Some traditions in Tanzania are wonderful!
By Leila Sheikh
A kanga is regular piece of cloth, which has a border
running around all the four sides and has a central motif often depicting a
flower. What distinguish kanga from other African print cloth are the proverbs
that are printed on the lower part of the cloth and which are always boxed.
Kanga as a form of clothing gained ascendancy on the
East African coast in the late 19th century. Prior to that women on the East African coast
wore kaniki (an indigo cloth) or marekani (calico) which were both tied
as a wrapper under the armpits. Most
drawings showing women on the coast around this time used only the one piece of
cloth which they tied around their bodies and gathered in one pleat over the
left breast. With the advent of Kanga,
women started using two pieces of cloth, one for wrapping around the body and
one for covering the head or as a shawl.
By 1900, women on the East African Coast had started
wearing kanga in the way it is worn now and it had become the accepted form of
clothing. The word kanga, derives its
meaning from the guinea fowl, sometimes the kanga was called and is still known
as leso.
One of the most striking aspects of the kanga is the
colors. Manufacturers somehow discovered that the more brilliant the colors,
the more attractive it would be to the consumers and they were not wrong.
What we know is that after the kaniki and plain
merekani, kanga became popular because of its vibrant colors and because it
disassociated women from slavery, as women of all social and economic classes
started wearing the kanga and we can safely say that it merged the social
classes, in clothing, something that had never happened, before.
How did kanga become popular?
The most striking contribution towards the
popularization of kanga has been through ngoma.
Ngoma groups used the kanga as sare
(uniform) because it was cheap, easily accessible, colorful and also because it
was easier to wear. The kanga doesn’t need
stitching, apart from the hem which is sewn on both sides to prevent the
threads from running and the material from
getting frayed. The hem itself
varies in width from time to time.
Sometimes the hem is very thin, barely half an inch in width sometimes
the hem goes upto one and a quarter inches in width. The width of the hem depends on the
preference of the wearer.
Another reason why it became popular is because of the
jina.
The Swahili have a rich oral tradition in the form of folklore and
poetry. When taarab music was introduced
in East Africa, in the early 1900s, very few people had access to record
players or santuri to listen to the
songs. People relied on their ears to
catch racy tunes which they hummed and some of those words used to depict
unrequited love or to depict a certain social situation, which in time were
incorporated on the kanga as jina.
We don’t know how the trend started to have proverbs
or jina or words on a kanga. It could be the first jina ever to be printed
on a kanga was ‘Idd Mubarak’ to celebrate the festival of Idd ul Hajj or Idd ul Fitr and it became fashionable to have it as
writing on a kanga.
Henceforth,
most kanga had to have a jina. It is important to note here that the word jina means name but it is used in this
context to describe the words printed on a kanga. We don’t know how the words came to be
referred to as a Jina, we can only
speculate. It could be because the word
started off as a reference to a particular title of some popular song at that
time, hence the word jina since in
Swahili we refer to the title of a song as jina
la wimbo meaning the name of the song.
The word jina became generic for any writing on a
kanga. It is important to note here that
the women on the whole tend to buy a kanga for its jina and not the design or
the colors, although they too play a part in the attraction of a kanga, but to
a smaller degree.
NGOMA
In the late 19th century, ngoma like the lelemama; msanja, fanta and canada were introduced by Ngindo and
Manyema women as part of unyago, the rites de passage. Groups were often called to perform at
functions like weddings and great emphasis was put on the number of groups
invited, the tuzo (gifts) given to
the performers and the food served by the hostess.
The kanga played an important role here because apart
from being worn as a uniform, it was worn around the hips during dancing and it
also acted as a form of gift. The host
would give out several pairs of kanga to the leader of the ngoma and to the
best dancers.
They in turn would present a few pairs to the host as
a gift. This gift giving of kanga
extended beyond one ngoma group whereby matrons of different groups would give
each other gifts of kanga while their groups were performing. This later extended to the giving of kanga as
a gift from one group to the other so if one group had given out 30 pairs of
kanga to a rival group, that group would be obliged to return a gift of 60
pairs. Those 60 pairs would be paid back
with 120 pairs and so on.
