Government of Tanzania was addressing cultural development in young
children. There is an abundance of literature in early childhood that provides evidence for the critical role early childhood
education plays in the development of specific cultural values in children. Despite this reality, analyses of the Cultural
Policy, Child Development Policy, Community Development Policy, Education and Training Policy and Tanzania
Development Vision 2025 as key Government documents revealed that early childhood in Tanzania has received little
cultural attention to the extent that specific cultural values and future image of the nation can hardly be predicted. The
article concludes that, left unchecked, such a situation could lead to disappearance of the nation’s cultural identity and
consequently disappearance of the cherished peace, stability and unity. The article recommends that delineation of specific
cultural values in key Government documents and their development in children’s early lives is crucial.
1.0 Introduction
The purpose of this article was to analyze Government policy documents in Tanzania so as to determine
the extent to which these documents envisaged cultural values and norms sought to be developed in the
early years of children’s lives. Such an analysis could make policy-makers, curriculum developers, early
childhood educators and caregivers aware of the quality of the current policy documents based on the
cultural dimension for early childhood. This awareness would ultimately inform policy and curriculum
development as well as provide directions in terms of child rearing and teaching for development of
specific cultural values in young children.
There is probably no greater function of education in society than one that seeks to perpetuate not only
social existence but also existence of a social group bearing specific cultural traits. These specific cultural
traits evolve as members of a social group engage in interactions and struggle to adjust to internal and
external stimuli thereby leading to development of a unique culture. Early childhood signifies the most
sensitive stage in the process of human development where the roots of certain personalities germinate
and grow eventually leading to creation of a nation with particular image. This being the case, it can safely
be argued that the propensity of the social group to continue its existence while maintaining particular
cultural traits relies on the education of young children.
There are several definitions of culture. The two definitions I find useful in this study are those by Schein
(1992) and Ratner (2002). Schein (1992, p. 12) defines culture as:
A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external
adaptation and internal integration that have worked well enough to be considered valid and,
therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation
to those problems.
Ratner (2002, p. 1) provides the following definition for culture:
Culture is a system of enduring behavioral and thinking patterns that are created, adopted, and
promulgated by a number of individuals jointly. These patterns are social (supraindividual) rather
than individual, and they are artifactual rather than natural.
From these two definitions of culture, the basic cultural elements or features can be outlined. In order for
any social group to claim existence of culture unique to it, it must have explicit set of enduring, shared,
43
basic assumptions developed over time in the entire process of day-to-day life struggles over nature and
nurture. In other words, a social group must have basic assumptions related to ways of interacting with
both nature and nurture and these assumptions must be basic, life-long and shared. The cultural life of any
specific society can be easily observed from what the societal members attach high value, consider or
believe to be the right way of doing certain things.
The prevalence of specific cultural values and norms in any particular country signifies its uniqueness and
facilitates creation of a national image. Such values serve as guide for citizens’ decisions and actions and at
the same time are used to judge people’s general ways of life. When these cultural values and norms are
clearly stated and included in Government documents such as social policies, curricula and other
important documents for instance strategic plans or action plans, citizens internalize them. People speak
of them as their own particularly when such values and norms are decided upon by people themselves.
These norms and values can be used to distinguish, not to segregate, natives from foreigners until
foreigners have undergone sufficient enculturation process. This refers to “the process of learning how to
be a competent member of a specific culture or group” (Masemann, 2003, p. 116). They permeate people’s
ways of perceiving, thinking and behaving (Schein, 1992). They govern people’s intentions to do certain
things in certain ways (Anscombe, 1957; Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005; Triandis, 1995).
Apart from cultural values and norms, existence of a clear educational philosophy has been seen by some
scholars as an expression of culture of a particular society. Basically, philosophy refers to belief systems of
a social group. Masemann (2003) cites educators such as Comenius, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Steiner,
Montesori and Dewey to exemplify the connectedness between educational philosophy and culture. In this
connection, it could be argued that any social group with well-established norms and values will essentially
have its educational philosophy clearly stated and implemented.
Cultural norms and values develop early in children’s life through a process known as socialization.
Socialization is “the intentional design of psychologically salient environments for children’s
development” (LeVine, 2003, p. 1). It has been described as “the most important influence on human
development” [and thus] “should be at the center of our attention in the study of human development”
(Weisner, 2003, p. xi). Some authorities view socialization as part and parcel of education because
“education has a cultural component and is not simply an information transfer” (Masemann, 2003, p. 116).
Therefore, at the core of the educational process is socialization and this starts in early childhood through
in the home setting and other socialization agents such as early childhood centers. This is why LeVine
(2003) observes that children meet cultural priorities during their preschool years. One of the main goals
of socialization is to develop in the child cultural competences to enable him or her participate
appropriately in a given culture according to set cultural values (LeVine, 2003).
If children meet cultural priorities during their preschool years and that the process through which they
meet these priorities is education or socialization, it is important to raise basic questions regarding the
education of young children in Tanzania. This study intended to answer the following questions: (1) What
specific cultural values exist in key Government documents? (2) How are these cultural values presented in
the documents subjected to analyses and what does that manner of presentation suggest in relation to
young children’s education?
2.0 Early Childhood Cultural Development in Different Countries in the World

In the contemporary world characterized by the globalization process, the quest for learning from what
takes place elsewhere in the world is probably more important than ever before. A cross-cultural study for
this matter is crucial. To develop a better understanding of how different countries and societies across
the world address cultural values in relation to early childhood, the USA (North America) and China
(Asia) are studied in this article. The USA and China are well known countries for their great achievements
in the general socio-economic development. The economic, scientific and technological advancements
attained by these countries are undeniably good and one would like to understand the cultural position
taken by these countries in relation to early childhood. While there could be other countries in the world
in general and Africa in particular that epitomize early childhood cultural development, the author believes
that the USA and China probably offer the most demonstrable example in this area. Such a cross-cultural
analysis illuminates on the issue at hand and is not meant for comparison.
44
I will use a guest pack I received from Concordia College, Minnesota, during my four-month exchange
programme from February to May 2005 to illustrate the issue at hand. This exchange programme involved
students and staff from university of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and those from Concordia College. In
that visit, I was given a guest pack. One of the materials in the guest pack contained a 3-page document on
which cultural norms were delineated. The cultural norms are appended (See Appendix 1).
One key message from this document is that Americans have a clear set of cultural norms. Whoever visits
America needs to understand them and make effort to live them through a process of enculturation.
These cultural norms are developed early in children’s lives both at home and school as exemplified in
social interactions between adults and children and among children themselves (See Holt, 2007).
China is perhaps the best example of how specific cultural tendencies can be delineated and developed in
children. The classic Four Great Books used in China are not only famous in the Chinese context but also
outside it. The Dream of the Red Chamber published in the 18th century by Cao Xueqin; the Romance of the
Three Kingdoms published in the 14th century by Luo Guanzhong; the Journey to the West published in 1950s
by Wu Cheng’en and the Water Margin by Shi Nai’an (undated) have been used in China for centuries as
sources of important cultural values and norms. These books, prepared in form of novels, contain
different stories each intended to foster specific cultural traits in children. Each child is encouraged to read
these books to the extent that the four books have almost become obligatory.
This article does not intend to recite the content of the novels, but rather outline the key cultural values
and norms contained in each of these books. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, storytelling is used to
create a range of personalities reflecting the Confucius values. One key value in the Confucius philosophy
is loyalty to one’s superiors and family. Loyalty is used as yardstick to distinguish respectful from immoral
people. In the contemporary communist China, the phrase saving faces is still common. It is considered
disrespectful for a young people to rebuke or criticize an adult, one’s parents or leader in the open. One
has to find better ways to correct a superior figure. Loyalty is also a central theme in the Water Margin.
The Dream of the Red Chamber uses the Buddhist and Taoist religious perspectives to discuss, among other
things, the issue of enlightenment. It implicitly emphasizes the need for meditation for one to find
meaning in this world. More importantly, it encourages people to persevere in the search for truth and
good life. In the contemporary communist China, it is believed that a hardworking person never dies poor.
Hard working spirit could be one of the most important factors that have contributed to rapid socio-
economic development in China. Hardworking has become the culture of the Chinese. Preschool and
school children are taught to work hard in order to live good life in future. Similarly, in the Journey to the
West, the Buddhist and Taoist religious groups provide a spiritual approach to enlightenment. There is
also an emphasis on brevity. Brevity is viewed as an important cultural value for every person. It is
particularly critical when it comes to protecting masters or any person in power. Essentially, every child is
expected to develop brevity and have the courage to fight against any invader of the society.
3.0 Theoretical Framework

In this section, I will use Montessori and Vygotsky’s theories to illustrate the sensitivity of early childhood
to learning and development of cultural values in children. While Montessori (1870 – 1952) developed a
theory that signifies the sensitivity of early childhood, Vygotsky (1978) in his Socio-cultural theory explains
how cultural values, norms and beliefs develop in children. When these theories are studied in relation to
each other, they provide a holistic understanding of the cultural dimension in early childhood. To analyze
the documents fully, the interpretive perspective is adopted. This goes beyond description of data as
Patton (2002, p. 480) argues:
Interpretation means attaching significance to what was found, making sense of findings, offering
explanations, drawing conclusions, extrapolating lessons, making inferences, considering
meanings, and otherwise imposing order on an unruly but surely patterned world.
Montessori (1870-1952) divided development of a human being into 3 stages: absorbent mind
(conception to 6 years), childhood (6 to 12 years) and adolescence (12 to 18 years) (Isaacs, 2007). The
absorbent mind is viewed as consisting of 2 phases: unconscious absorbent mind (birth to 3) and
conscious absorbent mind (3 to 6). She characterised the absorbent mind into 3 broad features reflecting
embryonic stages: physical embryo (embryo formation), spiritual embryo (post-natal emergence of child’s
45
uniqueness) and social embryo (internalisation of socio-cultural conventions). Basically, the absorbent
mind as the term suggests, is the developmental period characterised by massive “absorption” of
information from the environment as a result of the child’s innate curiosity (which Montessori termed
“horme”) to make sense of the world around him or her.
The unconscious absorbent mind involves children “absorbing indiscriminately from the environment that
surrounds them” while the conscious absorbent mind reflects the “child’s ability to organise and classify
information, experiences and concepts” (Isaacs, 2007, p. 11). Montessori saw that conscious absorbent
mind represents the critical periods associated with movement, language acquisition, acquaintance to
routines, small details awareness, sense refinement and internalisation of cultural norms, values and beliefs.
It is therefore in this stage where much of cultural development takes place in young children. The
practical implication of this theorization is that early childhood programmes have high potential for
learning and internalization of specific cultural values by children.
Montessori described the childhood stage as characterised by children’s keenness, eagerness and desire for
belonging. She maintained that this was the stage where children acquire the cultural aspects of life. In
adolescence, Montessori theorised that people’s behaviour becomes turbulent, unpredictable and volatile
(Isaacs, 2007). She further sub-divided this stage into puberty (12 to 13 years) and adolescence (15 to 18
years). Early childhood programmes in Tanzania cater for children from birth to eight. Hence, this article
is confined to this age cohort.
This study uses Montessori’s theoretical stance of children’s acquisition of cultural norms, values and
beliefs during the conscious absorbent mind in relation to what the Government policy documents state.
In other words, attempt is made to link policy-related statements to Montessori’s theorization of the need
to develop cultural values and norms during the conscious absorbent mind stage.
3.1 Socio-cultural Theory

The socio-cultural theory or cultural-historical theory was pioneered by the Russian psychologist Lev
Vygotsky (1896 – 1934). Essentially, this theory seeks to describe and explain children’s development
using the social, cultural and historical milieu. Instead of studying child development by focusing on the
child himself or herself, Vygotsky posits that child development could best be understood by studying the
socio-cultural and historical contexts in which the child is raised. This is the essence of the book Mind and
Society by Vygotsky (1978).
By studying the context in which the child grows for purposes of understanding child development,
Vygotsky meant that children become what the society wants them to be. Children’s cognitive, social,
emotional and physical capabilities are largely a result of the interactions between the child and the general
culture of a society including cultural activities, concepts and artifacts of a particular society (See for
example Berk & Winsler, 1995; Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 2005; Göncü , 1999; Nsamenang, 1992; Rogoff,
2003; Ratner, 2002; Thorne, 2005). For this reason, child development is essentially the child’s ability to
participate in cultural activities (Rogoff, 2003).
The notion of interactions between the child and his or her environment as a key factor in child
development is best explained in the socio-cultural theory. Using what he termed the General Genetic Law of
Cultural Development; Vygotsky posited that the child’s cultural development occurs at two planes. He
named these planes as: 1) the social or interpersonal plane and 2) the individual or psychological plane
(Berk & Winsler, 1995). These two strands are synonymous with the concepts of internalisation and
externalisation respectively as explained in cultural mediation. In cultural mediation, Sanders (2005, p. 192)
maintains:
All individuals hold beliefs and views about their world and these comprise the mental models of
the individual. Mental models are formed by two processes: internalisation, in which they are
taken from the culture within which they are an integral part; and externalisation, in which they
are actively developed by the constant interaction of the individual with their surrounding
environment.
In this article, the General Genetic Law of Cultural Development is used as a yardstick to assess the extent
to which the policy documents subjected to analyses align with this theoretical position. More specifically,
46
the education and care giving processes reflected in these documents are examined along the theoretical
view of internalization of specific cultural values. Hence, in the analyses, there is a focus on delineation,
presentation and emphasis given to early childhood cultural development.
In any society, aspects of life considered as normal (cultural norms) or valued (cultural values) help
develop in children attitudes towards the various aspects of life and general human conduct. The concept
of attitude is one of the three fundamentals of education; others being knowledge and skills. This concept
encompasses a number of dispositions such as interest, motivation, tolerance of ambiguity, confidence,
perseverance, honesty, love, collaboration and hardworking spirit (Fisher, 2001). As argued earlier in this
article, these cultural values develop early in children’s lives. Trying to develop them at a later stage other
than early childhood could be considered as less successful.
While development of knowledge and skills has been found to be the focus of most education systems
right from early childhood, the aspect of attitude has been rather peripheral. Enough literature exists to
substantiate this argument as learnt from several authors researching on Cognitive Affective Learning
(CAL) (See for example, Danaher et al., 2008; Hall, 2005; Hart, 2007; Owen-Smith, 2004; Zajonc, 2006).
While this trend seems persistent, it has been argued that an attitude and character development in general
is the most important element in the education reform (Danaher, 2008). Quoting President Bush’s
statement, Danaher (2008, p. 13) notes: “We’ve got to do more than just teach our children skills and
knowledge. We also want to make sure they’re kind and decent, compassionate and responsible, honest
and self-disciplined.” It is not clear yet how the key Government documents pertaining development of
human resource in Tanzania address the issue of character development at early childhood level.
3.2 Methods
Discourse analysis techniques were used to discern cultural values intended to develop citizens with good
characters as well as to learn any pitfalls, contradictions, disjunctions and discrepancies associated with the
delineation and manner of presentation of these values (Kress, 1989). Along with discourse analysis, content
analysis was deployed. Content analysis refers to “the collection and analysis of data based on close
observation of documents” (Gall, et al., 2005, pp. 135 – 136).
Five key documents were analyzed for this purpose: the Education and Training Policy (Ministry of Education
and Culture - MOEC, 1995); the Child Development Policy (Ministry of Community Development, Gender
and Children – MCDGC, 2008); the Cultural Policy (MOEC, 1997), Community Development Policy - CDP
(Ministry of Community Development, Women Affairs and Children – MCDWAC, 1996), and the
Tanzania Development Vision 2025 - TDV 2025 (URT, 2000). The selection of these documents was based
on the belief that such documents would provide cultural information deemed important by the
Government. A particular focus was on how the Government considered early childhood as a crucial
stage for cultural development.
Finally, the book Freedom and Socialism: A Selection from Writings & Speeches, 1965 – 1967 (Nyerere, 1968) was
examined to provide a link between earlier Tanzania’s (then Tanganyika) policy position vis-à-vis
contemporary policy statements. Essentially, the book establishes a philosophical grounding to the five
key documents subjected to analyses.
The analyses of these documents were solely done by the author. This would signify some kind of biasness
in data interpretation caused by subjectivity. However, the author bracketed all his previous
understandings, beliefs and assumptions in order to be as objective as possible. As is always the case with
qualitative data, objectivity is hard to achieve and only “justified subjectivity” can be claimed (Auerbach &
Silverstein, 2003). Justified subjectivity refers to researcher’s explicitness on making the text transparent,
communicable and coherent (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003). However, notwithstanding this effort, the
author’s academic and professional backgrounds could still influence data interpretation.
Instead of using an analysis checklist containing the main issues (cultural values in this study) as guide for
analysis, the author decided to maintain an open mind so as to let specific cultural values unfold in the
course of analysis. Ideally, interpretive qualitative researchers do not attempt to predetermine variables
(Bogdan & Biklen, 2003).
47
4.0 Results
Existing Cultural Values

The Cultural Policy (CP) was developed in 1997 and has 7 chapters. These include Language, Arts and
Crafts, Cultural Heritage and Management as well as Recreation. Others are: Culture and Community
Participation, Education and Training and the Management and Financing of Cultural Activities. The
policy generally avoids specifying cultural values and norms. Where it does so, there is a tendency of
viewing cultural elements rather vaguely. For example the words customs and traditions are treated as
though they were different from culture. In essence, customs and traditions are elements within culture.
Other words used in the document include ethics, moral values and national values.
While the document mentions customs and traditions as crucial for national development, it reveals that
these cultural elements are currently not clear. This is learnt from the statement that “Good customs and
traditions shall be identifies, enhanced and utilized in moulding a peaceful, respectable and harmonious
nation” (p. 16). This statement is made under chapter 6 – Education and Training, section titled “Bringing
up Children”. Although families, religious institutions and other programmes serving children are
recognized as important in child upbringing, it remains unclear how these institutions could raise children
successfully in the absence of delineated traditions and customs.
Section 6.1.9 shows that the incorporation of “Tanzanian values” (p. 17) in curricula shall be for “school-
going age” (p. 17) children. This essentially puts young children below 7 years (the age set for enrolment in
primary school in Tanzania) out of the plan for learning Tanzanian values. The CP assigns a special
function to religious organizations. It states that “Religious instruction shall be part and parcel of child up-
bringing so as to emphasize moral values, respect for work, human dignity and the spirit of tolerance” (p.
17). The policy, however, does not stipulate which religious instruction it refers to bearing in mind that
constitutionally Tanzania Government has no religion. More importantly, it is not clear whether religious
instruction would include young children before primary school.
Chapter 7 – National Values and Identity - mentions pre-primary education in the learning of the National
Anthem. Pre-primary children are required to sing the National Anthem every school day. However, this
seemingly important chapter on cultural development fails to delineate the cultural values considered
important for national identity. There is much effort made to list artifacts such as the giraffe, Mount
Kilimanjaro, Uhuru Torch, Coat of Arms, National Flag and special costumes (which currently do not
exist) as ways to promote and preserve national identity. There is less said on attitude development.
The Child Development Policy (ChDP) of the 2008 is a revised version of the 1996 ChDP whose main
purpose is to promote child development and welfare through implementation of the rights of the child as
stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Underpinned by the four rights – right to
survival, right to development, right to protection and right not to be discriminated against – the ChDP in
its eight chapters hardly addresses cultural development in early childhood. Although it makes it clear that
all stakeholders should cherish to provide services under the guidance of appropriate customs, traditions
and morals, nowhere are these cultural elements delineated. This situation makes realization of the sixth
and ninth policy objectives rather unrealistic. These objectives state that the ChDP seeks “to provide the
child proper direction so he or she can be a good citizen” [“Kumpa mtoto mwelekeo sahihi ili aweze kuwa raia
mwema”] (p. 19) and “to educate the society to ensure that children inherit good traditions and customs”
[“Kuelimisha jamii ili kuhakikisha kuwa watoto wanarithishwa mila na desturi nzuri”] (p. 17).
In the ChDP, the most direct policy statement related to early cultural development is provided in chapter
five under section (b) titled “Statements about the Right to Development” (p. 22). The first argument
raised here is that globalization through advancement in modern technologies such as the internet and TV
has caused some of the youths to ape undesirable life styles. The argument is further developed that the
youths imitate such life styles because there is no checking mechanism against entry of undesirable cultural
practices.
There are three statements that follow this argument which I find imperative to quote (p. 22):
(i) The Government through cooperation with families, society and other stakeholders
addressing children’s issues should educate children about good morals. [Serikali kwa
48
kushirikiana na familia, jamii na wadau wanaoshughulikia masuala ya watoto ielimishe watoto

kuhusu maadili mema].
(ii) The Government through cooperation with non-government organizations, private
sector and society in general should ensure that there is proper and correct use of
communication technologies in order to sustain good rearing and development of
Tanzanian children. [Serikali kwa kushirikiana na mashirika yasiyo ya kiserikali, sekta binafsi
na jamii kwa ujumla, ihakikishe kuwepo kwa matumizi bora na sahihi ya teknolojia za
mawasiliano ili kudumisha malezi na makuzi bora ya watoto wa Tanzania].
(iii) Parents, guardians and society should be educated about their responsibilities on their
children. [Wazazi, walezi na jamii waelimishwe kuhusu wajibu wao kwa watoto].
This policy statement, again, does not try to delineate the most crucial cultural elements. Although one of
the reasons for revising the 1996 CDP was to counteract effects caused by globalization leading to
character distortion, the position taken by the current CDP does not seem to provide a solution to the
problem. More importantly, this policy is not supported by an implementation plan which ideally would
provide further details.
To promote the development process, the Government of Tanzania formulated the Community
Development Policy (CDP) in 1996 (MCDWC, 1996). The analysis of its aims reveals a number of cultural
attributes responsible for bringing about development. One major valued spirit is self-reliance reflected in
use of locally available resources. Aim number one of the CDP argues that “This [spirit of self-reliance] is
the only way poverty can be eradicated in the country” (p. 8). Other attributes include spirit of saving,
collaboration and self-development. Further, the policy objectives contain several cultural attributes
including spirit of discovery, pursuit for community development, furthering stability, being democratic,
furthering peace, responsibility and recognition of “the evils of giving or taking bribes” (pp. 12 – 13). The
policy recognizes that there is a need “to educate communities on the importance of bringing up their
children to become effective participants/actors …” (p. 12). All the attributes contained in the analyzed
documents were expected to be reflected in the Tanzania Development Vision 2025 which articulates the
general future character of the nation.
The Tanzania Development Vision 2025 (TDV 2025) seeks to envisage the national image for the coming 25
years from 2000. In the document, two sections provide information related to this study. These are
sections 1.2.2 bearing the title “Peace, Stability and Unity” (p. 3) and 4.1 titled “Developmental Mindset
and Empowering Culture” (p. 17). Under the former section, the following statement is made (p. 17):
A nation should enjoy peace, political stability, national unity and social cohesion in an
environment of democracy and political and social tolerance. Although Tanzania has enjoyed
national unity, peace and stability for a long time, these attributes must continue to be cultivated,
nurtured and sustained as important pillars for the realization of the Vision.
This statement is explicit on the cultural attributes cherished: spirit of democracy and tolerance. These are
important avenues towards peace, stability and national unity. This understanding of the cultural attributes
needed for creation of a particular national image forms an important step in the quest for national
development.
The latter section is very clear on how to undergo “effective transformation of the mindset and culture...”
(p. 17). To achieve this end, several attitude-related attributes are outlined including self development,
community development, confidence, commitment, self-reliance, hard work, creativity, professionalism,
entrepreneurship as well as spirit of saving and investment. Basically, an attempt to delineate these
attributes as in this section is important but a statement on how to achieve this end is even more
important. No mention is made of the necessity to develop these attributes early in children’s lives.
The Education and Training Policy (ETP) document, like the CDP, does not attempt to list down cultural
values or norms. In its pre-primary education objectives section, only general statements about children’s
characters are provided. The words and phrases used include “to encourage and promote the overall
personality development of the child”, “to mould the character of the child and enable him/her to acquire
acceptable norms of social conduct and behaviour” and “to help the child acquire, appreciate, respect and
develop pride in the family, his or her cultural backgrounds, moral values, customs and traditions as well
as national ethic, identity and pride” (MOEC, 1995, pp. 3 – 4). Generally, the policy “recognizes that the
49
early years of life are critical for the development of a child’s mental and other potentials and, in particular
its personality development and formation“(MOEC, 1995, p. 3).
The current cultural and philosophical paths are grounded in the philosophy of education for self-reliance
whose attainment was to be accomplished within the broader framework of the socialist ideology (See
Nyerere, 1968). Socialism emphasized collective efforts for collective development. Education for self-
reliance stressed development of the people by people themselves through development of critical minds
and rational use of the resources available in the local context. In this regard, the cultural values included
cooperation, hardworking, honesty and ethics/moral uprightness.
Although several worthwhile cultural values can be learnt from the earlier policy documents, the main
pitfall could be absence of firm policy statements that emphasize early childhood cultural development. It
has to be remembered that early childhood education during this era held a lower position in most policy
documents. Much about early childhood education started in 1979 with the International Year of the Child
and subsequently, the Presidential Commission on Education popularly known as the Makweta Report
released in 1982 (Mtahabwa, 2007). The major similarity between the earlier policy statements and the
contemporary ones is based on the failure to specify cultural values to be developed in early childhood.
4.1 Consistency in Presentation of Cultural Values