This system known as potlatch in sociology,
usheha in Swahili is a form of obligatory exchanges in a
competitive spirit which can take on a combative dimension and can result and
has often done so, in bankruptcy of the two parties. In fact the gifts were often received with
trepidation because a similar gift would have to be given back, but
doubled. This form of gift exchange or
potlatch gave rise to the saying “mla
ng’ombe mmoja hulipa wawili’ (if you eat one cow you would have to pay
two).
It should be noted here that though the potlatch of
kanga started off as a form of camaraderie, it later took a combative aspect
and ngoma groups borrowed heavily from Indian merchants to pay back the
proverbial two cows. Some women pawned
their jewels or even sold it off to gain prestige in society. Houses were pawned or sold, marriages broke
up, children were neglected and pandemonium broke out.
This form of
obligatory gift exchange started in the 1930s and by the 1950s, it had become
so competitive that ngoma groups which had numerous numbers, both as dancers
and as cheerleaders, had to devise new strategies to be one up on their
rivals. This took the form of passing a
float which was paraded in all the popular streets so the population would see
what one group was giving the other.
The floats
were accompanied by songs and dance and much fracas. This marks the emergence of lelemama as a
form of mobilization among women. It
also marked ngoma as a great leveler of women in society.
Mobilization
From the 1930s various kanga were printed to
commemorate specific occasions. For
example when Queen Elizabeth 2nd had her coronation, in 1952 a
special kanga was printed to commemorate the occasion. This trend continued to the time of TANU’s
campaign for independence when Indian manufacturers printed three kanga in
1959, 1960 and 1962 with the picture of Bibi Titi Mohamed to mobilize the
public to vote for TANU and also to raise awareness among the public about the
whole notion of independence, especially women voters.
During the Second World War in the 1940s when imported
goods were scarce due to war, a team of two brothers known as Saidi Abeid and
Mohamed Abeid become innovative and started manufacturing kanga in Dar Es
Salaam, at Ilala.
That type of
kanga became known as Mohamed Abeid and
though they were not at par with the imported kanga from India and Holland and
Japan, they did serve the purpose, that of providing women with clothing during
a period of acute shortages.
Ritual and symbol in kanga
The first cloth that is wrapped on a baby after it is
born is a kanga. In fact traditionally,
a baby was wiped with clean rags from an old kanga and then a new piece of
kanga was wrapped around the child. This
ensures a lifelong affair with the kanga for both boy and girl children. The boys would grow up to buy their wives
kanga, while the girls would continue wearing kanga to the day they die.
By the time a child starts to toddle, a kanga would be
cut into a smaller piece and tied around the neck, draping the child. This form of wearing is known as kishingoshingo (by the neck). A boy would stop wearing a kanga when he has
grown slightly older than that but when he undergoes jando (circumcision), a kanga would be tied as a wrapper until the
wound heals.
A girl on the other hand would wear a kanga to
madrassa, she would work in it, play in it and sleep in it. The day she starts menstruating, she would be
taken to her somo (trainer) who has
to be given several pairs of kanga as a gift by the girl’s mother and
aunts. The somo would have to buy the girl at least two pairs of kanga on
completion of the rites de passage
and henceforth, they are bonded in the role of mentor confidant and
counselor on the part of the somo and pupil on the part of the girl
for the rest of their lives.
This somo/mwari
relationship is considered sacred and a girl is expected to confide in her
somo, be loyal to her and assist her whenever required. The somo is expected to advise, encourage and
guide the mwari.
This relationship is equivalent to the group therapy
that many women’s groups in the western world opt to undergo in modern times
and parallels can be drawn in the solidarity that western feminists are
preaching currently, which have been in existence for a long time among
Tanzanian women.
Rites de passage
Bi Kidawa Khamis say:” My somo Bi Kijakazi (may her soul rest in
peace) guided me from the time I was 13 until I got married at 19. She saw me through several miscarriages,
through the birth of my son, Khamis, through the death of my first husband,
through my second marriage until her time arrived and she answered the call.