The outgoing section has revealed existence of a number of cultural attributes in different documents.
This section presents a synopsis of these attributes as a way to assess consistency in the occurrence of the
same. The assumption is that consistent presentation of the cultural attributes across these documents
would suggest that these attributes are shared, enduring and basic. The opposite of it would be true for
inconsistent presentation of cultural values. Table 1 summarizes this information.
A number of issues arise from this table. First, while the CP, CDP and the TDV 2025 attempt to list down
a set of cultural values, the ChDP and the ETP do not. This suggests that childhood in general and early
childhood in particular has received little cultural attention though there is recognition for proper child
rearing. Second, while the CP provides a narrower range of cultural values, the CDP and the TDV 2025
provide broader ranges of the same. This suggests that the cultural values listed in the three documents are
not consistent and thus, less shared, less basic and less enduring. Third, only respect for work/hard work,
spirit of tolerance, self-reliance/self-development, saving spirit and community development are
consistently presented in two out of the five documents subjected to analyses. No single cultural attribute
appears thrice or more.
The general impression from these analyses is that although Tanzania has a wider range of cultural values
there is possibility that these attributes are hardly basic, shared and enduring. Had it been the opposite of
this, the attributes would have been presented consistently. Failure of the ChDP and the ETP (pre-
primary and primary sections) to specify cultural attributes essential for child development signifies less
attention given to early childhood in so far as cultural development is concerned.
50
Table 1: Consistency in Presentation of Cultural Values

S/No. Document Cultural Values/Norms/Attributes
1. CP • Respect for work/Self-reliance
• Human dignity
• Spirit of tolerance
2. ChDP • Nil (only general statements available e.g. good morals)
3. ETP Nil (only general statements available)
4 CDP • Self-reliance/Hard work

• Spirit of saving
• Collaboration
• Self-development
• Spirit of discovery
• Pursuit for community development
• Furthering stability
• Democratic spirit
• Furthering peace
• Responsibility
• Hating to give or take bribes (honesty)
5. TDV 2025 • Democratic spirit

• Tolerance
• Self development
• Community development
• Confidence
• Commitment
• Self-reliance/Hard work
• Creativity
• Professionalism
• Entrepreneurship
• Saving and investment spirit
5.0 Discussion
It was evident from the analyses that Tanzania recognizes the crucial role played by cultural values and
norms for national development. This recognition, however, seemed to be “a property” of few individuals
or classes in society. There is also high possibility that this recognition is based on a wrong theoretical
understanding of the principles governing cultural development. More importantly, the haphazard
approach to cultural values and norms in these documents signifies problems associated with philosophy
of education. The general claim one would make regarding the state of affairs in the quest for cultural
development in Tanzania, is that the cognitive and the affective domains of learning are
compartmentalized and separated almost at the expense of the latter.
The first claim is built on the assumption that cultural values are widely shared. In a book titled Building
Community in Schools, Sergiovanni (1994) argues that core values are part and parcel of life of all members in
a community. The core values are owned by the entire community because such values are determined by
the community itself. They are not imposed by a few individuals. Otherwise, they become artificial, less
basic and less enduring. If the values mentioned in the documents analyzed in this article were widely
51
shared, one would expect insistence and consistence in the occurrence of these values across the
documents. Else, these values would appear differently in different documents but emphasis would be
made for society members to have the whole cultural package as in the case of the Four Great Books in
China. Currently, such books lack in Tanzania. Generally, it appears that Tanzania does not have a “smart
list” of cultural values.
Inadequate attention on cultural development in young children as observed from the ChDP and the ETP
(pre-primary and primary sections) substantiates the second claim. In essence, one would expect these
documents to be explicit on the values Tanzanians cherish so as to set a firm foundation for the education
and care of children and ultimately, national development. Based on the position held by Vygotsky
(Bodrova & Leong, 2007), Montessori (Isaacs, 2007), Steiner (Nicol, 2007) and Reggio Emilia experience
proponents (Thornton & Brunton, 2005), it becomes clear that the opportunities early childhood offers
for successful early cultural development is hardly utilized in Tanzania. In this article, neither the ChDP
nor the ETP (pre-primary and primary sections) had explicit values compared to the CP, CDP and the
TDV 2025.
Existence of particular values/norms in any country signifies existence of an articulate educational
philosophy. Educational philosophy and cultural values/norms are intricately interwoven. They both
reflect a set of beliefs about best methods of performing cultural activities and general modes of life
considered as best. These two cultural aspects relate to each other reciprocally: philosophy draws on
cultural values/norms and vice versa. Based on the findings in this study, there is high possibility that
Tanzania is facing a crisis on both educational philosophy and cultural values/norms.
Failure of the ChDP and the ETP (pre-primary and primary sections) to articulate the values considered
important, puts the focus on attitude building at jeopardy in favor of the focus on skills and knowledge.
Current researches in Tanzania indicate that most pre-primary teachers and parents emphasize acquisition
of skills and knowledge while marginalizing the attitude component of education (see Kissassi, 1994;
Mbise 1996, Mtahabwa, 2007). Where character development is viewed as important, most practitioners in
Tanzania tend to be too controlling to allow joyful and independent learning. In this case, the major focus
is on inculcation of discipline, obedience and respect for adults (See Mtahabwa, 2007). Basically, good
education and development in general are impossible in the absence of the “right” attitudes. This assertion
echoes back prophetic statement by Alexis de Tocqueville (Platt, 1989, p. 160; quoted in Danaher, 2008, p.
13) that “America is great because she is good, but if America ever ceases to be good America will cease to
be great.” What this statement means is that “good” character is the foundation for national development.
The increase in incidences of crimes and violence in America has since 1990s contributed to much
emphasis on character education (See Danaher, 2008). No wonder the social vices witnessed in the USA
could ravage Tanzania.
6.0 Conclusions
If Tanzania ever wants to remain a peaceful, unified and stable country, development of the right attitudes
early in children’s lives is of paramount importance. The foregoing sections revealed that attitude or
character development as reflected in a clear set of values that are basic, shared and enduring particularly
at the early childhood level has more potential for failure than for success. The article therefore, concludes
that, left unchecked, such a situation could lead to disappearance of the nation’s cultural identity and
consequently, disappearance of the cherished peace, stability and unity.
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J. Dugbazah. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1 (1) 2009, 55-65
Negotiating Boundaries of Womanhood: The Position of Women
in Migrant Households in Rural Ghana
Justina Dugbazah
Tinaduzh2000@yahoo.co.uk
University of Birmingham
Abstract
Recent years have witnessed a growing research into migration as a component of development. However, in spite of the
increase in migration literature, there is a tendency to ignore gender as a critical issue. The situation in Ghana is no
exception. Most of the migration literature on Ghana tends to focus on different aspects of internal migration, as well as
on international migration. Thus, while migration has received considerable attention in Ghana, the gender dimensions
have been largely neglected. This article examines the interrelationship between gender and migration in Ghana.
Employing primary data from the Ho district and secondary data, the article examines the position of women in rural
migrant households. The findings demonstrate that rural women confront challenges in their daily activities. This
situation is compounded when men and/or women migrate, resulting in various consequences for rural households.
1.0 Introduction
Rural women are the backbone of the economy of most developing countries. Worldwide, rural women
play a major role in agriculture including farming, fisheries, forestry and livestock, producing more than 50
percent of food (Afshar, 1991). Yet rural women in developing countries are among the most
disadvantaged population groups. These women tend to have relatively lower positions with regard to
occupation, income, education, age, social class, culture or ethnicity (Oppong, 1987). Additionally, their
position within their households and community is considered lower than that of their male counterparts.
Rural women in Ghana are no exception. Abutia women, for eample, confront significant socio-cultural
and economic constraints such as lack of access to resources, limited decision-making, and relatively lower
socio-economic status within the household and community (Bukh, 1979). Their situation is worsened
when male members of the household migrate, resulting in an increase in women’s productive and
unproductive responsibilities. The research shows that Abutia women’s position in the household does
not improve, but rather remains the same, and in some instances, even deteriorates as a result if migration
(Addo & Kwegyir, 1990).1 The study suggests that effective development interventions should take into
consideration the position of women within rural households, because men and women experience the
impact of migration differently.
2.0 Research Sites

We conducted the research for this article in the three villages of Abutia Teti, Abutia Agorve and Abutia
Kloe in the Ho District of the Volta region of Ghana.2 These villages were chosen because they have the
requisite characteristics that make them appropriate for the research. First of all, the combined population
of the three Abutia villages provided a relatively large population size for the research. More importantly,
1 Having said that, it must be noted that rural women are not a homogenous group, and that they have
different needs and interests because they come from different backgrounds. For example, rural women’s
lifestyle, which is mainly geared towards farming, is influenced by variables that make their position
different from that of urban women.
2 The three Abutia villages tend to be referred to collectively as Abutia. Thus for the purposes of this
article, they will be referred to as such. This is particularly relevant because the study does not set out to
explore the differences or similarities between the villages.
55
however, is the fact that the villages have long established rural-urban migration patterns spanning two to
three generations in some households. The Abutia villages are located at the foot of the Abutia Hills
(Verdon, 1983). The predominant source of livelihood in the villages is farming.3 These villages,
however, have low soil fertility, and experience high variability of rainfall, which invariably impacts on
farm productivity. There is also low literacy and school enrolment levels, high infant and maternal
mortality rates, very poor nutrition status and limited access to capital (Dugbazah, 2008). As a result of
the lack of natural resources, unemployment and poverty, most people in the Abutia villages travel to
other parts of the country in search of better employment opportunities (Brydon & Chant, 1989).
However, only a limited number of studies have been undertaken to examine the impact of rural-urban
migration in the district (Brydon, 1987). Hence although the problem of out-migration in the district is
known to be high, its magnitude has not been fully explored. The Abutia villages, therefore, provides a
unique opportunity for researching the position of women in rural migrant households. By understanding
the conditions of these rural households, development practitioners will be in a better position to design
gender appropriate policies and projects.
2.1 Research Methodology

The research was organized into four methodological components, with findings from each method
informing the process and progress of the others. The research methods we used included simple
questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. These
were supplanted by textual analysis (Bloor et al., 2001). The first component of the field research was the
administration of simple designed questionnaires. The questions in the survey were structured to identify
and quantify some of the ideas and issues of the research, including background information on migrant
households. We also conducted semi-structured interviews in order to learn more about the household
background information, family networks, gender relations, productive and unproductive responsibilities
of women, and also intra-household negotiations and other relevant issues.
We gathered the data using pre-established networks. Through the process of snowballing, we identified
other respondents, and conducted the interviews with various actors at three different levels (Ritchie et al,
2003, p.57). Firstly, this was conducted among the different age groups of respondents (old, middle-aged
and young women and men). This classification was necessary because we recognized that the
perceptions regarding the position of women in the household varied with the socialization, priorities, and
expectations of individuals within each age group. We carried out the second level of the interviews with
community leaders and chiefs, and also held the third level of interviews with Abutia migrants in Accra.
Based on the insights obtained from the implementation of these research methods, we organized focus
group discussions (FGDs) in each village. The FGDs enabled us to gain a more comprehensive and more
in-depth perception about migration, and the extent to which people felt it had brought about changes in
their households. During the FGDs, we identified gender socialization as an important concept that
underpins the position of women in Abutia households.
3.0 Gender Ideology and Socialization

Gender socialization is the process by which people learn to behave in a certain way, as dictated by societal
beliefs, values, attitudes and examples. There is a strong association between gender ideology and gender
roles, and this is underpinned by socially constructed gender norms and expectations internalized by
individuals.4 Gender socialization begins very early in life in the Abutia villages. As soon as people put a
3 The reduction of government subsidies on inputs such as fertilizers as a result of Structural Adjustment
Programs has significantly cut agricultural production and rural incomes.
4 It is generally accepted that early gender socialization is one of the most pertinent issues in early
childhood, affecting both boys and girls. The foundations for stereotypes in gender roles are laid through
early gender socialization. There are numerous examples from varied parts of the world confirming that
56
label on the child as either a “girl” or “boy”, they begin treating the child in a stereotypical fashion
(Oppong, 1987:72). This stereotyping follows the child throughout his or her life, and is reinforced by
socialization, the process of acquiring cultural values and norms, through the major socializing agents of
family, school, religion and the mass media (Gramsci, 1971). In Abutia this is achieved mainly through the
influence of family, especially grandparents who tell value-laden stories and adages to children. The study
found that the gender ideology prevalent in the Abutia villages is reflected abundantly in the division of
labour within households, and they are presented both as a legitimizing process, and also as a social reality
(Byerlee, 1974).5 Traditionally, Abutia women are defined physically and intellectually as the “weaker”
sex, and in all ways subordinate to male authority. In private life women are subject to fathers, husbands,
brothers and even adult sons. Publicly, men dominate all decision-making in political, legal and economic
affairs in the villages (Chant, 1998). In order to determine the societal perspectives on the prevailing
gender ideology, respondents were interviewed to obtain their view of the ideal woman and the ideal man.
The findings show that community members define the ideal woman as a hard worker who obeys her
parents in her early years, and later her husband. She is described as soft spoken, nurturing, compliant and
subordinate. The ideal woman is also seen as primarily responsible for domestic duties, and crucial to the
integrity of the family unit. The ideal Abutia man on the other hand, is described as a hard worker who
honors his parents, respects his wife and provides for the financial needs of his family. The research
findings further revealed that the reality of men and women in this regard is very different from what is
perceived as “ideal.” For example, due to unemployment and poverty in the villages, men are not able to
provide for the financial needs of their families. This situation is one evidence of the daily challenge, which
have become the lived reality of rural households in the Abutia villages.
3.1 Land Tenure Rights of Women

One of the most important factors that affect the position of women in rural households in the Abutia
villages is the issue of land and the land tenure system.6 Land tenure issues are often gender specific as
women and men experience them differently (Oppong, 1987).7 In the Abutia villages, land tenure is
governed by the patrilineal land tenure system. This is because most women do not own land, but only
have access to it through their husbands, fathers or adult sons. However, even where women have access
to land, their security of tenure is precarious (Dzobo, 1975). Compared to men, women lose their
inheritance rights to land as soon as they marry. Unmarried daughters are given plots to farm, but in
situations where land is allocated to these women, it is usually done only after the males in the family have
selected the closest and more fertile land (Francis, 1995). The women are, therefore, left with the most
unproductive and smaller plots that tend to be further away from the village.8 Women usually lose the
rights to land following the divorce or death of their spouse (Manuh, 1984). The study observed that
widows and divorced women who did not have male children had virtually no tenure or inheritance rights
with which to ensure food security for themselves or their children.
gender socialization is intertwined with the ethnic, cultural, and religious values of a given society. And
gender socialization continues throughout the life cycle.
5 Gender ideology refers to attitudes and behaviors about what is appropriately feminine and masculine
according to the gender stereotypes of one’s society. For details see Barnett et al., 1993.
6 Land tenure refers to a collection of rights, only some of which are held at any one time by a particular
individual or social unit (Kotey & Tsikata. 1998). These range from those held by a society’s political
entities on down to individuals who may have their tenures secondarily from other individuals (such as
family heads).
7 Both formal and informal laws tend to discriminate against women across the Abutia villages, and the
rest of the country, thereby making it almost impossible for women to get equal access to land as men.
The land tenure issue is very pertinent to this study because it investigates the position of women in rural
Abutia agricultural households.
8 The research found that in the Abutia villages, males dominate in the interconnecting political, social and
economic domains, and they define the terms of access to land and control over it.
57
Most marriages and households in the Abutia villages are predominantly monogamous, with very few
polygamous households. However in the polygamous households, land allocation tends to depend on a
wife’s industriousness, her number in the line of other wives, or the number of male children she has
produced (Agarwal, 1990). Since her status may change at any time, she is not assured of the tenancy on a
plot from crop to crop. Thus regardless of the type of marriage practiced, women are essentially
temporary custodians of land, passing from father to male heir, even though they may be de-facto heads
of household (Goldstein & Udry, 2002). These gender inequalities in land tenure have implications for
both female-headed households and female members of male-headed households in Abutia. Constraints
relating to access, tenure security and sustainability impede the improvement of men’s and women’s
productivity (Manuh, 1984). This is because women cannot assume complete responsibility over their
livelihood until they have economic security. These socio-cultural norms and institutional arrangements
accentuate women’s lower socio-economic status, and indirectly encourages low agricultural productivity,
which subsequently leads to poverty and out-migration.
3.2 Access to Health

Women’s health issues have attained higher international visibility and renewed political commitment in
recent decades. Basic health care, family planning and obstetric services are essential for women.
However, these services remain unavailable to many women in Ghana. Thus while targeted policies and
programs have enabled women to lead healthier lives, significant gender-based health disparities remain.
Limited access to education or employment, high illiteracy rates and increasing poverty levels in the rural
areas is making health improvements for women exceedingly difficult. Many of the modest gains in
women’s health realized in recent decades are now threatened or have been reversed due to economic
instability among other factors. The research found that in the Abutia villages women do not use health
care facilities as often as they need to. Their resulting poor health leads to physical suffering and also
diminishes learning ability, thereby limiting women’s economic productivity. Part of the reason women do
not use health care facilities enough is that the health care system does not adequately address women’s
needs. There are deficiencies in the national health care system. This includes limited and affordable
district hospitals, health centers, maternity clinics or private clinics in rural areas, and there is no organized
family planning for rural families. In Abutia there are two inadequately equipped clinics for the three
villages and surrounding areas. The employees of the clinics are not adequately trained, and do not make
an effort to inform households about women’s specific health needs.
A priority issue in women’s health is infant and maternal mortality rate, which is high in Ghana, even by
African standards (FAO, 2000). Unequal gender relations manifest themselves in decision-making patterns
relating to fertility, which tend to reflect male rather than female preferences (Oppong, 1987). Sometimes
women are denied access to health services through decisions made at the household level. It is obvious,
however, that socio-economic and cultural factors such as gender inequity underlie these patterns.9 The
study found that Abutia women average six children, which contributes to the high rate of maternal
mortality. The women interviewed stated they usually do not want such large families, but are compelled
by their husbands. This situation is evidence that there is an unmet need for contraception. Early
childbearing often brings an end to a young woman’s education, and having a large family severely restricts
her job choices, work productivity, and mobility. The study argues that as long as women lack bargaining
power within sexual relationships, the success of conventional family planning initiatives will be limited.
The current trend in Ghana is towards the privatization of health services both in urban and rural areas.
This is particularly of concern in terms of continued decline in the accessibility to affordable good quality
health services (GSS, 2000). Gender-equitable approaches to health are needed to enable women’s full
participation in the planning and delivery of health services. The research found that the health of families
and communities are tied to the health of women. This is because the illness or death of a woman has
serious and far-reaching consequences for the health of her children, family and community. The unequal
access to health can be addressed by improving access to more adequate health care and women’s health
care facilities. A basic level of government funded primary health care must be maintained in order to
9 See Awumbila (2001) for an elaboration of issues of gender and resource allocation in Ghana.
58
avoid further deterioration of services to poor rural women (Goldstein & Udry, 2002). The Ghana
government has embarked on the National Health Insurance Scheme to address this problem. However,
the implementation of the Scheme has proven to be very problematic, and has not solved the problem by
a long shot. In the longer term, educating women is a better solution because increased education for
women results in reduced fertility and mortality rates. Women who are healthier and more educated will
be more productive members of the economy. Furthermore, improving the health and education of
women produces long-term benefits by improving the health and productivity of their children.
3.3 Women and Marriage

The legal system is yet another factor that impacts on rural women in Abutia and, therefore needs to be
considered in the debate on the position of rural women and migration. The legal system in Ghana
consists of customary laws, colonial and contemporary laws, as well as constitutional provisions under the
Four Republics. All these legal laws, together with traditional laws, which vary by region and ethnicity, are
implemented concurrently.10 The complexity of the legal situation has important implications for gender
relations because women have been caught between the decline in traditional systems, and the failure of
the legal system to enforce their legal rights and provisions (Manuh, 1997). As a result, both systems fail
to provide them with any meaningful protection.
The area within the legal system that affects rural women most is marriage. The vast majority of marriages
in Ghana, about 80%, even among educated urban groups, are still contracted under customary law (GSS,
2000). One peculiar feature of marriage under customary law is the concept of separateness in terms of
both identity and property acquisition. By contrast to marriage under the Ordinance, it permits couples to
maintain their separate identities, thus in theory they remain as two separate individuals (Manuh, 1984).
This individuality accounts for the customary rule that a wife cannot lay claim to her husband’s lineage
farms even in cases where she assisted in making improvements (Adayfio-Schandorf, 1994). For the same
reason, a woman does not become a member of her husband’s lineage through marriage.
In the Abutia villages, marriage is a very important component of the family system. There is a marked
division of responsibilities between husbands and wives, which is based on local gender ideology and
social norms (Brydon & Chant, 1989). For instance, husbands and wives enter into “contracts” with
specific expectations of the respective roles, rights and obligations of each spouse. The marriage
obligation carries with it a strict sense of duty for wives to assist their husbands in their economic
activities, although there is no corresponding obligation of reciprocity on the part of the husband to assist
his wife.11 Traditionally, men have the culturally defined obligation to provide for the economic
subsistence of their families. However, due to changing economic circumstances, one or both spouses
may neglect, or otherwise default on specific responsibilities. Divorce is generally not approved under
customary law or in the general society. Nevertheless, more detailed studies reveal that it appears to be
widespread (Tsikata, 2001).12 The general rule under customary law is that either party can apply for
divorce, although permissible grounds for divorce may vary by gender.
In both matrilineal and patrilineal customary systems, a woman has no direct rights to her husband’s
property, when he dies intestate, if no formal provision has been made for her (Manuh, 1984). In order to
address this problem, the PNDC government introduced the Intestate Succession Law and other laws in
1985. Collectively, both the Customary and Intestate Law provide the framework for improved and clearly
defined property rights to surviving women and children. However, even though the Intestate Succession
10 See Manuh (1984) for a discussion of the relationships between the law and women’s status in Ghana.
11 On the one hand, a husband is seen as having full control of his wife, including sexual monopoly and
the right to claim damages in the case of adultery (Goldstein & Udry, 2002). The wife, on the other hand,
does not have the same rights.
12 The increase in divorce however, is more common in urban areas among educated and economically
independent women.
59
Law, PNDC Law 111 (1985) has been in existence for more than two decades, there is limited knowledge
of its existence in Ghana (Tsikata, 2001). The result has been the continued application of customary
laws to property distribution of a spouse who dies intestate, with consequential injustices for women and
children. These adverse marital circumstances combine with livelihood insecurity to make women in rural
households highly vulnerable to economic stresses.
3.4 Women and Access to Credit

While rural women’s contribution to agricultural and livestock production is well-documented, they have
little or no access to productive inputs such as credit, to enhance their economic participation in these
sectors. In accessing financial services, poor women are more disadvantaged than their male counterparts,
because, most of them are illiterate and lack collateral.13 Though gender differences in simple access to
credit are not wide, there is a substantial gap in the average size of formal loans given to men and women
(Findlay, 1995). In terms of obtaining credit from the rural banks, large-scale cash crop farmers, who are
often males, are given priority over food crop farmers who are invariably female (Moser, 1989). Compared
to women involved in other economic activities, women in crop farming are by far the least considered by
formal financial institutions for loans (Oppong, 1997). The study found that households in the Abutia
villages in which women are reportedly unable to meet their credit needs do not produce as much as they
could.
Since women in the Abutia villages have less access than men to formal credit, they tend to rely on
informal credit from friends and family members. With little financial backing from their husbands and
extended family, some women have sought out and invested in social networks such as susu, which
provide either the social or institutional support needed to secure access to credit. In groups of four or
five, these women invest in a fixed amount of money weekly, and at the end of each month one woman
takes “the pot of money” for her individual use. These networks offer women considerable flexibility,
thereby allowing them to invest in their farms or in secondary businesses, to pay children’s school fees, or
to purchase clothing for themselves and their children. The costs of credit constraints to the Abutia
communities are substantial, because for the average family, the woman’s constraints are associated with a
loss in efficiency. Consequently, policies and programs designed to promote economic growth must
address obstacles that limit access to credit for poor women, not just for poor households. Studies that are
based solely on the household’s head may significantly underestimate the true economic impact of credit
constraints. In the case of Abutia, the situation is further compounded by the migration of men to the
urban centers.
4.0 Migration from the Abutia Villages

The study found that it is primarily the young, able-bodied and better educated males that migrate from
Abutia to the urban centers. These young men seek employment in the cities, leaving behind female
relatives to manage on their own and to provide for both the elderly and the young (Adepoju, 1995).
Relatively older able-bodied men migrate to more fertile farming areas in other regions, where they hire
out labour. Since the rainfall pattern in these predominantly cocoa growing areas is earlier than Abutia,
some of the men return in time to work on their own farms. Collectively, this migration patterns leave
substantial gaps in the agricultural and rural labour force. In Abutia, this has resulted not only in changes
in family structure, but has also led to adjustments in roles, and more importantly, impacted on the
position of women in the rural household.
13 Access to credit in Ghana is difficult. It is even more difficult for women than men. Women tend to
finance their businesses from personal savings, which is often insufficient. Traditional sources of
borrowing include loans and credits from traders and relations. Women use these sources more because
of their inability to access loans from banking sources. Such formal sources demand guarantees such as
collateral, and proper book-keeping methods which women are unable to provide due to their lack of
access to property and their low educational level.
60
4.1 Migration and the Position of Women in Abutia Rural Economy

Until recently very few studies of rural women’s contribution to the economy had been published. The
academic papers and policy reports which existed focused more on women’s formal employment, rather
than on the broader issues surrounding women and the rural economy. Our study found that agriculture
and petty trading are the predominant forms of employment in the Abutia villages. Relatively few women
work in formal sector activities. Women make up roughly 95 percent of the agriculture and retail trading,
working mostly in the informal sector (Dugbazah, 2008). Abutia women usually grow food crops, while
men grow cash crops. Thus women in Abutia make a major contribution to the economic production of
their households and communities, and assume primary responsibility for the health of their families.
Since farming is essentially a family enterprise in the Abutia villages, the migration of able-bodied young
men leaves the burden of farm work on women, older and younger persons, thereby resulting in the
shortage of farm labour (Yeboah, 1998). Men are not available for cultivation and planting, which are
both time and energy-intensive. For Abutia women, this translates into a marked increase in farm work,
which includes a wider range of farm tasks, and a heavier workload. With a diminishing supply of male
labour for farm tasks, women either depend on hired labour (which many cannot afford) or resort to
limiting agricultural operations. For example, when women have problems hiring labour, they tend to
cultivate less frequently, or cultivate less land. The long-term implications of agricultural labour force
shortages are a decline in food production and food security, a decline in nutrition, and subsequently the
health status of families (including a rise in mortality).
The findings show that in spite of the contribution that Abutia women make to the rural economy, gender
issues permeate their productive partnerships and use of land and other resources, thereby reducing their
ability to take risks (Tsikata, 2001). Thus while agriculture is the largest component of the villages,
productivity is less than it could be because women farmers are not fully empowered. This observation is
echoed by Bukh (1979:14) who contends that despite rural women’s involvement in the central aspects of
production, patriarchal ideologies ensure their continued subordination in the society. Rather
unfortunately her observation persists today, more than three decades after Bukh undertook her study in
Ghana. The situation has worsened over the years by migration from the villages into the urban areas.
4.2 Migration and the Position of Women in the Household

In Abutia there is a well defined division of labour, in which women’s tasks are composed of purely
domestic tasks and some aspects of farm work. Since household tasks are considered to be the exclusive
domain of women, the men do not provide any assistance. For example, if a woman does not cook for her
husband, he will demand that she does so, since cooking is part of her duties as a wife. Conversely, the
man is expected to provide food for the family as the main “breadwinner,” and his failure to do so thereby
affects his status as head of the household. The study findings show that in all three villages, women make
a fundamental contribution to the household economy and to food security. However, the involvement
of women is less visible than that of men. This is because most of the “functions” of women tend to be
seen as an extension of their reproductive activities and are not recognized socially as forming part of the
economic process. However, as men migrate, women are compelled to assume an increasing
responsibility, not only in terms of physical work on the farm and at home, but also as heads of
households.14 This, however, does not entail major decision-making, but simply in ensuring that the
household runs smoothly as a production unit.
As indicated earlier, involvement in paid work is only one part of women’s economic activity. Other areas
include their involvement in child care and other activities, which support the household and the rural
14Socio-cultural implications of rural-urban migration relate to its effect on the structure and cohesiveness
of the family, and these implications have gender perspectives.
61
community, are just as important (Afshar, 1998).15 Women and men in the Abutia villages have distinctly
different daily activities and social constraints, with women working longer hours than their male
counterparts (Boserup, 1970). The working day for women in Abutia often starts at about 4.30am and
continues until 8 or 9pm. The time covers different types of labour, such as time spent on family farm,
petty trading or any other economic activity. Additionally, women bear primary household responsibility
for child-rearing, cooking, washing, and collecting fuel-wood and water. We observed that the time spent
on household activities is longer in migrant households where the woman takes on an added responsibility
of work that used to be performed by a male or female migrant. This is because as the men in Abutia
households migrate to urban centers in search of work, women are often compelled to undertake
increased tasks in addition to other existing household responsibilities. These women are, therefore,
increasingly faced with a “double workday” of responsibility for household tasks as well as production
(Fernandez-Kelly, 1981). The migration of men and working-age youths from Abutia has resulted in the
transfer of workloads from adults to the elderly, and an increase in the labour burden of girl children
(Dugbazah, 2008). Older daughters, become responsible for caring for younger siblings and for helping
with domestic chores. These girls tend to be pulled out of school to assist their mothers, with important
repercussions on their educational attainment.
4.3 Increase in Female-headed Households

Female-headed households seem to be a major demographic trend in Ghana, as the national rate for 2000
was 40% for urban areas, and 39% for rural areas (GSS, 2002). The causes for this trend, however, differ
for urban and rural areas. While the cause for female-headed households in rural areas may be due mainly
to migration, in the urban areas, the main cause is divorce (Twumasi-Ankrah, 1995).16 That migration is
the major contributor to female-headed households in rural areas, is evidenced by the results of our study,
in which 65 out of the 109 households surveyed were female-headed households. An effect of female-
headed households is that most households are composed mainly of women, children and the elderly.
This in turn results in a high dependency ratio in these households (Dugbazah, 2008). As indicated
earlier, Abutia women have limited access to resources such as land and capital. It follows that the high
dependency ratio in female-headed households in Abutia makes it even more difficult for women to
mobilize adequate resources. As a result of this reality, these female-headed households tend to be the
most vulnerable among the rural poor (Addo & Kwegyir, 1990). It is clear from the findings that the
increased responsibility of women does not modify their socio-economic status or increase their position
in the household.
4.5 Women in Household Decision-Making

In Abutia households, men are traditionally responsible for making major household decisions, whilst
women make minor decisions that have to do with household activities or chores. The study findings
show that when men migrate the decision-making of women within households increases to various
degrees, but within a rather limited range. During the interviews more than 76 percent of the respondents
stated that migrants are consulted on all major decisions, while 24 percent said that major decisions are
usually made by the eldest male relatives in the household (Dugbazah, 2008). It is evident that some male
migrants still maintain their position as head of the family unit or household by proxy. They maintain
control in decision-making by giving directives to their male relatives, and send remittances through them,
and also ask them to act on their behalf. Due to this control by proxy, women do not have the autonomy
to make major decisions in the family. Hence in Abutia households, women continue to make minor
decisions even after male migration from the household. Women have to consult with either male
15 Rural women, with special reference to those in food production, engage in many “invisible” activities
that affect their productive lives (Murray, 1981; Oppong & Abu, 1987). According to Oppong (1987)
Ghanaian women tend to be more heavily burdened than their male counterparts across most socio-
economic groups. The drudgery that characterizes women’s daily activities was clearly seen during our
research.
16 See Brydon and Chant (1989) Chapt 4 for further discussion of the household.
62
household heads, a significant male member of the household, or the migrant, before making any major
decision. During the interviews, female participants argued that they have been put in a difficult position
of having to deal with the migrant as well as male members of the migrant’s family. Male migration,
therefore, conserves the traditional kinship relations and patriarchal values, thus reinforcing gender
asymmetries within the Abutia household.
5.0 Conclusion
Rural women continue to remain obscure and invisible in the process of economic development, although
they comprise the majority of the population in rural areas of Ghana. This study observed that gendered
rights and obligations are shaped in a large part by local gender ideologies and social norms. The
subservient position of women in the household is stronger in rural areas with its traditional beliefs in
submissiveness to the traditional family hierarchy. The lower social status of rural women is a reflection of
the prejudices that still exist against women. This already vulnerable position of women is worsened by
male out-migration, which tends to have gender differential implications for the position of women in the
household. The findings show that migration of men from Abutia results in greater on-farm and off-farm
responsibilities and worked longer hours for women. Despite recent gains in some areas, gender
inequalities continue to constrain women’s ability to participate in, and contribute to the economy. In
order to address fully these longstanding gender disparities, it is necessary to recognize that the supply side
of the market plays a critical role in contributing to rural-urban migration, with different outcomes for
men and women.
While rural-urban migration is important for increasing the incomes and living standards of households in
the Abutia villages and other rural areas in Ghana, it must not be viewed as a panacea. On the contrary,
male migration may simply serve to reinforce the subservient position of women, and its associated
household decision outcomes. In order to maintain the social fabric of rural communities and revitalize
local economies, the full involvement of women is important in the development process. This means that
equal opportunities must be systematically integrated in the design and implementation of rural
development programmes, to ensure that women and men can participate, and benefit on equal terms. All
these issues are critical to understanding the context of household production and decision-making,
especially in resource-poor communities undergoing rural-urban migration. The findings of this study
support the contention made by other scholars that gender must be treated as a theoretical basis of
differentiation, and not simply a control variable in the analysis of development concepts.
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C. Momonyi. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1 (1) 2009, 66-72
Nadharia ya Mtazamo-Kike Katika Muktadha wa Kiafrika
Clara Momanyi
clamona@yahoo.com
Chuo Kikuu cha Kenyatta
Ikisiri
Tangu kuanzishwa kwa mapambano dhidi ya ubaguzi wa wanawake ulimwenguni, makundi mbalimbali ya
wanawake yamejitokeza na mitazamo tofauti tofauti kwa lengo la kuyatafutia mdodoso matatizo yao. Hata
hivyo, baadhi ya wataalamu, watafiti na wahakiki wanaoshughulikia masuala ya wanawake, wametoa rai
kwamba nadharia nyingi zinazovyazwa katika nchi za magharibi haziwezi kutumiwa kutatulia shida
zinazomzonga mwanamke wa Kiafrika. Matilaba ya makala hii ni kutathmini mitazamo na rai za baadhi ya
wataalamu wa masuala ya mtazamo - kike, ili kubainisha nafasi na mchango wa wanawake wa Kiafrika katika
kuvyaza nadharia muafaka za kushughulikia uhakiki wa fasihi zao. Makala inaiduhushi nadharia ya Freud,
na nafasi yake katika uchanganuzi wa masuala ya kike katika jamii ya leo.
1.0 Utangulizi
Wana harakati wa masuala ya mtazamo - kike barani Afrika wamo mbioni kutafakari njia muafaka za
kuwasilisha matatizo yanayowakumba wanawake wa Kiafrika, ukiwemo usawiri wao katika fasihi. Hii ni
kwa sababu Aidha, inajadili maoni yanayotolewa na wanawake wa Kiafrika, wakiwemo wahakiki wa
mtazamo - kike, kuhusu mazingo yanayowakabili katika kuisaka na kuitambua nadharia itakayoweza
kutumiwa kuhakikia matini za kifasihi.
Katika makala hii, masuala yahusuyo mtazamo - kike yanatambuliwa kwa dhana ya 'Unisai'. Neno hili
linatokana na neno 'nisai' linalomaanisha mwanamke au wanawake. Kwa sababu masuala haya yanahusisha
wanawake, neno 'unisai' linaweza kuafiki mada hii. Uundaji wa neno hili unatokana na mijadala
inayoendelezwa na wasomi wa fasihi ya Kiswahili, hususan katika kutafuta istilahi toshelezi za
kushughulikia dhana mpya zinazoibuka kila uchao katika ulimwengu wa fasihi. Unisai basi, ni matokeo ya
mijadala hiyo inayokita katika masuala ya kinadharia.
Fauka ya haya, katika makala hii neno 'uana' limetumiwa kama kitengo cha kijamii. Dhana hii imetumiwa ili
kubainisha zile tofauti za majukumu ya kijamii baina ya mwanamume na mwanamke. Baadhi ya wataalamu
wa fasihi ya Kiswahili awali walipendekeza neno 'Umenke' kutumiwa kubainisha tofauti hizi.
Hata hivyo, baadhi ya wataalamu wa maswala ya kike wameipigia maswali istilahi hii. Wengi hawakubaliani
na matumizi ya neno hili kwani wanahisi limesheheni taasubi ya kiume. Hii ni kwa sababu linahusisha
maneno mawili; ume-(kiume) na -nke(kike). Kama ilivyo kawaida katika jamii za mfumo wa kuumeni,
mwanamume ndiye anayetangulizwa kwanza kabla ya mwanamke. Kwa vile neno linaanza na jinsi ya
kiume ume-, basi neno 'umenke' limeghoshi taasubi ya kiume. Hata hivyo, neno 'unisai' limo katika
kujaribiwa, na mustakabali wake utategemea jinsi linavyopokewa, kukubalika, na kutumiwa katika jamii.
Kwa upande mwingine, neno 'jinsia' limetumiwa kumaanisha kitengo cha maumbile. Binadamu kaumbwa
mwanamke au mwanamume. Kadhalika, 'ujinsia' ni zile hisia zinazoandamana na jinsia ya mtu, na ambazo
huchangia kumdunisha mtu wa jinsia nyingine, au kumtwaza mtu dhidi ya mwingine kutokana na hali hiyo
ya kimaumbile.
Katika kuhitimisha, makala inatoa mapendekezo yatakayozingatiwa katika uteuzi wa nadharia
itakayotumiwa kama mhimili wa kuhakiki fasihi ya Kiafrika. Mapendekezo hayo yanazingatia hali halisi za
maisha ya mwanamke wa Kiafrika.
66
2.0 Sakata ya Freud

Kwa muda mrefu sasa, nadharia ya Freud (1977) imeshughulisha kalamu za wahakiki wengi wa masuala ya
kinafsia, kijinsia, na kielimu - jamii. Kwanza, misingi ya kimaumbile ya nadharia hii imepigiwa maswali,
hususan katika muktadha wa maswala ya kike. Aidha, ubia wa nadharia hii katika kuuvumisha mfumo wa
kuumeni kama mfumo pekee wa kuyaainisha na kuyaeleza maisha ya binadamu, umedadisiwa kwa kina na
wana-anthropolojia.
Kwa ufupi, nadharia ya Freud ilikita katika uelewa wa maumbile ya binadamu na ukuaji wa jinsia yake.
Huku akitumia dhana iliyojulikana kama 'utata wa Oedipus (Oedipus Complex), alionyesha jinsi watoto wa
kiume na kike walivyokua na kudhibiti nafasi zao kijamii. Kwa ufupi tu, Freud amejenga nadharia yake
kutokana na uhalisi wa kimaumbile kwamba watoto wachanga wana utashi mkubwa kwa mama yao
ambaye ndiye chemchemi ya mapenzi yao. Lakini katika hatua fulani ya ukuaji wao, hutambua kuwepo kwa
nguvu ya kiume inayoelekezwa kwa yule mtoto wa kiume kwa sababu ya uume wake. Watoto hao wote
(kiume na kike) huonea fahari kiungo hicho kinachotambulisha jinsia ya kiume.
Nadharia ya Freud imewapa kero wataalamu wa masuala ya kike. Kwa mfano, baadhi ya wana - Unisai
walioshutumu mitazamo ya freud hasa kwenye miaka ya sabini ni kama vile Betty Friedan, Shulamith
Firestone na Kate Millet (Tong 1989:143). Hawa wanaeleza kwamba nafasi duni wanayopewa wanawake
haitokani na maumbile yao, bali inatokana na jinsi jamii inavyounda dhana ya 'mwanamke'. Pengine hii
ndiyo sababu iliyomfanya Mary Wollstonecraft kwenye mwaka wa 1792 kutangaza kuwa wanawake
walihitaji kusimama wima na kunoa bongo zao zilizodumaa. Katika dahari hizo za nyuma, mwana-harakati
huyo alihisi kuwa, mwanamke alihitaji kuivua 'nafsi bandia' aliyopewa na jamii, na kujitathmini upya.
Betty Friedan (Tong 1989:143) anasisitiza kwamba mawazo ya Freud yaliathiriwa na utamaduni wa nyakati
za Malkia Victoria wa Uingereza hata ingawa Freud aliasisi nadharia yake kwenye miaka ya 1920 na 1930.
Lakini pengine kile kilichowabughudhi wana - Unisai ni kile Freud alichobainisha kuwa kinaongozwa na
maumbile. Hapa alishadidia kwamba mwili ndio hatima ya mtu. Katika muktadha huu, jukumu la
mwanamke la uzazi, utambulisho wa uana wake na mapendeleo yake ya kijinsia huamuliwa na kule
kutokuwa na uume. Nao Karen Horney, Alfred Adler na Clara Thompson wakinukuliwa na Sydie
(1987:134-147), kwa mfano, wameeleza kuwa nadharia za kinafsia kama ile ya Freud kuhusu masuala ya
kike zimeathiriwa na mapendeleo ya mitazamo ya kiume. Kwa hivyo, dhana kuwa wanawake huhisi viungo
vyao vya uzazi ni duni vikilinganishwa na vile vya kiume ni dhana chapwa isiyo na mashiko.
Ibainike kuwa mtazamo wa Freud umekita katika utamaduni wa kuumeni ambao humdunisha mwanamke.
Mazingira ya mtu ndiyo yanayojenga na kurutubisha nafsi yake. Aidha, hulka ya mtu hutegemea sana
mazingira anamokulia. Kwa hivyo, hii inamaanisha kwamba hulka ya mwanamke daima imo katika hali ya
kufinyangwa na mikatale ya kitamaduni. Ukuaji wa mtu basi, hauathiriwi na maumbile yake, bali mazingira
yake kwa ujumla.
Kwa upande wake, Simon de Beauvoir (1974) alilidhukuri swala la Freud na kubaini kwamba mwanamke
huchukuliwa kama jinsia ya pili. Mwanamke basi, hupimwa na kuelezwa kwa kutumia vigezo vya
mwanamume. Hata hivyo, Beauvoir anakaulisha kwamba siyo maumbile, elimu - nafsia wala masuala ya
kiuchumi ambayo huamua asili ya mwanamke, bali ni utaratibu wa maisha. Wazo hili pia linashikiliwa na
wataalamu Mbiti (1969) na Halliday (1974), ambao wamefafanua jinsi watoto wa kike na kiume
wanavyopitishwa katika mafunzo mahsusi ili waweze kutambua uana wao, pamoja na majukumu
yanayoandamana na uana huo. Haya yalihusisha pia jinsi ya kutumia lugha.
Mwana-harakati wa masuala ya kike Kate Millet (1970) anauona mfumo wa kuumeni kama chanzo cha
udunishwaji na ubaguzi wa wanawake. Anauona mfumo huo kama mahusiano yanayoashiria nguvu fulani
ya kiume inayomdhalilisha mwanamke kupitia utaratibu wa uainishaji wa majukumu katika jamii.
Kwa upande mwingine, wapo wana-unisai ambao wametumia misingi ya nadharia ya Freud kuundia
mitazamo mbalimbali ya uchanganuzi - nafsia. Kwa mfano, kuna wale waliopuuza kipengele cha 'utata wa
Oedipus' na badala yake kuchanganua uhusiano ule wa kwanza kabisa baina ya mama na mtoto. Walijaribu
kuonyesha umuhimu wa mama katika ujenzi wa mtu, na kwamba jukumu hili aali halina budi kuheshimiwa.
Mkumbo huu wa mawazo ndio uliowapelekea wana-unisai wa Kiafrika, hadi hivi karibuni, kuusifu umama
kama chanzo cha kumkomboa mwanamke. Hii ni kwa sababu wengi wao waliamini kuwa nadharia ya
67
Freud haina nafasi katika masuala ya Kiafrika. Mwanamke wa Kiafrika huthamini zaidi wajibu wake katika
ujenzi wa jamii yake, malezi ya watoto, na majukumu yake katika familia. Hana nafasi ya kuangalia viungo
vya mwili wake kama hatima yake, wala kuuonea fahari uume kiasi cha kuuhusudu.
Hali hii ni tofauti miongoni mwa Wana-unisai wa Marekani, kwa mfano, ambao wameuvua madaraka
umama kwani waliuona kama kizuizi cha kuwafanya wanawake wasifanikiwe katika utekelezaji wa
majukumu ya umma, kama vile kuajiriwa. Barani Afrika, dhana ya umama ilishitadi kwenye miaka ya 1930,
na ililenga kuwafanya wanaume watambue kazi walizofanya wanawake nyumbani na kwingineko. Mwana-
unisai mtajika Filomena Steady alikuwa mmoja wa wale walioendeleza mtazamo huo ulioshamiri hadi
miaka ya 1980. Baadhi ya waandishi wa kike pia walibuni kazi za fasihi zenye mwelekeo huu (Taz. Penina
Muhando Nguzo Mama (1982). Baadaye, wakereketwa wa masuala ya Unisai walitambua kuwa kwa batini
yake, wanawake wa Kiafrika hawahitaji ukubalifu wa wanaume kufanya kile ambacho ni haki yao.
Aidha, ilibainika kuwa wanaume hawana nafasi katika harakati za ukombozi wa wanawake kwani wao ndio
hasa chanzo cha udunishwaji wao. Hii ndiyo maana waliipigia maswali dhana iliyoimarishwa na serikali
nyingi barani Afrika, 'Wanawake na Maendeleo'. Chini ya uvuli huu, serikali za Kiafrika zilianza
kuwatunukia baadhi ya wanawake nyadhifa mbalimbali katika sekta za umma. Wengine waliteuliwa hata
kuingia bungeni. Kule kuwazawadia wanawake kulionekana na baadhi ya wakereketwa wa kike kama
kuwachukua wanawake saw na watu wasioweza kupigania vyeo hivyo kutokana na tajriba, ujuzi na uwezo
wao.
Jambo muhimu linalobainika miongoni mwa wana-unisai wa Kiafrika ni kwamba hawazingatii mwili wa
kike kama chanzo cha maonevu, tofauti na walivyoona wale wa Kimagharibi. Wanashikilia kwamba
maonevu yao yanatokana na masuala nyeti yanayoukumba ulimwengu wa tatu. Kwa upande mwingine,
kuna wale waliopigia mbizi nadharia ya Freud na kuibuka na tafsiri mpya ya dhana ya 'utata wa Oedipus'.
Waliipa dhana hii sura mpya isiyofungamanishwa na mielekeo ya kuumeni. Aidha, ilibainika kwamba
mawazo ya Freud yanaweza kuwa chanzo cha ukombozi wa mwanamake au pia yakatumiwa kumtia
utumwani.
3.0 Nadharia ya Unisai wa Kiafrika