I remember when I first started menstruating. My mother called all my aunts from my
maternal and my paternal side. She
informed them of the event and my father’s sister, Bi Mwatumu suggested that Bi
Kijakazi be my somo. Her own two
daughters, (twins), were also Bi Kijakazi’s wari and she was respected in the
society. My mother gave her permission
and I was taken to my somo’s house for seven days to be taught about the facts
of life. My mother bought three pairs of
kanga for Bi Kijakazi and’ two pairs of kanga for me. She also sent a number of gifts to Bi
Kijakazi like a cockerel, five kilos of rice, some halud perfume and about
5,000/= cash. I was given some utensils,
a mat (utango) that I would be sitting on and sleeping on, a bar of soap and a
prayer mat. My aunts each gave Bi
Kijakazi a pair of kanga which amounted to a lot if you count my father’s five
sisters, my mother’s three sisters, their sisters in law, their cousins and
friends. In all she must have got about
25 pairs.
Nowadays the mother of the mwari would give a somo up
to 20 pairs of kanga. If you add the
gifts of kanga from the mwari’s aunt and other female relatives, the somo would
get a hefty package, sometimes as many as 75 pairs.
For example when a mwari gets married and is found a
virgin her somo gets several pairs of kanga from the bride’s mother and other
female relatives to congratulate her on having been a good teacher to her mwari
and having ensured that the mwari is respectable.
Bi Mariam Salum:” At my wedding, my somo washed me in a pair
of kanga that my mother had bought. This
kanga is called sutu. It has a zig zag pattern on the two sides and
has a design of small flowers, sometimes circles throughout the mji (centre). The wedding sutu are usually in black, maroon
and white to denote the three aspects of life i.e. black for hair, white, for
seminal fluid and red for menstrual blood.
There is a belief among my people that the word sutu is a derivative from the word msuto meaning make public or show to the
people. In a way it is apt because
during a wedding, the bride’s side sing a very traditional song as a way of
msuto which goes “mlisema hayawi mbona
yamekuwa…”, so it could be that the sutu kanga is a way of making public or
showing off to society or to detractors that the wedding is taking place,
despite gossip to the contrary.
Bi Kijakazi:” Some tribes don’t wear the sutu. It is mwiko (taboo) for them. Traditionally, the red/maroon, black and
white colours have always been associated with ngoma za shetani (spirit possession and spirit dances). The shetani likes the colours red, especially
the subiani. The rohani likes white
while the vibwengo like black. There are people who are possessed by all the
three spirits therefore have to wear all the three colours while undergoing ‘kupungwa’ (spirit exorcism).
B Aziza Hemed:’ When I had my first baby and the
subsequent ones too, I was given a kanga by my mother. It was the mkaja. My somo used it to
tighten my stomach, like a corset so that it wouldn’t protrude later. The mkaja is very important, and the practice
is quite painful as the stomach is pushed in and a folded kanga is tightened
around the waist. We believe that the
mkaja forces out all the impurities from the uterus, apart from acting as a
corset to tighten stomach muscles. This
kanga has to come from the maternal side.
When a daughter gets married, her mother gets the ‘mkaja’ from a
son-in-law as compensation for wearing that painful corset after having given
birth to the bride. Strangely, the
mother of the son is not paid a ‘mkaja’ when he gets married.
My mother gave me a mbeleko (baby wrapper) when I gave birth to my children. This mbeleko is symbolic because we normally
carry babies in a sling on our backs called mbeleko and we use a kanga for
that. So although we may use different
kanga as a sling, that symbolic mbeleko has to came from a new mother’s mother.
I used old kanga on all my babies as nappies. They are the best as they are cool and prevent
nappy rash. I also use a kanga as a
shawl, because they are cool, easy to wash and they dry fast. In fact, a lot of my friends use it in same
way.
Bi Sharou Bint Majura:” Kanga are a very important aspect of a sanduku (trunk), the gifts that a bride
receives from her husband. The sanduku has to have a number of gifts in
it, like jewellery”, perfume, dresses, shoes, combs, some make up, bed sheets,
towels etc., but kanga has to be the most important gift in the sanduku because
when the sasambura (showing off
gifts) takes place, people have to see how many pairs the bride received.