Kwa karne nyingi sasa wana harakati wa masuala ya kike wamekuwa wakidadisi majukumu ya wanawake
katika nyanja zote za maisha. Aidha, wamekuwa wakisaili mahusiano ya kijamii baina ya wanaume na
wanawake; kisiasa, kijamii, kiuchumi, na kiutamaduni. Nadharia mbalimbali zimeteuliwa ili kuyaeleza na
kuyaelewa mahusiano haya. Kwa mfano, baadhi ya nadharia za kinisai zimebainisha maonevu ya umma wa
kike. Zimeonyesha kuwa chanzo cha maonevu hayo ni ule uimarishaji wa asasi za kijamii zilizojengwa na
kuhimiliwa na misingi ya uana.
Si jukumu la makala hii kuzirejelea nadharia zote zinazoshughulikia maswala ya Unisai. Dhamira ya makala
ni kupigia darubini mitazamo iliyopendekezwa barani Afrika katika kuisaka nadharia toshelezi ya Unisai
itakayoafiki uchambuzi wa kazi za fasihi ya Kiafrika. Kila kazi ya kifasihi ina kipengele cha uana, na
kwamba katika jamii mbalimbali ulimwenguni, mtu anapoitwa mwanamume au mwanamke huwa
amewekwa katika kitengo fulani cha kijamii (Momanyi 2002:61).
Katika muktadha wa maswala ya unisai barani Afrika, wataalamu mbalimbali wametoa rai kwamba
nadharia za kimagharibi haziwezi moja kwa moja kutumiwa kuhakiki kazi za kifasihi za Kiafrika. Hii ni kwa
sababu nadharia hizo ziliasisiwa ughaibuni ili kushughulikia maswala yaliyowahusu wanawake katika
ulimwengu wa magharibi. Wanawake wa Kiafrika hukumbwa na matatizo tofauti kutokana na mifanyiko
mahsusi ya jamii zao na hali halisi za kimazingira zilizowazunguka.
Mbali na kwamba wanawake barani Afrika wamekuwa wakikabiliana na udunishwaji unaotokana na taasubi
za kiume zilizosaki katika jamii nyingi, wamekuwa wakitatizwa na pingamizi zingine nje ya tamaduni zao.
Baadhi ya pingamizi hizo ni kama vile taathira za ukoloni, ukoloni mambo - leo, vita vya kikabila na athari
zake, ukame, njaa, athari za sera za urekebishaji wa uchumi na miundo-jamii, maradhi sugu ya ukimwi,
udororaji wa chumi za nchi, na masharti magumu ya kiuchumi yanayowekewa nchi hizi kutokana na
ubedui wa mataifa yaliyostawi. Aidha, ukosefu wa uhuru wa kuchagua miongoni mwa wanawake waafrika
ni kizingiti kikubwa katika maendeleo yao. Kwa mfano, ukosefu wa uwezo wa kuchagua kuwa mzazi au
mke, kuzaa na idadi ya watoto anaohitaji, ni baadhi ya vikwazo hivyo.
68
Aidha, maonevu kwa wanawake walemavu, wanawake tasa au hata sharuti za ukeketaji wa watoto wa kike,
na ukewenza, ni vikwazo vinavyodumaza maendeleo ya wanawake na watoto wa kike kwa jumla.
Maonevu, dhuluma na ubaguzi wa wanawake ni mambo yaliyosawiriwa katika kazi nyingi za fasihi barani
Afrika. Waandishi wa kike na kiume wamemsawiri mwanamke kwa njia tofauti zinazochora taswira halisi
ya maisha ya mwanamke wa Kiafrika, hata ingawa zingine zimepiga chuku majukumu yake.
Wanawake wa Kiafrika wakiwemo wale wa nchi zinazostawi, walichukua mwelekeo tofauti mnamo mwaka
wa 1976. Hatua hii ilichukuliwa katika kongamano la wanawake lililofanyika huko Wellesley college (Okeke
1996:226). Katika jumuiko hili, wanawake kutoka sehemu mbalimbali walitofautiana vikali na wanawake
wa kimagharibi. Walidai kwamba haina haja ya kushirikiana nao katika harakati za kuukomoa ubabe wa
mfumo wa kuumeni iwapo hisia za kibeberu na ukiritimba wa mataifa ya kimagharibi dhidi ya mataifa
yanayostawi bado unaendelea. Walishikilia kwamba unyanyasaji huo lazima ujadiliwe kwa kina kwenye
ajenda za mapambano hayo ya wanawake.
Tofauti hizi zilisababisha utasa katika uendelezaji wa harakati hizo, hali iliyodumu mpaka kwenye miaka ya
1980. Baadaye, wanawake wakereketwa barani Afrika walianza kujadili juu ya kuasisiwa kwa nadharia ya
unisai ili kushughulikia fasihi ya Kiafrika. Isitoshe, wanawake wasomi barani Afrika walianzisha mashirika
ya kiutafiti ili kuyatafutia mdodoso maswala haya nyeti. Ilibainika zaidi kwamba unisai wa Kiafrika ni
tofauti na ule wa kimagharibi tuliouzoea tangu miaka ya sitini. wana-unisai wa Kiafrika hujishughulisha na
masuala ya kuyamudu maisha ndani ya wavu wa mfumo wa ugandamizaji. Wanawake waafrika wanapigania
haki zao kama vile haki za kumiliki ardhi na mali, haki ya kuweza kudhibiti ugawaji wa chakula, ajira, na
hakikisho la usalama katika utekelezaji wa kazi zao. Haya ndiyo masuala yanayopaswa kushirikishwa katika
nadharia ya unisai wa Kiafrika.
Waasisi wa mtazamo huu ni kama vile Filomena Steady, Olufemi Taiwo, na Ayesha Imam (Okeke
1996:226). Mwana harakati mashuhuri Ifi Amadiume (1987:8), kwa mfano, alikerwa na kule kuletewa
dhana, mapendekezo, na masuluhisho ya kisiasa kutoka katika mataifa nje ya bara hili. Alikaulisha kwamba
midodoso hiyo ya kimagharibi haina budi kupisha maarifa, juhudi, na mitazamo ya waafrika wenyewe
katika kutafuta njia za kujiopoa. Mijadala inayoendelezwa katika kipindi cha baada ya Usasa (Post-
Modernism) kama anavyokiri Parpat (1993:443), imewakabidhi wanawake wa ulimwengu wa tatu
wanaobaguliwa, silaha za kujihami. Wanawake hawa walijitosa katika mijadala hii kwani waliona matatizo
yanayowakabili ni tofauti kwa hali nyingi na yale yanayowakabili wanawake wa kimagharibi.
Ieleweke pia kwamba kwa muda mrefu sasa, wanawake wazungu wamemiliki ujuzi wa kusoma taaluma
zihusuzo wanawake wa Kiafrika. Ni jambo la kufadhaisha kuona kwamba vitabu vilivyoandikwa na
wazungu hao havikuvuviwa tajriba za waafrika wala kupata mchango wa kitaaluma wa waafrika wenyewe.
Aghalabu, baadhi ya vitabu hivyo vimesheheni upotovu na ukengeushi kuhusu maisha halisi ya wanawake
wa Kiafrika. Aidha, hawajaielewa nafsi ya mwanamke wa Kiafrika wala taabu zinazomkabili. Ni jambo la
kusikitisha kuona kwamba baadhi ya kauli zinazoendelezwa na wataalamu kutoka nje zina upotovu
mwingi.
Okeke (1996:231), kwa mfano, anasema hatuwezi kuanza kuzungumzia juu ya mitazamo ya kiuhakiki
wakati ambapo wingi wa tajriba zetu haujagunduliwa na kuhakikiwa. Bila kuchunguza tajriba halisi za
wanawake barani Afrika, hatuwezi kuzungumzia kikamilifu juu ya nafasi yetu katika safu za mijadala ya
masuala ya Unisai. Uchunguzi huo ni muhimu ili kujenga uhusiano na makundi mengine ya wanawake
ulimwenguni.
Katika muktadha wa fasihi ya Afrika, kuna mjadala unaoendelezwa na wataalamu wa kifasihi kuhusu
mhusika wa kike katika fasihi za Kiafrika. Kwa mfano, ni ukweli usiopingika kwamba sio waandishi wote
wanaowasawiri wanawake kama wapenzi, masuria, makahaba, au vitegemezi tu vya wanaume. Wapo wale
wanaowasawiri kama viumbe wenye umahiri mkubwa katika kutoa maamuzi bora, mashujaa, na watu
waliojitoa mhanga kwa manufaa ya wengine (Wafia dini), na kuipiga vita mifumo ya udhalimu.
Mwandishi Mariama Ba ananukuliwa akizungumzia juu ya mustakabali wa mwanamke wa Kiafrika katika
fasihi (Zell na wengine 1983:385). Anasema zile nyimbo za Kiafrika zilizoimbwa ili kuwakumbuka akina
mama wa Afrika, na ambazo zinaeleza matamanio ya watu kuhusu Mama Afrika, sasa hazitoshi
kumshughulikia mwanamke wa Kiafrika. Huyu lazima apewe fursa anayostahili katika fasihi, hususan
jukumu lake katika mapambano ya ukombozi akiwa sambamba na mwanamume. Aidha, apewe fursa
inayolingana na mchango wake katika maendeleo ya kiuchumi barani. Baadhi ya waandishi wamejaribu
kusawiri jinsi mwanamke huyo anavyojikakamua. Mwandishi Emecheta (1982) anamsawiri mwanamke wa
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kisasa akiwa amekabiliwa na mivutano aina mbili. Kwanza, anakabiliwa na usasa unaomshawishi kuvua
baadhi ya hisia na mielekeo potovu ya jamii yake, na upande wa pili anakabiliwa na uasili wa Kiafrika
unaomhitaji anyenyekee mila na desturi za jamii yake.
Hali hii inabainika kupitia mhusika Nko katika Double Yoke anayeshindwa kujitanzua katika utata huo
unaomzonga. Lakini wahusika wanaoonyesha kufaulu kuvua nafsi hiyo bandia ya kike ni kupitia kazi za
Flora Nwapa kama vile wahusika Idu na Efuro (Davies na Graves 1990:176). Kwingineko katika fasihi ya
Kiswahili tunakumbana na kazi zinazosawiri mivutano ya kijamii na jinsi wahusika wa kike wanavyojizatiti
ili kujiopoa kutoka katika mikatale ya kiutamaduni na uhalisi wa maisha yanayowazunguka. Mazrui (1981)
katika Kilio cha Haki anamsawiri mhusika Lanina anayeendeleza mapambano dhidi ya athari za ukoloni,
mila na itikadi za jamii yake. Analipigia mbizi swala la siasa na nafasi ya mwanamke katika asasi hii.
Tunabainishiwa kwamba mwanamke ana uhuru wa kufanya kazi yoyote bila kuwekewa vikwazo. Naye
Mwachofi (1987) katika Mama Ee, anayasawiri mapambano dhidi ya mila zinazomdhalilisha mwanamke.
Mwandishi analijadili swala la ajira miongoni mwa wanawake, na kuonyesha kwamba mwanamke ana haki
ya kuajiriwa ili ajisimamie kiuchumi.
Kwingineko katika fasihi za Kiafrika Mariama Ba (1980) katika So Long A Letter anayasawiri mafunzo
anayopewa mhusika Nabou ili kumwezesha kuwa na hisia za upole, ukarimu, unyamavu, na utiifu ili aweze
kuishi vyema na mwanamume (Taz. Utenzi wa Mwanakupona). Fauka ya haya, wahariri wa Ngambika
wanauona umuhimu wa kurejelea kazi za fasihi ya Kiafrika, hususan zile zilizoandikwa, ili kutathmini upya
umbuji na itikadi za waandishi hao. (Davies na Graves 1990:vii). Wanatoa msisitizo wa kuhakiki nafasi ya
wahusika wa kike waliogubikwa na vivuli vya mifumo ya kuumeni, ili kuchunguza upya majukumu yao
katika kazi hizo.
Ipo haja ya kutumia nadharia ya Unisai wa Kiafrika kuhakiki kazi hizo kwa minajili ya kumtoa mwanamke
kutoka katika ukiritimba wa mifumo dhalimu na kumwezesha kujisimamia ili kutimiza shughuli zake
kikamilifu katika majukwaa ya fasihi sawa na mwanamume.
4.0 Je, Unisai wa Kiafrika unahusisha maswala gani?

Steady (1981) ni mmoja wa waasisi wa nadharia ya Unisai wa Kiafrika. Tofauti na dhana zinazoendelezwa
na wana-unisai wa kimagharibi, Steady anaona kwamba mwanamke wa Kiafrika ni mwana harakati
shupavu wa mapambano dhidi ya ubaguzi wa kijinsia, na mtetezi hodari wa haki na usawa wa mwanamke.
Hii ni kwa sababu, mbali na kwamba amepitia katika vipindi mbalimbali vya kihistoria vyenye wingi wa
misukosuko, ameweza pia kujikimu bila kumtegemea mwanamume kwa hali nyingi. Kwa kufanya hivyo
basi, hujinyima ule 'ulinzi' wa mwana mume.
Isitoshe, mwanamke huyu amezongwa na matatizo mengi zaidi yanayomkalifu akilinganishwa na yule wa
kimagharibi, na ameweza kujinasua kutoka katika mitego mingi ya kijamii, kisiasa, kiuchumi, na hasa
kiutamaduni. Ogundipe-Leslie (1984), ambaye ametoa mchango maridhawa katika nadharia hiyo,
amebainisha matatizo yanayomwandama mwanamke wa Kiafrika. Kwa mfano, anaeleza mwanamke wa
Kiafrika amenyanyaswa kutoka nje ya bara hili kupitia kwa athari zilizoachwa na mkoloni, taathira za
tamaduni za kigeni, masharti ya kiuchumi yanayowekewa nchi yake, rangi yake, na hata yeye mwenyewe.
Kwa upande mwingine, ametiwa shemere na kutawaliwa na itikadi za mifumo ya kuumeni iliyosaki taasubi
za kiume.
Kadhalika, Ogundipe-Leslie (1994:221) anashikilia kwamba nadharia za kimagharibi ni mitazamo isiyoweza
kumshughulikia mwanamke wa Kiafrika kikamilifu. Kwa hivyo, anatoa hadhari kwamba kule kutumia
mitazamo hii kikasuku ili kuhakiki fasihi ya Kiafrika huenda kuwe kikwazo katika kujivumbua kwetu
kiutamaduni. Pia anaona hulka ya mwanamke wa Kiafrika kama matokeo ya dahari nyingi za kupuliziwa
itikadi za kuumeni kiasi cha kumfanya ajitweke 'nafsi bandia' inayothaminiwa na mfumo wa kuumeni. Hii
ndiyo maana Simon de Beauvior (1974) alikaulisha kwamba mtu hazaliwi mwanamke bali huwa
mwanamke kupitia kwa mafunzo yanayomtwika majukumu mahsusi kulingana na uana wake.
Nadharia ya Unisai wa Kiafrika basi, haina budi kukita katika mila, desturi, na kaida za kijamii ili ibainishe
nafasi ya mwanamke. Katika kupendekeza nadharia kama hii, masuala mengi ya kiutafiti
yameshunghulikiwa na wataalamu na wahakiki mbalimbali wa fasihi ya Kiafrika kama vile Davies na
Graves (1990), Ogundipe-Leslie (1984, 1994), Steady (1981), Amadiume (1987), Parpart (1993), Okeke
(1996), Momanyi (1998, 2002), Wandera (1996), miongoni mwa wengine.
70
Miongoni mwao wamependekeza vigezo mahsusi vitakavyotumiwa katika tahakiki za fasihi ya Kiafrika,
hususan ile iliyoandikwa na waafrika wenyewe. Kwanza kabisa, nadharia hiyo ihusishe kipengele cha
ushirika kati ya wanaume na wanawake. Hii ni kwa sababu ni muhimu kutambua mapambano ya pamoja
yanayotekelezwa na jinsia hizi mbili ili kufifisha unyanyasaji wa kigeni. Kwa miaka mingi, wanawake
wameshirikiana sako kwa bako na wanaume ili kukomoa mifumo dhalimu ya kigeni. Udhalimu huo
ulioshitadi katika enzi ya ukoloni na ambao kimelea chake ni ukoloni mambo-leo, huwanyanyasa waafrika
wote kwa jumla.
Hata hivyo, mwanamke wa Kiafrika hunyanyaswa kuwili; mikatale na sharuti za kiutamaduni kwa upande
mmoja, na unyanyasaji wa kigeni unaojitokeza kwa njia nyingi ili kumdumaza zaidi. Ijapokuwa Unisai huo
huenda ukajikita katika malengo na mahitaji tofauti na ule wa kimagharibi, ipo haja ya kujenga ushirikiano
katika kutathmini vigezo vya nadharia za kimagharibi, ili kuteua vile vinavyoafiki hali na maisha ya
mwanamke wa Kiafrika. Nadharia kama hiyo, ikite katika uhalisi wa mazingira na maisha ya mwanamke
huyu. Historia ni kielelezo muhimu cha tajriba na maisha ya watu. Ngara (1985) anashadidia umuhimu huu
kwa kueleza kuwa kuondoa historia katika fasihi ya Kiafrika, ni sawa na kuzama katika utupu na uchapwa
wa kiusomi.
Kwa hivyo, nadharia hiyo irejelee historia kama vile fasihi za kale na matendo ya watu ili kuvumbua
mambo yaliyomthakilisha mwanamke. Hii ni pamoja na kubainisha mifano bora ya mashujaa wa kike
watakaokuwa vielelezo bora vya kumhakiki mwanamke wa Kiafrika. Mifano kama hiyo inaweza kushadidia
hoja kwamba mwanamke wa Kiafrika alikuwa huru zaidi na aliheshimiwa katika nyakati za kabla ya majilio
ya wakoloni. Aidha, nadharia hiyo haina budi kutambua uwezo wa mwanamke huyo wa kujitegemea na
kuzalisha mali bila kumtegemea mwanamume.
Kwa hivyo, nadharia ijihusishe na maisha halisi ya mwanamke wa Kiafrika, kadhia anazotekeleza, na
mabadiliko anayoleta katika jamii yake. Mtazamo huo, uweze kuhakiki asasi na taratibu za kijamii barani
Afrika zinazomthamini mwanamke kwa lengo la kuzitambua. Asasi kama hizo hazina budi kutambuliwa
kama kigezo muhimu cha nadharia hiyo. Kadhalika, nadharia iweze kutumiwa kutupilia mbali mielekeo
hasi na asasi zozote zinazomfukarisha, kumnyanyasa, na kumdhalilisha mwanamke huyo, hasa katika
matumizi ya lugha au sanaa ya aina yoyote.
Kwa mujibu wa vigezo hivi, wana-unisai wa Kiafrika wanahitajika kuzidhukuri nadharia za kimagharibi ili
kuona iwapo baadhi ya vigezo vya mitazamo hiyo vinaafiki na kutaalaki mahitaji ya mwanamke wa Kiafrika
katika fasihi. Ninaamini kwamba kuna vigezo vingine, hasa vile vinavyoshughulikia masuala ya kinafsia
ambavyo vinaweza kuafiki uhakiki wa fasihi za Kiafrika. Katika muktadha huu, masuala hayo yasihusishe
tu dhuluma dhidi ya wanawake bali pia dhuluma zinazoelekezwa kwao na wanawake wenzao walioshitadi
ushaufu na ubabe wa mielekeo ya kuumeni.
5.0 Hitimisho
Kulingana na hoja zilizojadiliwa, ipo haja ya kudahili mustakabali wa Unisai wa Kiafrika. Ipo haja ya
kushughulikia vigezo muafaka vya nadharia itakayotumiwa kuhakiki matini za fasihi ya Kiafrika. Yapo
masuala mengi yanayoibuka kila uchao kuhusu namna mwanamke wa Kiafrika anavyoweza
kushughulikiwa katika fasihi, na mitazamo ya kinisai itakayofaulisha uhakiki wa fasihi hii. Kutokana na
udurusu wa mapendekezo ya wakereketwa wa masuala ya kike barani Afrika na kwingineko, ni bayana
kwamba ipo haja ya kuunda nadharia itakayokifu tahakiki za fasihi hiyo.
Kwa mujibu wa mjadala wa makala hii, hatuna budi kuchunguza mila, desturi, na mikondo ya kijamii,
kiuchumi na kisiasa, inayomwathiri mwanamke wa Kiafrika, na jinsi hali hizi zinavyojibainisha katika fasihi.
Kujitegemea kwa mwanamke na ushirika wake na mwanamume ni baadhi ya vigezo vya kuzingatiwa.
Kadhalika, ipo haja ya kuchunguza kurasa za historia yetu kwani kumwelewa binadamu yeyote kunahitaji
kigezo cha historia. Mwanamke wa Kiafrika amepitia mikondo mbalimbali ya kihistoria, mikondo
iliyoshuhudia thamani yake, mbali na unyanyaswaji wake. Tajriba za mwanamke huyu basi, hazina budi
kuzingatiwa ili kubainisha uhalisi wa maisha yake.
Kwa upande mwingine, nadharia za kimagharibi zisichukuliwe moja kwa moja kama mitazamo muflisi
isiyoweza kumshughulikia mwanamke wa Kiafrika kwa kila hali. Ipo haja ya kuzitathmini kwa lengo la
kurutubisha Unisai wa Kiafrika. Mwisho bali si akali, wanawake wa Kiafrika, hasa waandishi na wahakiki
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wa fasihi wanapaswa kusimama kidete, kuwa na ghera ya kuandika, kutathmini na kuhakiki fasihi za janibu
zetu. Jukumu hili litasaidia pia kurutubisha nadharia hiyo ya Unisai wa Kiafrika.
Marejeo
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World Press.
De Beauvoir, S. (1974): The Second Sex, New York, vintage Books.
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Freud, S. (1977): On Sexuality, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
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Edward Arnold.
Mazrui, A. (1981): Kilio cha Haki, Nairobi, Longman.
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Ugandamizwaji?" Tasnifu ya M.A.; Chuo Kikuu cha Egerton, Njoro. (Haijachapishwa).
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M. Kuria. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1 (1) 2009, 72-83
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye: A White Woman’s Afrocentric Approach to Gender Politics in Africa
Mike Kuria
mkuria@daystar.ac.ke
Dayster University
Abstract
Can an ‘outsider’ in Africa become so culturally assimilated as to qualify being seen as an insider? The debate about
how writers perceive and mirror the world through their own cultural prisms has created dichotomous concepts such as
“African” versus “European/American” or the “Afrocentric” as opposed to “Eurocentric”. This paper not only
concedes that it is possible for an African to be Eurocentric, as so well argued by Frantz Fanon (1965; 1967) in his
writings; but that it is also equally possible for a person of European descent to become so immersed in African culture
as to have their view of the world shaped more by Africa than by Europe and therefore qualify to be described as
Afrocentric. I hereby submit the case of Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye and her writings to interrogate what befits
“afrocentric approach to gender politics in Africa”.
1.0 Introduction
Marjorie was born white British in 1929 and travelled to Kenya as a Christian missionary and bookseller
in1954. She met and married the late Oludhe Macogye, a Luo physician, in 1957 and became a Kenyan
citizen in 1964. She has been living in Kenya since 1954 where she and her late husband raised three
children. It means she has lived through Kenya’s major political epochs namely the last stages of
colonialism, the Mau Mau resistance, and post-independence Kenya under the reigns of Kenyatta, Moi
and now Mwai Kibaki. During the so called second liberation struggle1 when Kenyans were struggling
against the one party rule and agitating for multiparty democracy it was young politicians such as James
Orengo, Paul Muite, Kiraitu Murungi, Raila Odinga and others, usually referred to as the “young turks”
because of their age, who spearheaded the struggle to have section 2A of the constitution repealed in
order to allow for the re-introduction of multiparty democracy in Kenya. In 1982 the constitution of
Kenya had been amended to make Kenya a one party state. The so called young turks were born around
the same time that Macgoye started living in Kenya. Current demographics which show that 56% of
Kenya’s population is below 35 years of age (Lwanga, 2007) indicate that Macgoye started living in Kenya
long before the majority of Kenyans were born. She, for example, became a citizen two years before I was
born. It is however not just the longevity of Macgoye’s stay in Kenya that interests me here but also the
way that she has managed to become so culturally integrated among the Luos as to warrant, in my
opinion, being considered an “insider” Luo rather than what Nnaemeka ( 1995, 85) calls an “inoutsider.”
By “inoutsider” Nnaemeka means one “…who pays equal attention to cultural contexts and critical
theory”. While I am in agreement with Nnaemeka that any non-African who wants to engage in African
literary/cultural criticism must at the very least cultivate a sense of “inoutsidership”, I am suggesting that
Macgoye should simply be considered an insider. I quite agree with Kurtz (2005) when he argues that
“[b]y the end of the twentieth century Macgoye, then in her seventies, had spent almost half of that
century living, working, raising a family, and writing in Kenya. By this time, clearly, she was no longer
Nyarloka, no longer an outsider. Rather, in the minds of her family, her community, and Kenyan readers at
large, she was a Min Gem-‘Mother of Gem’, a title acknowledging her role in the Luo community of
Western Kenya into which she had married” (Kurtz 2005, 3).
1 During the 1980s and early 1990s Kenyans regarded their struggle for the repeal of section 2A of the
constitution of Kenya, to allow for multiparty democracy as second liberation struggle, the first struggle
having been against British colonialism.
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2.0 Mcgoye’s Writings

Macgoye’s first novel, Coming to Birth, was published in 1986. This was followed in 1987 by The Present
Moment and Street life, then came Homing In in 1994 while Chira, Published in 1997, was followed by a
collection of her poetry under the title Make it Sing and Other Poems in 1998. Her latest novel is A Farm
Called Kishnev published in 2006. She has also published non-literary works such as The Story of Kenya: A
Nation in the Making (1984) and Moral Issues in Kenya: A Personal View (1996). Macgoye has largely been
ignored in the study of African and East African literature. Kurtz (2005), besides demonstrating the fact
that Macgoye has not been given the attention that her writing warrants and deserves, has argued that one
of the reasons that Macgoye has been ignored by literary critics is because they were unable to categorise
and box her into any monolithic identity mould. He correctly argues that Macgoye’s writing cannot not be
classed together with other colonialist writings such as those by Defoe in Robinson Crusoe, Karen Blixen in
Out of Africa, or Elspeth Huxley in Flame Trees of Thika. These are writers who write as outsiders writing
about Africa. Macgoye also differs from black African writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Margaret
Ogola, Rebeka Njau and Grace Ogot because these can be seen Africans writing about Africa from an
insider perspective because they are black and were born and raised in Africa. This is in contrast to
Macgoye who is white and was born in England. A reading of Macgoye’s novels above, however, reveals
that most of her characters are black and the themes she explores are about Africa from an African
perspective. Indeed with the exceptions of Homing In and A Farm Called Kishnev, all her main characters are
black Africans struggling with their daily lives. The characters are treated without the prejudice and
fascination characteristic of western writers writing about Africans. Her subjects include poverty and
hunger, HIV/AIDS, the struggle for independence and its attendant impact on Africa’s colonial subjects,
gender and culture, all of them dealt with a tinge of a genuine concern for the underprivileged. One of her
most famous poems, for example is “A Freedom Song” which is about a house girl called Atieno who is
blamed for everything that goes wrong and overworked by her masters. She eventually dies and only then
is she paid some attention with more money being spent on her than had ever been spent while she was
living. Macgoye’s sympathies are always with the marginalised in society in Africa. Like other African
writers, Macgoye’s writings borrow from the cultures and languages of Africa and specifically the Luo.
She is critical about African cultures and systems but so are writers such as Okot P’Bitek in Song of Ocol,
Tsitsi Dangarembga in Nervous Conditions, and Rebeka Njau in Ripples in the Pool.
3.0 Macgoye’s Identity: Luo or White Kenyan?

In 1998 I had the opportunity of interviewing three Luo women writers namely: Grace Ogot, Margaret
Ogola and Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. While interviewing Ogot she described Macgoye as a typical Luo
who had reminded her on several occasions the proper Luo way of doing things. It is interesting that out
of the three, Macgoye was the only one to come up with the traditional provision for women to reject
suitors in the so-called marriage by capture among the Luo. Reacting to my suggestion that there were
institutions that empowered women in the traditional Luo set up, she had this to say:
Yes, they gave women power. There were institutions even very small ones. For instance,
if a girl was captured, usually called marriage by capture but it was of course pre-arranged, but if a
girl was really unwilling to go, she was to stand on an anthill facing in the direction of her home and
refuse. If you did not respect her refusal, there was very strong chira2, there was a strong taboo
(Kuria 2003, 62).
During the interview, I asked Macgoye if she considered herself Luo, just Kenyan, or white Kenyan. This
was her response:
I consider myself a Kenyan…. I certainly do not see myself as a Kenyan White; I mean I do not
think that there is a community of Kenyan whites although there are a few people, not necessarily
citizens, who make an agglomeration but they do not actually make community. So, yes, I see
myself as a Kenyan and the sub-category is bound to be Luo (Kuria 2003, 53).
2 Curse (emphasis mine)
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The point I am making here is that its not just Macgoyes’ works that suggest she is Kenya but that she also
constructs her own identity as Luo and therefore Kenyan. It is interesting that when I asked her if she
writes from a Kenya perspective, she replied that she actually had no alternative. In other words, being
Kenyan comes naturally to her. Indeed she declared that she could no longer write about modern Europe
unless she was to make a deliberate effort and research about it. In her own words:
I would be inept in writing about modern Europe because I have seen very little of it. Let me just
make one qualifier there; that does not mean to say that I may not write about it if I choose to
and if I do my homework. And perhaps that is one problem with African writers. We (emphasis
mine)are always being pushed to restrict ourselves to cultures…..one may write about anything so
long as he or she gathers material about his subject.
I believe this should put an end to arguments doubting Macgoye’s African identity. She does not even
seem to be conscious of herself as a migrant from Europe. She is simply Luo and Kenyan.
3.1 Afrocentricity.
In her fiction, and especially Coming to Birth; Homing In; and Victoria and Murder in Majengo, Macgoye
postulates what I would call an afrocentric interpretation of the African experience of history from a
female perspective. In applying the term “afrocentric” as an adjective to define interpretation, I am simply
combining the words Africa and centre to mean a way of understanding reality from an African
perspective. Africa becomes the centre and the position from which we view the world around us. I am
borrowing from Ngugi’s argument, in his book Moving the Center: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms, for the
need to move the centre because traditionally Europe and America have acted as if they were the centres
of the universe when it comes to knowledge. Afrocentricty so conceived suggests that we in Africa can
and should make the continent our centre of the universe. The term “afrocentric” here does not mean the
same thing as it does in the discourses of black African American intellectuals such as Asante (2001; 1993;
1988) where it denotes black consciousness. It means that Macgoye’s values and view of the world have
Africa as the springboard or the prism through which they are constructed. Macgoye’s afrocentricity is
evident in her questioning and reconstructing the Luo concept of home; her views about women and
careerism in Africa; her interpretation of motherhood and marriage; and her approach to cultural practices
such as polygamy, wife inheritance and female circumcision.
3.2 Reconstructing the Concept of Home

In Coming to Birth, the concept of home is critically examined and evaluated in the context of Luo cultural
politics as well as Kenyan national politics. Home as a concept, which features prominently in Macgoye’s
fiction, is very significant in the context of Luo culture. In the Wambui Otieno case in which Wambui, a
Kikuyu woman, engaged the Luo Umira Kager clan in a legal tussle over where to bury her husband, a
witness who was responding to one of the leading counsel’s invitation to provide the Luo definition of a
home had this to say:
This is the place where an uncle or a father takes you to point out where you should build. You
go to that place with your wife and first son and put a small structure. Your son builds a small hut
called simba. You should sleep there with your wife and then it becomes a home (Cohen and
Odhimbo 1989, 41).
Okoth Okombo, as quoted by Cohen and Odhiambo (1989, 41) has this to say about the idea of a home
as seen from a Luo perspective and in the context of the Wambui Otieno saga:
‘[H]ere we have the crucial distinction between home as an English word and its dholuo correlate
dala or (pacho). For the definition of dala must of necessity contain an indication of how it comes
into being. Since establishing dala is a ritual that involves at the very minimum the man who is to
be the head of the home, his eldest son, his wife, and his own father (or an appropriate
representative from his anyuola [minimal lineage]), it cannot be a personal affair. That is, a man
cannot just feel that the building in which he lives is his dala. Thus no matter how much one feels
at home in a given ot (“house”) one cannot just declare it dala (“home”) without the appropriate
ritual, which is reducible to such essentials as may be prescribed by the consulted elder or elders’.
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What becomes clear here is that for the Luo, the establishment of a home involves a husband, a wife, a
child, relatives and land, almost always ancestral land (Mboya, 1983). Macgoye examines this system of
constituting home(s) and interprets it as patriarchal and oppressive to women. She then suggests that
women’s concept of home needs to be redefined from their own perspective. This attempt to redefine the
concept of home, for women, involves confronting and coming to terms with their own narratives of
pain. This can in itself be seen as some kind of a homecoming that is evocative of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s
collection of essays titled Homecoming : Essays on African and Caribbean literature, Culture and Politics. Macgoye
seems to suggest that women’s method of homecoming involves shunning marriage or negotiating its
terms, seeking money, wealth and knowledge, and cultivating cultural as well as economic independence.
Coming to Birth (1986) and Homing In (1994) are the two novels in which Macgoye explores what home
means to Kenyan women. The two novels’ development centres on the main women characters’ process
of becoming and their search, not for a room they could call their own as in Virginia Wolf’s text, A Room
of one’s Own, but a place where they can find comfort and peace and call home. In Coming to Birth (1986)
when Paulina moves from her rural home to Nairobi, she is in search of her husband and therefore ready
to make a home. Nairobi for her is a land of promise, but it soon turns out to be a land of violence,
suffering, exploitation and deprivation. In this context, her life in Nairobi mirrors the state of the nation
under British colonialism. When she arrives in Nairobi in1956, the state of emergency has already been in
place for two years and has become an accepted fact. “Operation Anvil”3 has been instituted which means
that Kenyans, especially the Kikuyu, have no freedom of movement. When Martin, her husband, begins to
lock her in the house and restrict her movement she becomes his colony, existing for his pleasure, which
parallels Kenya’s relationship to Britain. She is his prisoner. Home for her as defined in cultural and
patriarchal terms is a prison and it is this concept that her narrative endeavours to reconstruct and cast
from a woman’s point of view.
Martin is a classic embodiment of what home means to men. Macgoye informs us that seven years after his
marriage, Martin was still a Luo boy “… whose whole world picture revolved around an idealised ‘home’
to which he would return in plenty and comfort after making his mark on the big world”( Macgoye 1986,
51). In other words, Martin was holding onto a traditional idea of making homes where marriage meant
men went into the world and made a mark and then returned to their wives back home. Macgoye is critical
of the traditional idea of marriage, and the related process of establishing the home, as the grand finale to
a woman’s life. Marriage is what old women, taken as the custodians of custom, paraded “…as so simple
and inevitable that after it there was nothing to tell” (137). Instead Macgoye portrays marriage as marking
the beginning of a tumultuous and painful life for the women. Home as a haven of peace is neither found
in the rural areas (cultural definition) nor in the urban areas (urban/modern construction). In the first
instance, Nairobi brutalises Paulina. In contrast, when she returns to the rural areas she manages to rise to
the level of a teacher and owner of a house. While in Nairobi she is virtually a sexual slave, her return to
the rural areas coincides with her discovery/establishment of sexual freedom. Although Kisumu is semi-
urban at this time, her relationship with people and the ethics within which she operates is rural. Simon,
for example, suggests that she is culturally ethically right in seeking to make a child with someone else if
her husband had failed in that obligation. However, it is also in the rural areas where her greatest loss
occurs, namely the death of her son Okeyo. On the other hand when she returns to Nairobi she finds
liberating comradeship with Mrs M and the urchins. It is also during this period in Nairobi that she finds
her “voice” and hence ability to articulate her ideas. We then realise, as she also does, that her whole life,
both in the village and in town, has been a long journey in terms of soul searching. When Martin and Mr
M react negatively to her having intervened in a fight between urchins in the city and having been
interviewed by the press in consequence of her action, she brushes aside their advice that she should think
before acting thus: “I reckon I have had a lot of time for thinking, years and years for it…And these kids
have more thinking-time than is good for them, too. It’s my business who I buy a cup of tea for, and who I give my
name to, if it comes to that (139) [emphasis mine]. This indicates that Paulina, as Mr M rightly notes, has
become a new woman. She wants to define herself as opposed to taking orders and instructions from the
men in her life. The emphasis here is that her growth is not a simple consequence of an urban experience
3 This was a code name for the operation to keep suspicious Africans and especially the Kikuyu out of
Nairobi.
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but that this is the result of growth/development of consciousness in the course of living both in urban
and rural areas.
What we see is a Paulina increasingly more at home and comfortable with ideas as well as her environment
not because she is living in either the rural or urban areas but because she is in control. Although Martin
has come back into her life and is living with her, he is the one who has moved to her house and is
therefore obliged to tow her line rather than make demands. When Paulina gets pregnant with his baby
she, against custom, lets him know that she is pregnant and he too, contrary to custom, is delighted. It is
interesting and perhaps disappointing that she seems ready to be faithful to him without requiring him to
reciprocate. Careful examination, however, also suggests that she has divested herself of Martin’s influence
so much so that he is no longer the centre of her life. She has effectively reconstructed motherhood from
fulfilment of social demands by women, friends, community or even her husband to a self fulfilling
experience. She accepts adulation for her ability to mother but her self respect and worth is no longer
dependent on it. While she does not deny that motherhood is self-fulfilling and that it makes women feel
complete, she now constructs it as her own choice and she is ready to pursue the enterprise with or
without Martin’s support or that of society. She therefore asserts her right to construct home in her image,
retaining all the traditional elements but shifting the control of every one of them to women. Home
therefore becomes not a geographical or cultural location but a spatial-temporal location where women
find comfort and exercise control. She can therefore consider Nairobi as home and yet see that as simply
an extension rather than in opposition to Gem. In many ways this is a woman’s expression of the same
concept that Cohen and Odhiambo (Siaya) explore in terms of Luos establishing home away from home.
The two authors demonstrate how Luos have migrated to other lands outside Kisumu, as evidently
manifest in Ogot’s The Promised Land, and established extensions of their village homes. In Mombasa for
example one such area is known as Kisumu ndogo which simply translates as little Kisumu. When Paulina
therefore tells Martin, while they are in Nairobi:
This is your baby…I hope you will help me to take good care, so that even if one of your safari
wives gives you a dozen children still you need not be ashamed of your home in Gem ( Macgoye
1986, 147).
She is inviting him to a home away from home (Gem away from Gem) in which he is the one given the
choice of either rejecting or accepting the institution as she represents and concretises it as opposed to his
being the one to set the rules and requiring her to obey them. While one may justifiably feel that she ought
to have grown strong enough to demand mutual respect and not allow him the luxury of “safari wives”, it
has to be acknowledged that her concept of home is now significantly different from the patriarchal one.
4.0 Western Feminism as Fantasy: The Choice between Career and Home Making
In reference to African women and their careers, Macgoye demonstrates that for most women in Africa,
black or white, family and career are not necessarily or even primarily in opposition to each other. Women
do not have to choose between career and raising families. Careerism for them is more a matter of bread
and butter rather than self-esteem, self-actualisation, and freedom. Indeed the situation is much more
austere than that. This stance is most explicitly articulated by Ellen in Homing In. Writing to Lilly, a former
student of hers in England and who is planning to come to Kenya to see her as well as carry out some
interviews to assess the condition of women there, Ellen writes, “Probably most Kenyan women are
preoccupied with bread and not butter, without a thought of jam. Girls education had (sic) forged ahead,
but there isn’t much time to speculate on sexual equality, let alone fantasy” (Macgoye 1994, 164). This
suggests that to Africans, some of western feminism’s preoccupation is fantasy. It is interesting that when
I asked Macgoye whether she thought there were problems that were specific to women and which
women should be particularly concerned about she had this to say:
Well, there is a major problem; I mean this is so obvious. I am saying it all the time; the major problem is that we
obviously admit that two hundred children die of preventable causes every day. And that two hundred is probably a
very low estimate. It seems to me that any normal woman should wake up in the morning remembering this, any
woman who has undertaken that enormous enterprise of having children, and this essentially should be a matter of
deliberate choice, should be asking herself every morning, am I really able to do this and please God help. If I have
to be employed or in some other need, am I going to, in any way, diminish the childhood that these children have a
right to expect? Please show me what to do about it. This to me is completely overriding (Kuria 2003, 55).
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This may seem to suggest that Macgoye is suggesting that children are women’s responsibility in Africa.
However, a careful reading of her novels suggests that in fact she thinks child rearing in Africa has been
very much a collective responsibility that extends across gender and society as a whole and that this is the
ideal. However, because men are nearly always away trying to earn money for the family, it is women who
bear the brunt of the responsibility for bringing up children and bear the blame when things go wrong. A
good example is Homing In where Martha and her husband Njogu, whose hazardous lorry driving job
leads to his early death at the hands of gangsters. Before his death, Njogu brings money and food to his
wife and considers his children well taken care of only to come home one day to find one of his sons with
dwindled legs and a protruding stomach suggesting kwashiorkor. He slaps Martha once in ignorance of
the fact that she would not have been able to merely feed her own children while “sunken eyes watched
everything that came in and pestered you for a share of what remained” (70). In other words Martha was
mother not only to her biological children but also other children in the village and therefore she found it
impossible not to share what her husband only intended for his biological children.
4.1 Motherhood from an African Perspective.

Macgoye’s Afrocentric approach to gender issues is also evident in her handling of the experience and
theme of motherhood. Her approach echoes Nnaemeka’s (1997, 5) sentiments when she (Nnaemeka)
argues that unlike feminist discourses in the west, where motherhood is nearly always yoked to
victimhood, “African women writers attempt most of the time to delink motherhood and victimhood the
way they separate wifehood and motherhood…” Macgoye’s characters fit Nnaemeka’s description.
Instead of repudiating motherhood or struggling for the right to work rather than make homes or
alternatively make homes as opposed to working, Macgoye’s women combine motherhood, work and
resistance.
Indeed, as the women of Murang’a in Homing In demonstrate, their right to motherhood becomes their
basis for resistance. In this novel, two thousand women in Murang’a march to the colonial DCs office to
protest against forced terracing. In supporting the women against forced terracing by the colonialists,
Ellen argues that the women, rather than being forced into work, should have been left alone to take care
of their homes, babies and gardens. Women were using motherhood as a basis for protest. Macgoye
argues that rather than lower a woman’s status in an African society, children elevate women. This
phenomenon is reflected among the Luo by Paulina’s experience in Coming to Birth. When she bears a son
in Kisumu, even though every one knows that the child is illegitimate, her position in society among the
women and society in general improves. In Homing In, Macgoye argues that married Kikuyu women had
their “crowns shaved and shiny to show that they had married children and were of an age to give
counsel” (87). This is Macgoye’s way of suggesting that an Afrocentric approach to gender politics does
not view motherhood as always or even primarily an encumbrance but as a source of empowerment or as
a source of inspiration for empowerment. The argument here is not that African women are not weighed
down or even prevented from full self-actualisation by motherhood, but that African women may not
necessarily employ the same tools of discourse as western gender activists in addressing their own
concerns. The idea of motherhood as empowering is an interesting view since it contrasts sharply with
Macgoye’s view of marriage. Although Jack and Ellen in Homing In, for example, lead a relatively conflict
free marriage life, when Jack dies Ellen feels “at last unencumbered” (147). Marriage is interpreted as
confinement suggesting imprisonment and therefore loss of freedom. Macgoye suggests that marriage for
women means dispossession and is therefore parallel to the state of emergency declared by the colonialists
in 1952. Images of marriage as prison, confinement, disruption, dispossession and other debilitations run
throughout Macgoye’s fiction.
In Victoria, for example, prostitution is shown as more empowering than marriage. Prostitution is shown
as less of a vice but more of a wilfully chosen career and a form of resistance to the oppressive strictures
of marriage. Marriage is compared to the bondage of sin from which women have to be redeemed, just as
Christians are redeemed from sin by Christ. Although Macgoye does not seem to advocate for the
abolition of the marriage institution, she does seem to suggest that women are better off outside of the
institution. While it is possible for women to be married and successful, they need to resist or step outside
the marriage institution in order to experience self-fulfilment in their successes. Paulina of Coming to Birth
has to leave her husband in order to find her fullest self-expression. Victoria has to run away from her
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husband in order to improve her economic status, and the one woman who feels complete, Lilly Beach,
has to divorce twice to sustain her status as a free woman. I am not suggesting that Macgoye is calling for
the dismantling or even the rejection of marriage but that she suggests that the best form of marriage is
one in which man is not the centre of the universe.
5.0 African Customs: FGM and Polygamy.

Macgoye’s approach to gender issues is explicitly afrocentric is in her attitude toward African customs
such as female circumcision and polygamy. In regard to female circumcision for example, it is instructive
to note that although she is clearly in opposition to the practice, she never refers to it as female genital
mutilation, a term which in my opinion suggests senseless, brutal, savage and pointless hacking of
women’s genitalia. She does not view it as a practice designed by patriarchy to exercise control on
women’s sexuality as most Eurocentric literature seems to mirror the ritual. I have in mind writings such
as Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy and Warrior Masks. As a matter of fact Macgoye suggests that
irresponsible opposition to the practice in Kenya caused more harm than good as women ended up being
“…savagely cut on a tirade of reaction”. In Homing In, Martha, for example, goes through the practice at
the insistence of her mother and to the chagrin of her father. In her mother’s opinion, circumcision
prepares girls for marriage, enhances female power in the land because it binds women together as age
mates, and also forges unity between the younger and older women. This view of seeing women as largely
responsible for female circumcision was echoed much more blatantly by Margaret Ogola in an interview
with me. She said:
I hate the way women will go to international forums and start talking about FGM, we call it FGM medically, as if a
part of a lobotomy, a part of the brain was removed. This is a minor operation and in some tribes it is extremely minor,
it is just the significance of the shedding, the cleansing shedding of the blood, and they go out there, many of them have
undergone the operation, and they talk as if somebody truly did something terrible to them. But it was something that
made you part of a generation, that made you acceptable and feel at home in that generation. They have forgotten that.
So when they go and read that western hype they come and bring it here and it is as if men were collecting women and
doing FGM on them while it was a women’s thing, it was a sister thing, women did it to each other to prepare
themselves (Kuria 2003, 142).
Rather than oppose the ritual by branding it barbaric, retrogressive, savage and brutish, Macgoye rather
argues that the ritual has outlived its purpose. Her stance is that the struggle for independence rendered
the practice non-effectual as it could no longer bind girls to their village and community as this had been
taken over by the freedom oath.
Unlike the early missionaries Macgoye does not think that religion should have been the basis of
opposition to female circumcision as was the case in Ngugi’s The River Between. This stance is reflected in
Martha’s refusal to have her daughter Lillian circumcised. When old village women come sniffing and
making innuendoes to the effect that Lillian should submit to the ritual, Martha’s refusal is not based on a
Eurocentric conception of the ritual as being unchristian or as being carried out by old, rough and
unhygienic women. At this time, the “circumciser herself was not some antique skin-clad figure but
possibly handled your money in the market or scrubbed floors in the Town Hall”( Macgoye 1994, 127).
Martha’s refusal is based on the rationale that “the whole hugger mugger was unnecessary and unhealthy”
(127). In reflection on her own experience, she argues that in a world that had “…so much unnecessary
pain in it,” it is absurd that one “should inflict some extra pain just for the hell of it” (52). She feels that
Lillian, being a fatherless girl in a new world, should be left to live and “discover the rules as she went
along”. Female circumcision in Macgoye’s view should therefore be eradicated first because it is
unnecessary and unhealthy and secondly because it now serves no purpose as it can no longer effectively
bind women to women and to their villages and communities. Macgoye’s approach is afrocentric, in my
view, first primarily because it seeks to understand the practice in its context. Secondly, and arising from
this primary reason, Macgoye’s approach is afrocentric because it is not culturally arrogant, condescending,
or patronising. And thirdly, because it exonerates neither men nor women in apportioning blame for the
practice.
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5.1 Polygamy: Empowerment vs. Disempowerment

Polygamy is another institution that Macgoye examines from an Afrocentric perspective. In most
Eurocentric literature, polygamy is seen as oppressive to women. Katherine Frank’s argument that
polygamy “…is the most glaring inequitable and sexist feature of traditional African society” (15) is a case
in point. One of the reasons why some westerners find polygamy sexist is because the institution enables
men to have more sex than women. Polygamy is therefore seen as a patriarchal institution designed to
take care of men’s sexual needs. Another interpretation of polygamy is as commodifying women in the
sense that they become a reflection of a man’s wealth. And thirdly that polygamy enhances male power as
the more women a man has the greater is his empire to rule. Fourthly, Christianity mirrors polygamy as
another indicator of how far Africans are far from God. In other words polygamy is a violation of God’s
commandments or is indicative of a people without God.
Macgoye, herself once a missionary, takes a different approach, though clearly in favour of monogamy.
First, she does not interpret polygamy as a source of conflict for women in and of itself. Polygamy is taken
for granted in her texts and the women or men involved in them do not seem to experience any more
conflict than those in monogamous marriages. In fact polygamy in Macgoye’s texts seems to give women a
chance for solidarity and comradeship. In Chira, for example, the women in polygamous relationships as
well as those married to brothers refer to each other as “my sister-in-law” as well as “my co-wife”. This
approach resonates with Wanjiku Kabira’s short story “My Sister My Co-wife” in which she demonstrates
the institution’s potentiality of sisterhood as well as opportunities to decenter men. In Macgoye’s Victoria,
polygamy is actually arranged in the conviction that it would be beneficial both to Victoria and her distant
cousin. When Victoria runs away from the mission and leaves a daughter behind, its one of her co-wives
who ends up taking the child and bringing her up. Although ascribing significance to the role of
Christianity in the reduction of polygamous families, Macgoye suggests that changing social-economic
forces have led or are leading many Africans to abandon the practice of their own accord.
Macgoye argues that traditionally Luo women approved of polygamy because it empowered them. The
senior wife took the title of Mikaye while the junior one took the title of Nyachira. These titles were not
mere names but also descriptive of offices. By virtue of her being the senior wife, Mikaye assumed new
powers not only vis-à-vis Nyachira but also vis-à-vis her husband. The husband would no longer make any
major decisions without telling her. She was relieved of many hard household tasks which were passed
over to the new wife. This scenario is most explicit in Chira. In this novel polygamy is explored using
Assistant Minister MacOwour who, in a politically inspired conspiracy, is declared bankrupt and hence
sacked from his cabinet post. It is then that we learn that he has two wives, Justina and Evangeline, plus
several other girlfriends among whom is Njoki, Adhiambo and Janet. I am here concerned with the
relationship between Evangeline, the Mikaye and Justina, the Nyachira. First, Evangeline uses polygamy to
evade tasks that she considers distasteful. She concedes that she could tolerate Justina because Justina
“…was respectful and accepted the tedious engagements Evangeline did not care for” ( Macgoye 1997,
100). Secondly, she takes advantage of polygamy to deal with her menopause as is reflected in the
following quote:
Evangeline had early closed off the husband’s mandatory alternating visits by declaring herself
infertile. This made her smile sometimes: monogamous sisters-in-law were always trying to evade the approach of
menopause, attributing hot flushes to malaria or the use of an electric iron (100-101 [Emphasis mine].
It is important to stress that this does not mean that Evangeline was happy with Mac’Owuor as a husband.
In fact, because of undisclosed pains that he apparently had caused her, she barely stopped short of
divorcing him. The point I am making is that polygamy worked in her favour and that because Justina was
willing to play second fiddle, the relationship was relatively conflict free. On her part, although Justina
“…had forgotten about the grand passion, she got plenty of attention and the competition [meaning
Evangeline] kept out of her way” (102). She therefore had no reason to be competitive in her relationship
with Evangeline. It seems to me fair to conclude that the age differences between the two women, with
Evangeline being beyond child bearing age and Justina being young and in her prime, served to reduce the
sense of competition. This is in contrast to Justina’s feelings toward Adhiambo who was only a mistress
but Justina’s age mate. Justina argues that “[s]he felt a bit sorry for Evangeline, who had ideas ahead of her
time. But she was afraid of Adhiambo, who soured and seethed and might possess or invent the means to
discredit them all” (102). It is clear that had MacOwour been in a polygamous relationship involving
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Adhiambo and Justina as the co-wives, the conflicts in the marriage would have been much more
tumultuous. I am suggesting that in Evangeline, Justina and Adhiambo is a representation of the changing
nature and function of the institution of polygamy.
This changing nature is explained away in Victoria where Macgoye argues that polygamy was especially
undermined in the 1930s and 1940s when tables were turned so that Nyachira became the privileged one.
“The new wife was no longer taking her proper place in the household as Victoria had done when
Anyango sent for her all those years ago” (Macgoye 1993, 54). Instead:
[S]he would be the one who got new dresses and housekeeping money, she would be the one
whose children, belonging to a later and luckier generation, would get into high schools, and she
would be the one who appeared in Christmas staff dinner and had her photograph in the paper as
the sophisticated years rolled on (54).
This meant that the status of “the junior wife became a prize worth having and for this hundreds of little
girls hung around bars and offices of great men…” (54). In the same breadth, first wives began to feel that
their positions “needed to be guarded against intruders”. While polygamy traditionally helped the first
wives enhance their positions in the family, modernity means that a second wife threatens the position of
the first wife. It is in this context that Macgoye understands the modern woman’s opposition to polygamy
rather than that the institution was inherently oppressive to women. Victoria, for example, who is
Macgoye’s example of a progressive, independent minded and liberated woman, never ceases to inquire
about her daughter’s co-wife. Lois, her daughter and married as a second wife, becomes infuriated by her
mother’s inquiries. Her feeling is that her mother has failed to make a transition into the twentieth century
where marriage is for good and all and where there is no room for co-wives. The two women’s positions
in reference to polygamy can be understood in the context of changing roles of women in the institution.
Victoria, though the more independent minded and stronger of the two, finds nothing wrong with
polygamy because her mindset is traditional while her daughter feels threatened by the institution because
she knows that in modern times a second wife diminishes rather than enhances her powers . Polygamy has
ceased to be co-operative and has instead become competitive.
Macgoye’s criticism of African culture is especially appealing because one senses her awareness of the need
for what Nnaemeka (1997) calls a writer’s or critic’s cultural literacy of his/her target community. For
Macgoye, the target community is the Luo and she demonstrates in her fiction that she is aware and
mindful of “cultural imperatives and shifts” among the Luo. This makes it plain to see that she operates, at
the very least and to borrow from Nnaemeka (1995) once again, as an in/outsider vis-à-vis Luo culture.
To paraphrase my interpretation of the same concept in the beginning of this paper, Nnaemeka is
referring to someone who, though not indigenous to a particular community, has cultivated such cultural
literacy as to be incapable of being arrogantly dismissive of other people’s cultural values only on the basis
of his/her own cultural prisms/background. In my opinion, Macgoye has done much more than just
acquire Luo cultural literacy, she has become culturally assimilated. However, as she suggested in her
interview with me, her British background and missionary training and vocation also impact on her
writings. It is interesting, for example, that her fiction is without the cruel European masters and
colonialists or deceptive and hypocritical missionaries such as found in Ngugi’s novels. It is also to this
influence that I would ascribe her relative irreverence to the institution of marriage which is rather non-
afrocentric.
6.0 Conclusion
In conclusion, however, Macgoye’s view of gender politics in Africa does not posit women’s struggle for
freedom as pitting them against men. In her novels there are no tensions between men and women whose
genesis or foundation is primarily gender. There is no militancy or bitterness against men or a celebration
of men’s misfortunes as happens in Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions. However there is an acute
awareness of women coming against oppressive social forces whose strength lies in the fact that they are
sanctioned by both men and women. I am not here suggesting that Macgoye does not hold men
responsible for some of the misfortunes or debilitations that befall women. I am rather suggesting that
she argues that there are ways in which African men and women face largely similar problems but that
being yoked with men militates against women’s capacity to make the best of those problematic situations.
She suggests that in order for women to find the fullest expression of their potential it is important that
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they sever those relationships that bind them to men, of which marriage is the worst culprit. This view
becomes very pronounced if we pay attention to the state and condition of men in the lives of Macgoye’s
successful or powerful women. The men are conspicuous by their absence in the lives of those women. In
Homin In Jack is taken away from home to engage in the second world war and farm in Kitale in order that
Mrs Smith may learn the art of managing a farm and being head of her home. Mwangi also goes to war
before coming back only to be arrested and detained so that his wife gets to not only run the home but
also establish a successful family business. Victoria argues that her engagement or involvement with many
men, as opposed to being tied down to one of them gave her lee way to become independent. This is the
same argument that Macgoye seems to extend to polygamy but in reverse order. Polygamy seems to enable
women to focus more on themselves rather than on their men. It is disappointing that she does not zero
down on any one single polygamous family as she does with monogamy in Coming to Birth where marriage
becomes so oppressively confining that Paulina has to break free from the institution in order to find the
full expression of her humanity. What is not in doubt, however, is that Macgoye feels that unlike
motherhood, marriage imprisons and limits women’s potential. It seems her Christian ethics makes her
stop short of advocating the abolition of the institution. In spite of her radical approach to the institution
of marriage, I am convinced that in the whole her fiction is written from the perspective of an African and
specifically a Kenyan Luo. If the Luo perspective qualifies as African, and I think it does, then Macgoye’s
views, in spite of her being white, are Luo and therefore African.
References
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Asante, M. K. (1993). Afrocentricity and culture. In African Culture: The Rhythms of Unity, ed. Molefi Kete
Asante and Kariamu Welsh Asante, 1-12. Greenwood Press, 1985; Reprint, Trenton, N.J.: Africa
World Press (page references are to reprint edition)
Asante,M.K.(2001) Afrocentricity: the theory of social change http://www.asante.net/articles/guadalupe-
asante.html (accessed 20 January 2001)
Cohen, D. W. and Adhiambo, E. S. A. (1989). Siaya: The historical Anthropology of an African Landscape.
London: James Currey.
Cohen, D. W. and Adhiambo, E. S. A. (1992). Burying S.M.: The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power
in Africa. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.
Dangarembga T. (1988). Nervous Conditions. London: Women's Press.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin White Masks. New York: Grove Press
Fanon, F.(1965). The Wretched of the Earth. Suffolk: The Chaucer Press
Kuria, M. (2003).Talking Gender: Conversations with Kenyan Women Writers. Nairobi: PJ-Kenya.
Kabira, W. (1991). My Co-wife, My Sister. In Our Secret Lives: An Anthology of Poems and Short Stories by
Kenyan Women Writers, eds. Kabira etal, 26-31. Nairobi: Phoenix Publishers.
Kurtz, R.(2005). Nyarloka’s Gift: The Writing of Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. Nairobi: Mvule Africa
Publishers.
Lwanga, E. (2007). Remarks by Ms Elizabeth Lwanga, UNDP Resident Representative, on the occasion of
YES-MSE Certificate Awarding Ceremony on 25th January 2007, Kenya Institute of Education,
Nairobi. Retrieved 2/02/09 from
http://www.ke.undp.org/SpeechRR-yesMSE.pdf
Macgoye, M. (1993). Victoria, and Murder in Majengo. London : Macmillan,.
Macgoye, M. (1984). The story of Kenya: a nation in the making. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.
Macgoye, M. (1986). Coming to Birth. Nairobi: East African Education Publishers.
Macgoye, M. (1994). Homing In. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.
Macgoye, M. (1997). Chira. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers
Macgoye , M. (1993). Victoria, and Murder in Majengo. London : Macmillan.
Mboya, P. (1983). Luo: kitgi gi timbegi: A Hand Book of Luo Customs. Kisumu, Kenya: Anyange Press.
Nnaemeka, O. (1997). Introduction: Ima(in)ing knowledge, power and subversion in the margins. In The
Politics of (M)Othering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature, ed. Obioma Naemeka,1-25.
London: Routledge,
Nnaemeka, O. (1995). Feminism, rebellious women and cultural boundaries: rereading Flora Nwapa and
the compatriots. In Research in African Literatures 26.2 (Summer): 80-113.
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Nnaemeka, O. (1997). Urban spaces, women’s spaces: Polygamy as sign in Mariama Ba’s novels. In The
politics of (m)othering: Womanhood, identity,and resistance in African literature, ed. Obioma Naemeka,1-25.
London: Routledge.
Thiong'o, N.(1965). The River Between. London: Heinemann,
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I. Mbaabu and J. Kobia. Journal of Humanities (JH), Volume 1 (1) 2009, 84-95
Taswira za Mwanamume katika Fasihi Simulizi ya Kiafrika: Mfano wa Nyimbo za Tohara

Miongoni mwa Waigembe
Ireri Mbaabu na John M. Kobia

jkobia@yahoo.com
Chuo Kikuu cha Kenyatta na Chuo Kikuu cha Masinde Muliro
Ikisiri
Kwa muda mrefu, tafiti kuhusu masuala ya uana katika fasihi zimejikita zaidi katika jinsia ya kike na kupuuza
usawiri wa jinsia ya kiume katika tanzu mbalimbali za fasihi. Hata hivyo, kwa sasa, ulimwenguni kote kuna tafiti
nyingi kuhusu kusawiriwa kwa mwanamume katika taaluma mbalimbali. Makala hii inachunguza taswira za
mwanamume zinazojitokeza katika nyimbo za tohara za wanaume miongoni mwa Waigembe, nchini Kenya.
1.1 Utangulizi
Waigembe ni kundi mojawapo ya makundi tisa yanayoiunda jamii ya Wameru (Laughton, 1944; Nyaga,
1997; Kobia, 2004). Waigembe wanaishi katika tarafa tisa katika wilaya ya Igembe, Mkoa wa Mashariki
nchini Kenya. Ni wakulima wa mazao na wafugaji wa mifugo mbalimbali. Kama jamii yoyote ya Kiafrika,
Waigembe wana tanzu mbalimbali za fasihi simulizi kama vile ngano, methali, vitendawili na nyimbo.
Makala hii imezingatia zaidi utanzu wa nyimbo hasa zile za tohara na kuzihakiki ili kubainisha taswira za
mwanamume zinazojidhihirisha katika nyimbo hizo. Taswira hizi zinabainisha mwonoulimwengu wa jamii
ya Waigembe kuhusu matarajio, nafasi na majukumu ya mwanamume katika jamii hii.
1.2 Dhana ya Taswira

Ufafanuzi tofauti umetolewa kuhusu dhana ya taswira na wataalamu kadha. Kwa mfano, Msokile (1993:45)
anaeleza kuwa taswira ni mkusanyiko wa picha zinazoundwa na maelezo ya msanii katika kazi yake ya
fasihi. Ikumbukwe kuwa, wakati mwingine, taswira hujumuisha tamathali nyingine za usemi kama vile
sitiari, tashibihi, uhaishaji ili kujenga picha na kuibua hisia kama kuona, kugusa, kunusa, kuonja na kusikia;
zinazohusika na kazi ya fasihi. Picha hizi huhusu mawazo, dhana, maumbile au vitu anuai.
Kulingana na Ullman (1966:177) taswira ni tamathali ya usemi ambayo hueleza kufanana au kukaribiana
kwa kitu. Maoni haya yanakaribiana na mawazo ya Senkoro (1982:35) kuhusu dhana ya taswira ambayo
anaieleza kuwa ni mkusanyiko wa picha mbalimbali ziundwazo na maelezo ya msanii katika kazi ya fasihi.
Senkoro (1982:36) anaendelea kufafanua zaidi kuwa picha hizo huweza kuwa za wazo, kitu, hali, dhana au
uzoefu fulani katika jamii. Dhana ya taswira kuwa picha pia inajitokeza katika maelezo ya Mulokozi na
Kahigi (1979:28) ambao wanadahili kuwa, “… ni matumizi ya lugha yanayopambanuliwa na utunzi mzuri
wa maneno, uangalifu na udhahiri wa maelezo wenye kuhusisha na kujumuisha dhana mbalimbali tofauti
ndani ya dhana ili kueleza athari maalumu katika mawazo ya msomaji au msikilizaji.”
Katika nyimbo za tohara, kuna picha au taswira mbalimbali zinazojitokeza kutokana na matumizi ya lugha
hasa kwa uteuzi wa maneno kwa uangalifu. Taswira hizi huwa na athari kwa waimbaji, watahiriwa, wazazi,
nthaka (wavulana waliotahiriwa) na walezi wa watahiriwa.
Akieleza asili ya neno taswira, Wamitila (2003a:197) anadai kuwa linatokana na lugha ya Kiarabu. Anasema
dhana ya taswira ni sawa na jazanda ambapo neno jazanda lina asili ya lugha za Kibantu. Dhima kuu ya
kutumia taswira katika nyimbo ni kuweza kuchochea hisia za hadhira. Taswira huibua hisia za hadhira
inapotumiwa katika kazi za kisanaa.
Tilak (1993:20) anafananisha taswira na sitiari anaposema kwamba, kimsingi taswira ni tamathali ya usemi
kama ilivyo sitiari. Taswira huitwa hivyo kwa sababu katika taswira, kitu kimoja au dhana fulani hufikiriwa
au huelezewa ndani ya nyingine. Wamitila (2003a:197), kwa upande wake, amefafanua taswira hivi:
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…ni picha ambazo humjia msomaji anaposoma kazi fulani ya fasihi …

picha hizo hujengwa kutokana na maelezo ya mwandishi au tamathali za
usemi anazotumia … picha zinazopatikana katika kazi za fasihi huweza
kulenga hisia hizo tofauti tofauti…
Maelezo haya ya Wamitila (2003a) yanaelekea kuonyesha kuwa taswira ni dhana inayopatikana katika fasihi
andishi tu. Ieleweke kuwa taswira kama tamathali ya usemi hubainika katika tanzu zote za fasihi; andishi na
simulizi. Katika fasihi simulizi, taswira ni picha ambazo humjia mshiriki, mtazamaji wa utendaji au hadhira
kupitia wasilisho kutoka kwa msanii. Kwa mfano, kuna picha zinazomjia msikilizaji wakati hatibu anatumia
methali, kuimba wimbo au kutega vitendawili.
Taswira ni maneno yanayomfanya msikilizaji, mtazamaji au msomaji wa kazi ya fasihi kupata picha ya
mawazo yanayohusiana na hisi tano za binadamu za kuona, kusikia, kunusa, kugusa na kuonja. Taswira ni
picha zinazowajia hadhira katika fikira zao kupitia elementi za mazungumzo na viziada lugha
vinavyodhibitiwa na msanii. Hata hivyo, sharti hadhira na msanii waweze kuelewana au wawe na tajriba
sawia katika utendaji ili kufanikisha uwasilishaji na ufasiri wa taswira husika.
1.3 Uainishaji wa Taswira katika Fasihi

Taswira hutilia mkazo nguvu mhusika, au fanani, mandhari, maana na maudhui katika fasihi. Katika
uhakiki wa taswira katika kazi ya kisanaa, maswali kadha humwongoza mhakiki. Delmar (2005) ametoa
maswali yafuatayo ambayo yanapaswa kumwongoza mhakiki wa kazi ya fasihi kuhusu matumizi ya taswira:
(i) Ni taswira za aina gani zinazojitokeza katika kazi ya fasihi?
(ii) Je, taswira hizo ni dhahiri?
(iii) Taswira hizo zinawakilisha nini?
(iv) Taswira hizo zina athari gani?
(v) Taswira zimejumuishwa vipi katika kazi ya fasihi?
Taswira ni dhana inayozingatia hisi kama vile kuona, kusikia, kuonja, kugusa na kunusa. Maneno katika
fasihi simulizi ndiyo hujenga na kukamilisha taswira. Taswira inaweza kubainika kupitia kwa neno moja,
fungu la maneno au kwa kuchunguza mafungu kadha ya maneno. Katika muktadha wa nyimbo za tohara
miongoni mwa Waigembe, taswira inaweza kubainika kupitia uhakiki wa mshororo, ubeti, vifungu vya
maneno katika ubeti au wimbo mzima.
Uainishaji wa taswira unaweza kufanywa kwa misingi miwili mikuu; kulingana na hisi na dhima ya taswira
iwapo ni hasi au chanya. Kwa kuainisha taswira kwa misingi ya hisi, kuna aina tano zifuatazo:
(a) Taswira ya mnuso
(b) Taswira ya mguso
(c) Taswira ya uoni au maono
(d) Taswira ya usikivu au kusikia
(e) Taswira ya mwonjo
1.3.1 Taswira ya Mnuso

Taswira ya mnuso inahusu picha zinazojengwa na zinazolenga viungo vya kunusa. Viungo hivi ni kama
pua. Nyimbo nyingi za tohara ya wanaume katika jamii ya Waigembe zina taswira ya mnuso. Kwa mfano,
katika wimbo wa Mwereru Ruuji Ndia (Dimbwi la Maji Lililojaa), picha imechorwa ya mvulana ambaye
hajatahiriwa akidhihirishwa kama anayenuka na aliyeoza. Hii ni taswira ya mnuso kwa sababu dhana ya
kunusa inayojitokeza. Uchanganuzi wa taswira ya mnuso inayomrejelea mvulana ambaye hajatahiriwa kama
“kunuka” na “kuoza” zinamaanisha kuwa mvulana ambaye hajatahiriwa kamwe si mwanajamii kamili
katika jamii ya Waigembe. Kwa kawaida, kitu ambacho kinanuka na kuoza hakina manufaa yoyote. Kwa
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hivyo, kwa Waigembe, tohara ya wanaume ilikuwa ndio njia ya kipekee ya kuondoa “uvundo” na kumfanya
mwanajamii aliyekamilika. Hii ni taswira ya mnuso yenye maana iliyojificha kupitia kwa nyimbo za tohara.
1.3.2 Taswira ya Mguso

Aina nyingine ya taswira katika fasihi ni taswira ya mguso. Taswira hii huleta, dhana ya hali ya kugusa au
kupapasa kidogo au kitu au mnyama. Wakati mwingine taswira mguso, inajumuisha hata kushika mtu
kidogo.
Mifano ya nyimbo za tohara zenye taswira ya mguso ni kama vile Tonguu, Mibau iri Murang’a (Mikalatusi
iliyo Murang’a), Ciokanamba, Kirarire miongoni mwa zingine. Mathalani, katika wimbo, Tonguu, taswira ya
mguso inajitokeza katika mishororo, Kiiji kira kiutongwa (Uume ule umeguswa). Maana au ujumbe
unaopitishwa ni kuwa mvulana ametahiriwa. Neno ‘umeguswa’ ni taswira ya mguso inayowakilisha kitendo
cha kutahiriwa. Wimbo huu huimbwa na wavulana waliotahiriwa katika eneo la tohara, kuashiria kuwa
mvulana mmoja ametahiriwa. Dhana ya ngariba ‘kugusa uume’ kwa maana ya ndani ni kutahiriwa. Hapa,
matumizi ya maneno ili kujenga taswira ya mguso huwa na viwango mbalimbali vya maana. Kulingana na
nadharia ya viwango vya maana, maneno huwa na maana mbalimbali kulingana na viwango tofauti.
Katika wimbo Mibau iri Murang’a (Mikalatusi Iliyo Murang’a), taswira ya mguso inajitokeza katika
mshororo huu:
Kiongozi: Iriwatwa egatendera i mwiiji i, Inashikwa inateleza ewe mwiiji
Wote: Mibau iri Murang’a i mwiiji i, Mikalatusi iliyo Murang’a.
Taswira ya ‘mikalatusi’ inayojitokeza inawakilisha dhana ya ndii, sehemu inayoning’inia katika sehemu ya
siri ya mwanamume baada ya tohara katika jamii ya Wameru, Wakikuyu na Wamaasai. Kwa kawaida, ndii
huteleza inaposhikwa kwa mikono na hali hii ndiyo inalinganishwa na kushika miti ya mikalatusi katika
wimbo huu. Mtu anaposhika mti wa aina ya mkalatusi akitaka kuukwea huteleza na hii ndiyo sababu
inamithilishwa na kushika ndii wakati wa uponyaji wa jeraha la tohara. Ndii huteleza kwa sababu ya damu
na uchungu usioweza kuhimilika. Kinachosisitiwa hapa ni uvumilivu kwa waliotahiriwa. Ntaane
hufahamishwa wanapoelekea nyumbani kutoka eneo la tohara, kuwa shughuli ya tohara sio rahisi bali
inahitaji ujasiri, makini na uvumilivu.
Katika wimbo wa Ciokanamba, taswira ya mguso inabainika katika mishororo hii:
Kiongozi: Ciokanamba ii-uii. Ewe Ciokanamba uu-ii
Wote: Yaa – iii iui tonga nturume Jai! Gusa kondoo ndume (kuma),
Kiongozi: Ya ina wa mwana ii uu Ya mamake mtoto anayetahiriwa
Wote: Jai Uii Yai uuii!
Kiongozi: Ciokanamba ii-uii. Ewe Ciokanamba
Wote: Jaa – iii iui tonga kiiji Jai! Gusa mboo,
Kiongozi: Kiethe – o – mwiji ii – u – ii Ya babake mvulana atakayetahiriwa.
Wote: Kenda ugwirua ii – ui Ili ufurahi.
Katika mshororo, tonga nturume (gusa kondoo ndume au gusa kuma), taswira ya kugusa inamaanisha
kufanya ngono. Hali hii ya matumizi ya lugha ya matusi imeshamiri katika nyimbo za tohara miongoni
mwa Waigembe. Wanawake nao wanapoimba wimbo uo huo, huubadilisha na kuimba Tonga kiiji, Kiethe – o
– mwiji ii (Gusa mboo, ya babake mvulana atakayetahiriwa). Taswira hii inaweza kufasiriwa kulingana na
nadharia ya viwango vya maana kuwa ni utani baina ya jinsia ya kike na kiume katika jamii ya Waigembe.
Utani huu ni kilele cha furaha waliyonayo wanawake kwa wanaume. Hata hivyo, katika kiwango kingine
cha maana, hali hii ya wanawake kutumia lugha ya matusi dhidi ya wanaume, inaweza kufasiriwa kama njia
mojawapo ya wanawake ya kupinga udunishwaji au kuonewa katika jamii hii. Ikumbukwe kuwa wanaume
hutangulia kuimba wimbo huu na kisha wanawake huimba kama mbinu ya kupinga yaliyomo kwenye
wimbo huo.
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1.3.3 Taswira ya Mwonjo

Taswira ya mwonjo inaweza kuelezwa kama picha inayolenga kwenye hisia za kuonja. Taswira nyingi za
mwonjo hurejelea chakula au vinywaji. Mifano mingi ya taswira za mwonjo inajitokeza katika nyimbo za
tohara za Waigembe. Kwa mfano, katika wimbo, Mbeere Ikurema Kwaria, (Njuga Zimekataa Kuongea)
mshororo: Taanwa ukaree ukia (Tahiriwa upate [ule] taabu). Katika mshororo huu, kuna taswira ya kuonja
au kupata dhiki, wakati na baada ya operesheni ya tohara. Kimsingi, taswira hii ya mwonjo inatumiwa
kuwahimiza wavulana wawe jasiri ili kukabiliana na matatizo wakati wa tohara.
Mfano mwingine wa taswira mwonjo unajitokeza katika wimbo wa Kirarire kwenye ubeti ufuatao:
Wenda kuruma kia muntu umukuru, Ukitaka kula cha mwanamke mzee,
Waambe umuthinjire, Kwanza umchinjie,
Gintu kia muntu umukuru ii, Kitu cha mwanamke mzee ii,
Ni mugongo kiri. Ni mgongoni kipo.
Taswira ya mwonjo katika ubeti huu inadhihirika kupitia dhana ya kula. Hata hivyo, dhana ya ‘kula’ katika
muktadha wa ubeti huu hairejelei kitendo cha kawaida cha kula. Maana fiche inayobainika ni kitendo cha
kufanya ngono. Katika jamii nyingi za Kiafrika dhana ya kujuana kimwili kati ya mwanamke na
mwanamume, hurejelewa kwa kutumia neno “kula”. Hivyo basi, katika ubeti huu, mvulana anapewa
mawaidha siku ya ‘kuchomwa’ kupitia wimbo wa Kirarire. Anashauriwa kuwa mwanamke anahitaji kupewa
vyakula na kutunzwa vyema. Katika kiwango kingine cha maana, ubeti huu, unaweza kufasiriwa kuwa
wanawake hushawishika haraka kufanya ngono na wanaume kwa kupewa chakula hasa nyama. Suala hili
limejadiliwa kwa kina katika sehemu 5. 4 kuhusu taswira za mwanamke katika nyimbo za tohara katika sura
hii.
Mifano mingine ya taswira mwonjo au taswira ya kuonja pia inapatikana katika beti zifuatazo za wimbo wa
Kirarire:
Tukiri tuiri na tungi tuiri, Vibuyu viwili na vingine viwili,
Nkwathire mwana uthaka. Nimpe mtoto wako ushauri.
No merumeru muura ikwenda, Ni chakula nthaka wanataka,

No merumeru nthaka ikwenda. Ni chakula nthaka wanataka.
Taata reete ii reete. Mama leete ii leete,
Taata reete ii reete. Mama leete ii leete,
Taata nkundia ii nkundia. Mama nipe kinywaji ii kinywaji,

Taata nkundia ii nkundia. Mama nipe kinywaji ii kinywaji.
Katika beti hizi taswira ya kuonja inajitokeza katika mishororo; Tukiri tuiri na tungi tuiri (Vibuyu viwili na
vingine viwili), No merumeru muura ikwenda (Ni chakula nthaka wanataka) na Taata nkundia ii nkundia (Mama
nipe kinywaji ii kinywaji). Hapa wavulana waliotahiriwa wanaitisha vinywaji na chakula wakati wa sherehe
ya ‘kuchoma’ ntaane. Wakati wa sherehe hii, vyakula na vinywaji vingi huandaliwa.
Taswira ya mwonjo pia inajitokeza katika wimbo, Uraugaa Miriti ikurea Maraya (Ulisema Miriti ni Malaya).
Katika wimbo huu kama ule wa Kirarire uliorejelewa hapo juu, dhana ya kufanya ngono inafananishwa na
kitendo cha ‘kula’. Katika wimbo huu, wanawake ndio wanalaumiwa kwa ukahaba, ingawa wao hushiriki
pamoja na wanaume. Wavulana watakaotahiriwa wanaonywa wasifikirie kutahiriwa ni tikiti ya kujiingiza
katika ukahaba. Taswira ya mwonjo hapo inawarejelea wanawake kama chakula kinachoweza kuliwa na
mwanamume yeyote mwenye meno. Kimila, kufanya mapenzi kuna tasifida ya kula chakula na kukataa
kufanya mapenzi ni kukataa chakula.
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1.3.4 Taswira ya Usikivu

Taswira nyingine ni taswira ya usikivu au kusikia. Kama anavyoeleza Wamitila (2003b:227), taswira za
usikivu, ni taswira ambapo msanii anaunda picha ambazo hulenga hisia ya kusikia. Msanii hujenga picha
zinazohusiana na sauti. Taswira hii, wakati mwingine, huwakilishwa na tamathali ya usemi ya onomatopeya
au tanakali-sauti. Tanakali-sauti ni dhana ya fasihi inayotumiwa kurejelea sauti inayoigiza namna kitu
kinavyotenda kazi yake. Sauti ya kitu husika huweza kufanikisha taswira ya kusikia.
Kuna mifano kadha ya taswira za kusikia zinazobainika katika nyimbo za tohara katika jamii ya Waigembe.
Kwa mfano, katika wimbo, Mutani ni Maitha (Ngariba ni Adui), ubeti ufuatao unadhihirisha taswira ya
kusikia:
Kiongozi: Yai i u-i mutani ni maitha Eeh, ngariba ni adui,
ya ncabu e mwiiji, wa govi la mvulana hajatahiriwa,
Wote: Yai i u-i, mutani ni maitha Eeh, ngariba ni adui,
ya ncabu e mwiiji wa govi ya mvulana hajatahiriwa,
Kiongozi: Kiricikirici! ukaibua Utasikia kiricikirici!
Wote: Ndiwokuo ii mwiiji. Niko hapo mvulana hajatahiriwa.
Tamathali ya tanakali ya sauti inawakilishwa na maneno “Utasikia kirici! kirici!”. Hii ni sauti inayotolewa na
kisu mtu anapokata kitu. Katika muktadha huu, taswira ya kusikia, inayojitokeza ni kuwa ngariba yumo
katika shughuli yake ya kumtahiri mvulana kwa kutumia kisu. Wimbo huu unamshauri mvulana
atakayetahiriwa kuwa atakaposikia sauti au mlio wa kisu kirici! kirici! ajue kuwa yuko karibu kumaliziwa
shughuli ya tohara. Hivyo basi, alihimizwa awe mvumilivu hadi mwisho wa shughuli hiyo.
1.3.5 Taswira ya Uoni

Aina nyingine ya taswira ni taswira ya uoni. Taswira hii hujenga picha inayolenga mtazamo wa macho
(Wamitila, 2003b:197). Kimsingi, taswira ya uoni inalenga hisia ya kuona. Katika nyimbo za tohara, kuna
taswira za uoni zinazojitokeza. Mathalan, katika wimbo, Mbeere Ikurema Kwaria, (Njuga Zimekataa
Kuongea) mishororo ifuatayo inabainisha aina hii ya taswira:
Mbeere ikurema kwaria Njuga zimekataa kuongea
Ukiugaa ntikuene. Ukifikiria sikuoni.
Riitho ntiene ungii Jicho halioni mwingine
Mishororo hiyo hapo juu inadhihirisha taswira ya uoni inayojitokeza kupitia dhana ya jicho. Katika wimbo
uliotajwa hapo juu, riitho (jicho) ni taswira inayowakilisha nthaka (wavulana waliotahiriwa) ambao
mojawapo ya majukumu yao ni kuwa macho au kuhakikisha kuwa wanaona matendo ya wavulana
wasiotahiriwa, wakati wanapokabiliana na ngariba. Iwapo mvulana alivumilia, waliweza kuwajulisha jamaa
kupitia kwa nyimbo wakifika nyumbani. Wanaposema Riitho ntiene ungi (Jicho halioni mwingine)
wanamaanisha kazi yao kubwa katika eneo la tohara ni kuangalia matendo ya wavulana wanaotahiriwa na
kuhakikisha kuwa ngariba anaendesha kazi yake inavyotakikana.
Mfano mwingine wa taswira ya uoni unapatikana katika wimbo wa Kirarire, katika ubeti huu:
Waibua kurukuru! Ukisikie kurukuru!
Umenye mwana agukunda uthaka, Ujue mtoto amepata ushauri,
Kuuria na nthi ugwate ikurema, Vuruta chini ushike imekushinda,
Kirimaara no makengi, Mlima Kenya una theluji,
Ciura kau ii kwire kaangi, Fasiri hilo nikujulishe jingine,
Ciura kau ii kwire kaangi. Fasiri hilo nikujulishe jingine.
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Mshororo, Kirimaara no makengi (Mlima Kenya una theluji), unaleta dhana ya kuona kwa umbali. Mlima
Kenya una umuhimu mkubwa kwa jamii zinazouzunguka. Ishara ya theluji ni baraka kwani kutokana na
theluji, maji hupatikana ambayo yana umuhimu kwa wanajamii katika shughuli zao za kiuchumi na kijamii.
Kwa mfano, ikumbukwe kuwa kabla ya wavulana kwenda kutahiriwa ni lazima waoge kwenye mto wenye
maji baridi asubuhi.
1.3.6 Taswira ya Mwendo

Kuna pia aina nyingine za taswira ambazo hazina uhusiano na hisi. Hizi ni kama vile taswira ya mwendo,
taswira ya kimaelezo na taswira za kiishara. Kwa mfano, taswira za mwendo ni zile ambazo huleta picha ya
mwendo au usafiri wa aina fulani. Kwa mfano, katika wimbo wa Mbeere Ikurema Kwaria (Njuga Zimekataa
Kuongea), taswira ya mwendo inawakilishwa na dhana ya kumkimbiza mvulana atakayetahiriwa
anapoelekea eneo la tohara.
Taswira ya mwendo inajitokeza wazi katika wimbo huu kwa matumizi ya maneno Kagukie ruu nkwinge
(Ngoja ifike asubuhi nikukimbize) katika ubeti wa tatu, mshororo wa pili kama ifuatavyo:
Ka-gukie ruu nkwinge. Ngoja ifike asubuhi nikukimbize.
Pia, katika wimbo uo huo, picha ya mwendo inadhihirika katika mshororo, Ejaga [mutani] ja mpuundu ii
(Huja [ngariba] kama ukungu) kama inavyodhihirika katika sehemu hii:
Ationagwa akiija Haonekani akija.
Ejaga ja mpundu ii. Huja kama ukungu.
Dhana ya ukungu inaleta taswira ya jinsi mawingu huwa na mwendo wa polepole lakini wa hakika kabla
ya mvua. Ukungu pia, huwakilisha mwendo wa polepole ambao ngariba huingia kwenye eneo la tohara bila
kutarajiwa.
Baada ya kutalii uainishaji wa taswira na kutoa mifano kwa kurejelea nyimbo za tohara miongoni mwa
Waigembe, sehemu inayofuata imejikita zaidi katika taswira za mwanamume zinazojitokeza katika nyimbo
za tohara katika jamii hii.
1.4 Taswira za Mwanamume katika Nyimbo za Tohara

Tafiti za hapo awali (kwa mfano, Kabira, 1993; Wandera, 1996; Ndungo, 1998; Kobia, 2004; Mwita, 2005)
kuhusu suala la uana barani Afrika zimeegemea uhakiki wa taswira za mwanamke hadi kufikia kiwango cha
kufikiriwa kuwa dhana ya uana inawarejelea wanawake pekee (Ntarangwi, 1998:243). Ni kutokana na hali
hii ambapo makala hii imeshughulikia kusawiriwa kwa mwanamume katika fasihi simulizi ya Waigembe
hususan katika nyimbo za tohara. Hali hii ya kutoshughulikia taswira za mwanamume kwa uketo ni
upungufu mkubwa kwani ufafanuzi wa dhana ya uana si kamilifu bila kujumuisha jinsia zote; wanaume na
wanawake. Tafiti chache (kwa mfano, Momanyi, 2007) zimeanza kushughulikia kusawiriwa kwa
mwanamume katika fasihi.
Taswira za mwanamume zinazobainika katika nyimbo za tohara ni kiwakilishi halisi cha itikadi ya jadi ya
Waigembe kuhusu mwanamume katika jamii hii. Taswira hizi zimejengwa kwa falsafa ya taasubi ya kiume
ambapo mwanamume ni mtawala na mwanamke ni mtawaliwa. Kuna taswira chanya na hasi ambazo
zinadhihirika katika nyimbo za tohara katika jamii ya Waigembe. Miongoni mwa taswira chanya ni kama:
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1.4.1 Taswira ya Mwanamume kama Shujaa na Jasiri

Taswira ya kwanza ya mwanamume inayojitokeza kwa udhahiri wa hali ya juu katika nyimbo za tohara ni
kuwa mwanamume ni kiumbe jasiri. Sifa hii ya ujasiri ilisisitizwa kwa mwanamume tangu akiwa mtoto hadi
kuwa mtu mzima. Taswira hii imebainika katika nyimbo kadha kama vile Uu Ruuju (Ewe Ruuju), Ii Mwiiri
(Ewe Mwili) na Mwiiji Akuuma (Mvulana Amevumilia). Kwa mfano, katika wimbo wa Ii Mwiiri (Ewe
Mwili), taswira ya ujasiri wa mwanamume inajitokeza katika beti hizi:
Ndierencha abo-chia, Nambembeleza babu yangu,
Angurire rwaka, Aninunulie yangu (tohara),
Na mwaari. Kwa mtamba.
I mutaane ukari? Ni mvulana aliyetahiriwa wa aina gani?
Uuju ukwona kirugu Anayeona anayetamani,
Akeiriara. Na hatingiziki.
Taswira ya ujasiri katika beti hizi, inajitokeza kwani mvulana ambaye hajatahiriwa anambembeleza babake
‘amnunulie’ tohara. Kununua tohara kunamaanisha kumtafuta atakayekuwa mlezi wa mvulana baada ya
tohara. Pia, inamaanisha babake ajiandae kwa mahitaji ya tohara kwani mvulana yuko tayari kwa awamu hii
ya tohara. Ujasiri wa mwanamume unashadidiwa na hali ya mvulana kutamani kutahiriwa. Kama
inavyobainika katika wimbo huu, licha ya kisu kikali cha ngariba, mvulana haogopi (hatingiziki) shughuli ya
tohara.
Sifa ya woga haikukubaliwa kwa wanaume katika jamii ya Waigembe na imani hii imeendelezwa katika
nyimbo nyingi za tohara. Mwanamume mwoga alikataliwa katika jamii ya Waigembe. Aliyeonekana mwoga
alikejeliwa na hali hii inadhihirika katika nyimbo za tohara. Wimbo wa Muthaaru (Mvulana Mwoga) ni
mfano mzuri wa jinsi Waigembe walivyowadharau wanaume waoga. Katika wimbo huu, mvulana
anatahadharishwa asiwe mwoga anapokabiliana na kisu cha ngariba. Waimbaji wa wimbo huu ambao ni
nthaka humkejeli mwiiji ambaye ni mwoga kwa kumuuliza maswali ya balagha, “Urindora iguru nkugitire
atia?” (Unaniangalia nikufanyie nini?).
Tabia ya woga kwa wanaume hata kama hawajatahiriwa ilikemewa. Wimbo wa Muili, ni mfano mzuri
ambapo, wavulana waoga wanashauriwa badala ya kuaibisha ukoo wao, ni afadhali ikifika siku ya tohara
watoroke. Katika ubeti wa kwanza, kuna mishororo hii:
Ii Muili: kiathao ni ruju; Ii Muili; sherehe ni kesho;
Ii Muili; bawitia iguru, nibaitie, Ii Muili; wanaotaka kutoroka, watoroke,
Iii Muili. Iii: Muili.
Katika wimbo huu, mshororo, Ii Muili; bawitia iguru nibaitie (Ii Muili; wanaotaka kutoroka, watoroke) ni
mwito kwa wavulana wenye woga wa kutahiriwa. Hata hivyo, ikumbukwe kuwa tohara ilikuwa lazima kwa
kila mwanamume aliyezaliwa katika jamii ya Waigembe.
Katika wimbo wa Muili, mwanamume anachorwa kama analia. Hata hivyo, dhana ya ‘kulilia tohara’ katika
muktadha wa wimbo huu si sifa ya woga bali ni hamu ya kutaka kutahiriwa ili mvulana awe mwanamume
kamili. Katika kiwango cha juu cha maana, kuriria inamaanisha kutangaza hadharani kuwa mvulana ambaye
hajatahiriwa anataka kutahiriwa. Hivyo basi, mvulana aliwaalika watu wa ukoo wao na jamii kwa jumla
kufika kwa sherehe ya kutahiriwa kwake.
Ushujaa wa mwanamume umesisitizwa katika nyimbo za tohara. Mafunzo ambayo wavulana
waliyofundishwa jandoni ni ushujaa. Mojawapo ya nyenzo muhimu za kupitisha mafunzo hayo hayo ni
nyimbo za tohara. Hii ndio sababu nyimbo za tohara zimejaa taswira zenye kuelekeza kwenye sifa ya
ushujaa kwa wanaume.
Ngariba anasawiriwa kama ‘adui wa govi la mvulana’. Ushujaa huandamana na ukali fulani. Ngariba katika
nyimbo za tohara amesawiriwa kama chui ambaye hana huruma. Kwa mfano, katika mishororo ifuatayo ya
wimbo wa Urithamba na Iria (Utaoga kwa Maziwa):
Kiongozi: Yai urithamba na iria Ewe mvulana utaoga kwa maziwa
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Wote: I mutani akathamba i na muruku mwiiji, Ngariba ataoga na damu yako ewe mwiiji
Katika wimbo huu, taswira ya ushujaa au ukali inajitokeza kwani ngariba anaoga kwa kutumia damu ya
mvulana ambaye amemtahiri. Huu ni ujasiri wa hali ya juu. Damu ni taswira ya kitendo cha kumpasha
mvulana tohara. Kazi ya ngariba inahitaji ushujaa na makini ya hali ya juu na si kila mtu angeweza kuwa
ngariba katika jamii hii.
Ngariba aliyezembea wakati wa shughuli ya tohara alionywa na nthaka na kushauriwa atekeleza wajibu
wake ipasavyo. Wakati mwingine ngariba mzembe alitishwa kwa kupigwa kama inavyobainika katika
wimbo wa Kionje kia Murimo (Hoi Hoi wa Ugonjwa) katika mshororo huu:
Ii Kang’entu kuunda muruki othioro Ii Kang’entu pata adabu ya kiboko.
1.4.2 Mwanamume kama Anayemiliki Nyenzo za Uzalishaji Mali

Mwanamume ndiye anayemiliki ardhi na raslimali zingine za kuzalisha mali. Katika jamii ya Waigembe, ni
mwanamume anayetegemewa kiuchumi kuilisha familia yake. Hii ni itikadi inayoendelezwa katika fasihi
simulizi ya jamii hii. Kwa mfano, mwanamume sharti ashirikishwe katika kumpa mvulana au msichana
atakayetahiriwa zawadi ya mbuzi kama inavyoelezwa katika wimbo wa Muntuentu ni Kailiba (Mjomba ni
Kailiba). Hii ni kwa sababu katika jamii zinazozingatia mfumo wa kuumeni, mifugo ni mali ya
mwanamume.
1.4.3 Mwanamume kama Mkarimu

Mwanamume amesawiriwa kama mtu mkarimu katika jamii. Kwa mfano, katika wimbo wa Muili, beti za 8
na 9, wavulana watakaotahiriwa wanamsifu mjomba wao kwa ukarimu wake kwa kuwapa zawadi za kila
aina. Hata hivyo, kuna wanaume wachache ambao ni wachoyo. Wanaume bahili walikashifiwa kama
inavyobainika katika wimbo wa Muili, ubeti wa 10. Hebu angalia taswira hizi mbili; ya ukarimu na uchoyo
wa mwanamume zinavyodhihirika katika beti hizi za wimbo wa Muili:
Ii: Muili: Muntuetu mwega ii Ii Muili: mjomba wangu mkarimu ii
Ii: Muili: ni uria unenkera nkagwata ii Ii Muili: ni yule anayenipa kitu nikashika,
Ii Muili. Ii Muili.
Ii: Muili: Muntuetu mwega ii Ii Muili: mjomba wangu mkarimu ii

Ii: Muili: nkamuragiria kamwali ii Ii Muili: nitamtolea mahari ya mtamba ii,
Ii Muili. Ii Muili.
Ii: Muili: Muntuetu nthuura ii Ii Muili: mjomba asiyenipenda ii

Ii: Muili: nkamuragiria nkomongo ii ii Muili: nitamtolea mahari ya mawe ii,
Ii Muili. Ii Muili.
Mjomba ambaye ni mkarimu anasifiwa na mvulana atakayetahiriwa kuwa anampa zawadi. Hata hivyo,
mjomba ambaye ni mchoyo anadhihakiwa kuwa badala ya kutoa mahari ya mtamba, atatoa mawe.
1.4.4 Mwanamume ni Mwenye Busara

Wanaume hubuni lugha na kuitumia kama jukwaa la kuwadunisha wanawake. Wanaume huchukuliwa
kuwa ni wenye busara zaidi katika jamii kuliko wanawake. Hali hii inabainika katika nyimbo za tohara. Kwa
mfano, katika wimbo wa Kirarire, wanaume wanasawiriwa kama ndio pekee wenye hekima.
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Ubeti huu unashadidia mjadala huu:

Ntumanirwe akuru beeje mbaurie, Wazee (wanaume) waitwe waje niwaulize,
Ukuru buragua muntu ubwona. Ushauri huulizwa mtu aliye na tajriba.
Ubeti huu, unadhihirisha kwamba ni wanaume wazee ambao ndio wenye busara ya kutatua suala fulani
katika jamii. Hivyo basi, iwapo katika jamii kuna tatizo au kitendawili ambacho kiliwashinda wanawake au
watoto, ni wanaume wakongwe wenye busara walioitwa ili kutafuta suluhisho.
Kuhusu suala la uana na teknolojia, kama linavyojitokeza katika nyimbo za tohara, wanaume ndio
wanaonasibishwa na teknolojia mpya. Kwa mfano, katika wimbo wa Kionje kia Murimo (Hoi hoi wa
Ugonjwa) ngariba anasawiriwa kama tarakilishi kwa sababu ya utendakazi wake wa kuwapasha tohara
wavulana. Kwa kawaida shughuli ya kumpasha tohara mvulana huchukua muda usiozidi sekunde ishirini.
Kasi hii hufananishwa na hali ya utendakazi wa teknolojia ya kompyuta, ambayo hunasibishwa na jinsia ya
kiume katika nyimbo za tohara miongoni mwa Waigembe. Wanaume wanasawiriwa kama watu wasiobaki
nyuma kiteknolojia, kiwakati, wenye uwezo wa kijamii, kiuchumi na kiteknolojia (Mkuchu, 2004:154).
1.4.5 Taswira ya Mwanamume kama Mwenye Uwezo na Nguvu

Taswira ya mwanamume kama mwenye uwezo na nguvu ina misingi yake katika mfumo wa kuumeni.
Mfumo wa kuumeni unaweza kufafanuliwa kama mamlaka, utawala na kudhibiti kunakoendelezwa na
wanaume dhidi ya wanawake katika jamii (Bullock na wenzake, 1988:632). Hali hii hudhihirika kwa jinsi
wanaume wameweza kudhibiti taasisi za kijamii na itikadi hasa lugha na fasihi. Tuttle (1986:242) anaeleza
mfumo wa kuumeni kama “utawala wa baba”. Kama anavyoeleza Nye (1988) mfumo wa kuumeni
umejengwa kwa misingi ya utamaduni na lugha.
Picha ya mwanamume kama mwenye uwezo na nguvu katika utamaduni wa Waigembe imejitokeza kupitia
matumizi ya lugha katika nyimbo za tohara zikiwa mojawapo ya tanzu za fasihi simulizi ya jamii hii. Dhana
hii ya uwezo wa mwanamume inawakilishwa na taswira ya wanyama; ndovu na kifaru katika wimbo wa
Kirarire . Mishororo ifuatayo ya wimbo huo inadhihirisha nguvu na uwezo wa mwanamume kupitia
matumizi ya taswira ya ndovu na kifaru:
Mpuria e Kariba iri na ntuala, Kifaru kutoka Kariba ana njuga,
Njogu e Kariba iri na ntuala. Ndovu kutoka Kariba ana njuga.
Picha ya ndovu na kifaru katika mishororo iliyodondolewa hapo juu ni kiwakilishi cha mwanamume kwa
sababu thuuthiu, mganga maalumu anayeongoza sherehe ya ‘kuchoma ntaane’ huwa na sura kama ya
wanyama hao wawili. Hii ni kutokana na maleba na mapiku ambayo thuuthiu huvaa anapoongoza sherehe
hii.
Ntarangwi (1998:201) anatoa kauli kuwa katika jamii ya Waswahili, mwanamume kamili ni yule anayeshiriki
ngono mara kwa mara na wanawake. Mwanamume ambaye hawezi kutekeleza wajibu huo na matarajio
hayo ya taasubi ya kiume huonekana kama ni mwanamke.
Licha ya taswira chanya kumhusu mwanamume katika nyimbo za tohara katika jamii kuna taswira chache
hasi. Baadhi ya taswira hizi ni kama vile:
1.4.6 Taswira ya ‘Mwanamume’ kama Mchafu

Mvulana ambaye hajatahiriwa hachukuliwi kama mwanamume kamili katika jamii ya Waigembe. Mwiiji
katika jamii ya jadi ya Waigembe hakuchukuliwa kama mwanamume. Mwanamume ambaye hajatahiriwa
katika jamii ya Waigembe alichukuliwa kuwa mchafu. Hivi ndivyo ilivyokuwa katika jamii za Kiafrika
zilizoendeleza mila ya tohara. Kwa mfano, katika jamii ya Wabukusu, kama anavyoeleza Nang’oli
(2000:57), mwanamume ambaye hajatahiriwa alichukuliwa kuwa mchafu na hangekubaliwa kwa vyovyote
kushiriki katika shughuli za jamii katika ukoo wake. Katika jamii ya Waigembe, ili kuondoa ‘uchafu’ ilikuwa
ni desturi kwa wavulana watakaotahiriwa kwenda kuoga mtoni asubuhi kabla ya kutahiriwa. Mila ya
kutahiriwa ilichukuliwa kuwa ni njia mojawapo ya kumfanya mwanamume safi kimwili, kitabia na kifikira.
Kwa mfano, wimbo wa Mwereru Ruuji Ndia (Dimbwi la maji lililojaa) katika mishororo ifuatayo:
92
Uu mwiiji, Uwe mvulana hujatahiriwa,

Ii kirumba, Ewe unayenuka,
Iii ntomuoru. Ewe mwanauoza.
Huu ni mfano mwafaka wa taswira ya mnuso ambapo mvulana ambaye hajatahiriwa anasawiriwa kama
mchafu. Katika wimbo huu, mwiiji (mvulana hajatahiriwa) anasawiriwa kama mtu anayenuka na aliye na
uoza. Iliaminika katika jamii hii kwamba, ni baada ya tohara ambapo mvulana angeweza kuwa mtu safi
kiakili, kimaadili na kimwili.
Usafi uliosisitizwa kwa mwanamume pia unawakilishwa na taswira ya mbega. Kwa mfano, katika wimbo
wa Woona Nkoroi Mwithune (Ukimwona Mbega Mwituni), mbega ni taswira ya ngariba ambaye kwa kawaida
ni mwanamume. Ngariba hufananishwa na mbega kwa sababu ya mavazi yake. Kimsingi, mbega ni
mnyama ambaye hupatikana katika jamii ya Waigembe kwa nadra sana. Ni mnyama nadhifu sana kisura na
hupendeza. Mwanamume hasa aliyetahiriwa anapofananishwa na mbega ni dhihirisho kuwa yeye ni safi,
mzuri, nadra, na mwenye thamani. Hii ndio sababu ya kuwepo na msemo wa Kiswahili husemao, ‘mbega
nafa na uzuri wangu’.
1.4.7 Taswira ya Mwanamume kama Mkware na Kahaba

Ingawa taswira nyingi za ukahaba na uasherati zimewalenga zaidi wanawake, kuna chache zinazowalenga
wanaume. Kwa mfano, katika wimbo wa Ntonkuri, mwanamume anasawiriwa kama kirumamito (Tazama
mshororo, Ntonkuri ni mkware wa kijiji x2), anayefanya mapenzi na mwanamke yeyote katika kijijini. Pia,
katika wimbo wa Uraugaa Miriti Ikurea Maraya (Ulisema Miriti ni Malaya), taswira ya mwanamume kama
kahaba imejitokeza. Katika wimbo huu, wavulana watakaotahiriwa wanashauriwa wasijiingize katika
vitendo vya ukahaba kwa kusingizia kuwa marika yaliyowatangulia yalifanya hivyo.
Mbali na kusawiri wanaume kama kahaba, baadhi ya nyimbo za tohara zinawachora kama watu wasiotumia
akili razini kwa kufanya mapenzi kiholela. Kwa mfano, mwanamume anachorwa akifanya mapenzi na
Karimi wa Nkaibua ‘katika shamba la migomba’ kama ilivyodhihirika katika wimbo wa Kirarire. Katika
wimbo wa Murenge Atiikua (Murenge Hangekufa), Murenge alifariki kwa sababu ya kufanya mapenzi na
Jane ambaye yamkini alikuwa ameambukizwa ugonjwa wa Ukimwi. Wimbo huu unatumiwa kuwaonya
wavulana kuwa ugonjwa wa Ukimwi upo na hauna dawa. Hali hii inaonyesha bayana kuwa nyimbo za
tohara zinaenda na wakati na kushughulikia masuala ibuka katika jamii inayobadilika kwa kasi.
Taswira za mwanamume na mwanamke kama wakware na kahaba ni dhihirisho la unyonge wa jinsia zote
kuthibiti hisia zao. Kwa mfano, katika wimbo wa Cioyaru, mhusika wa kike Cioyaru anasawiriwa kama
anayewapotosha vijana kwani anafanya mapenzi na wavulana ambao hawajatahiriwa ili kukidhi uchu wake.
Kulingana na maelezo ya wahojiwa, Cioyaru alikuwa mwanamke mrembo sana katika jamii ya Waigembe.
Aliwanasa wavulana wachanga kwa mapenzi. Maelezo haya ya Waigembe yanalandana na mawazo ya Reed
(1970:78) kwamba tangu nyakati za umwinyi na ubepari, wanawake wamekuwa katika harakati za kuwanasa
wanaume. Wao (wanawake) hufanya hivyo kwa kujirembesha kwa mapambo na mavazi ya kila aina mradi
wawateke kimahaba wavulana wachanga.
Jamii kamwe haipaswi kuendelea kumlaumu mwanamke kwa uasherati au ukahaba. Ni kweli kuwa, ‘pasi na
viganja viwili kofi hazilii’. Kama wanawake ndio wa kulaumiwa, wanaume pia hawawezi kuepuka lawama
hizo. Kama anavyouliza na kueleza Mailu (1974:9):
Kama wanawake ndio makahaba pekee basi tungeshindwa kueleza wanafanya ukahaba huo
na nani? Kulingana na wanaume wanaoshiriki kitendo hicho, wao si makahaba bali ni
wanawake. Hali hii ni kwa sababu ya taasubi ya kiume iliyokolea katika jamii nyingi za
Kiafrika.
Jamii kwa miaka mingi imehusisha kitendo cha ukahaba au uasherati na jinsia ya kike. Hili ni kosa kubwa
ambalo haliwatendei wanawake haki.
93
1.4.8 Mwanamume kama Asiye na Huruma

Wanaume wanawakilishwa katika nyimbo za tohara kama watu wasio na huruma. Hii ni sifa kinyume na
hali ya wanawake ambao wamechorwa kama wenye huruma. Badala ya sifa ya huruma mwanamume
amesawiriwa kama mbabe na asiyetishwa na jambo lolote. Kwa mfano, katika wimbo wa Ntonkuri,
mwanamume anasawiriwa kama asiye na huruma. Hoja hii inathibitishwa katika mshororo huu:
Jii Ntonkuri ati kiao kia mwana x2 Ewe Ntonkuri hana huruma kwa mtotox2
Jii Ntonkuri aribua kiroe akarirax2 Ntonkuri anasikia kiroe analia x2
Katika muktadha wa wimbo huu, Ntonkuri ni ngariba. Mvulana atakayetahiriwa anajulishwa kuwa ngariba
ni mtu asiye na huruma kwani humpasha tohara mvulana huku damu ikitiririka.
1.5 Hitimisho
Uchunguzi wa taswira za mwanamume unabainisha kuwa zinapatikana katika nyimbo za tohara za
Waigembe. Taswira hizi husaidia katika kuwasilisha maudhui yanayopatikana katika nyimbo za tohara.
Kupitia uhakiki wa taswira hizi, usawiri wa mwanamume katika jamii unaweza kudhihirika. Uchanganuzi
wa taswira za mwanamume katika nyimbo za tohara miongoni mwa Waigembe unadhihirisha bayana kuwa
taswira chanya kuhusu mwanamume zinatiliwa mkazo huku taswira hasi zikiwa chache.
Kupitia uchanganuzi wa taswira za mwanamume katika nyimbo za tohara, tunaweza kuelewa hisia na
mielekeo ya Waigembe kuhusu wajibu wa mwanamume katika jamii hii. Aidha, falsafa na itikadi ya jamii hii
kuhusu dhana ya uana imewekwa bayana. Taswira zinazojitokeza katika nyimbo zinaashiria nafasi na
majukumu ya mwanamume katika jamii. Hii ni kwa sababu taswira katika nyimbo huchota maudhui yake
katika jamii na jamii hubainisha dhima na jukumu la kila jinsia. Kinachobainika wazi ni kuwa aina hizi za
taswira ni mihimili muhimu ya kuweka wazi nafasi na wajibu wa mwanamume katika jamii hii.
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Journal of
Humanities
Volume 1 ▫ Number 1
(2009)
Articles
A Note on a Shared Heritage: The Bread Culture of the Waswahili of Zanzibar 1
Assibi Amidu
Dunia kokwa ya furu: Amali ya Misemo ya KiPemba 12

Ahmad Kipacha & Ibun Kombo
The Politicisation of Popobawa: Changing Explanations of a Collective Panic in Zanzibar 23
Martin Walsh
La culture dansée : un trait d’union entre deux mondes différents. Cas du Burundi 34
Sylvie Hatungimana
Early Childhood Cultural Development in Tanzania: Reflections from Key Government Documents 43
Lyambwene Mtahabwa
Negotiating Boundaries of Womanhood: The Position of Women in Migrant Households in Rural 55

Ghana
Justina Dugbazah
Nadharia ya Mtazamo-Kike Katika Muktadha wa Kiafrika 66

Clara Mamanyi
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye: A White Woman’s Afrocentric Approach to Gender Politics in Africa 73
Mike Kuria
Taswira za Mwanamume katika Fasihi Simulizi ya Kiafrika: Mfano wa Nyimbo za Tohara Miongoni 84
mwa Waigembe
Irene Mbaabu & John Kobia
97

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Published bi-annually by the School of Humanities,

Volume 1, Number 1 (2009)

© Journal of Humanities (JH), The University of Dodoma

A Note on a Shared Heritage: The Bread Culture of the Waswahili of Zanzibar 1

Dunia kokwa ya furu: Amali ya Misemo ya KiPemba 12

The Politicisation of Popobawa: Changing Explanations of a Collective Panic in Zanzibar 23

Negotiating Boundaries of Womanhood: The Position of Women in Migrant Households in Rural 55

Nadharia ya Mtazamo-Kike Katika Muktadha wa Kiafrika 66

A Note on a Shared Heritage: The Bread Culture of the Waswahili of Zanzibar

2.0 Kiswahili food culture

3.0 Varieties of Zanzibar bread

3.1 Pancake bread

3.2 Loaf bread

2 Issak E. Issak is from Zanzibar.

3.3 Flat bread

3.4 Round cake-like or cake bread

11. Mkate wa Kingazija. Comorian bread.

5.0 Other kinds of Zanzibar bread

6.0 African bread of the Waswahili

6.1 The most famous African bread in Kiswahili historical records

7.0 The semantic extensions of the term mkate in Kiswahili

7.1 The many senses of bread in Kiswahili

7.1.1 Are all pastries bread in Zanzibar?

8.0 Cultural shift: How European Bread surpassed African Bread

8 I am grateful to Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi for this alternative translation.

Amidu, A. (1990). Kimwondo: A Kiswahili Electoral Contest. Vienna: Afro-Pub.

Dunia kokwa ya furu: Amali ya Misemo ya KiPemba

Ahmad Kipacha na Ibun Kombo

1.1 Kisiwa cha Pemba

1.1.1 Shughuli za Kiuchumi na kijamii

6 Angalia Ngezi-Vumawimbi Forest Reserves Biodiversity Inventory Report. (2005).

2.0 Nadharia za Uchambuzi wa data za Kifoklo

3.0 Data za Kifoklo za Kisiwani Pemba

Eneo Etimolojia Chanzo chake

4.0 Misemo ya Kipemba katika Muktadha wa Shughuli za Uzalishaji Mali (Uchumi)

4.1 Misemo katika muktadha wa Uvuvi na Shughuli za Bahari

sasa hunitaki tena hitajwa watema mate.

4.2 Misemo katika muktadha wa Kilimo na Ufugaji

(vi) Ndama ndama ndio ngombe

The Politicisation of Popobawa:

Changing Explanations of a Collective Panic in Zanzibar

2.0 The political context

Table 1: Popobawa panics in historical context

mid-19th century heyday of Omani Arab rule

3.0 The development of the 1995 panic

Table 2: Chronology of the 1995 panic

4.0 Research on Popobawa

5.0 Early explanations of Popobawa

6.0 The politicisation of Popobawa

7.0 The political thesis amplified

3.0 Entre tradition et modernité

4.0 Adultes et enfants. Entre utilité, futilité et puérilité

5.0 Entre rupture et changement, permanence et continuité

5.1. Espace festif et modernité des danses burundaises

5.2. Le temps en danse

5.3. Le corps en danse

Early Childhood Cultural Development in Tanzania: Reflections from Key Government

2.0 Early Childhood Cultural Development in Different Countries in the World

3.0 Theoretical Framework

3.1 Socio-cultural Theory

Existing Cultural Values

kushirikiana na familia, jamii na wadau wanaoshughulikia masuala ya watoto ielimishe watoto

4.1 Consistency in Presentation of Cultural Values