The sasambura is an art. The person who dances and demonstrates and
shows off the gifts has to be a good dancer and mimic. The songs and gestures are quite lewd but since
the sasambura takes place within the house and there are no men around, we can
get as bawdy as we want. There are
special songs and dance steps for the sasambura. The whole purpose is to show society the
esteem that the bride and her family is held by the husband’s family, by their
friends and the prestige that is accorded to the bride. The more gifts, especially jewellery and
kanga that “a bride gets, the more she is held in esteem. People discuss the gifts some brides get
years later because nothing like it had been seen before.
Bi Ajuza:” The kanga is also used as a canopy while
the groom is eating ‘soro’ special
dishes prepared by the somo in a feast immediately after the wedding
ceremony. The soro has to have sweet and
savoury dishes and sherbets and juices to build the groom’s strength. The kanga that is held over the heads of the
groom and his companions has to have a romantic jina like ‘mahaba majani
popote hukua (love is like grass it grows anywhere) or ‘heshima tukipeana, daima tutapendana’ (If we respect one another,
our love would flourish forever) etc.
The kanga has to have colours like pinks, yellow and
green. It has to be in vogue at that
particular time and it has to come from the somo.
Bi Mwamini (mama Midomo):’ I work as a mkunga (traditional birth attendant) and have done so for the past
40 years. I learnt the profession from
my mother who learnt it from her own mother.
My family has produced wakunga
as far back as we can remember.
The wakunga
hold a special place in society and they are respected. We have an informal oath to help any birthing
mother, however poor and the tradition of paying wakunga with kanga is one way of ensuring that the pride of the new
parents is not hurt, especially those who are poor. So paying in kanga became the norm. Nowadays those who still use traditional
birth attendants pay them in cash and kanga, there are some who still prefer
the traditional gift of kanga without cash.
So you will find the wakunga have a lot of kanga because they help
deliver many babies.
Bi Sofia Aman:” When a woman dies, at least six pairs of
kanga are required in the washing ceremony.
The body of the deceased has to be covered at all times to preserve the
dignity of the dead person and kanga being light are used. Those kanga are later given away to poor women
as sadaka. The bier of women has a kanga tied around it
to show that the deceased is a woman. It
has to be a kanga from the deceased’s own collection.
Bi Mwanaisha Salim:” When we were young, women of my generation
used the kanga as a sign language. That
was 40 years ago. The language was not
in the jina but in the colours. For
example we wore red kanga to show our husbands we were menstruating and green
to show that we were available. We wore
dark somber colours for funerals and bright colours for weddings. We wore kanga
za moto (red and black) to show our displeasure or anger to husbands or
light colours like white and yellow to show our happiness. We wore kanga
za mawingu (dark blue and black) when we were sad or green to show we were
in love and each colour combinations had a meaning and our husbands, society
and relatives understood the meaning and the symbols.
Of course, there ore accompaniments to colour
combination of the kanga. Like henna and wanja for festive occasions, gold and coral beads (marijani) when we wanted to look
elegant. We used to change our kanga
daily. We never wore the same pair in
successive days. We had to have a lot of
kanga. Our husbands bought us kanga and
each festival was an occasion for a gift of kanga from a husband. At the beginning of ramadhan, our husbands
gave us kanga za uji (a gift for
making porridge which is eaten during ramadhan) kanga za iddi, kanga za maulid,
kanga za mapenzi just because a husband felt like it. We also bought our own kanga. A lot among us have been involved in small
businesses like cooking and selling maandazi
and the money was spent on buying kanga.
It was imperative that we buy many pairs otherwise we would lose heshima (prestige) in society.
Nowadays, you young women use majina (writing) on the kanga to send the message across. During our time we were more subtle but very
effective. I remembers my late husband
Bwana Abdallah (may his soul rest in peace) once saw me wearing kanga za moto and he realized I was
angry over something. To make amends, he
went out and bought me a new pair and I went to change my kanga and put on a
light coloured one. There was no spoken
word, but anger was shown, an apology was given and accepted and life continued
harmoniously.
Nowadays, the kanga have blatant messages printed
across them, some outright insulting. I
feel quite ashamed to see our young women brazenly sporting kanga with insults
printed across it. The insults are often
aimed at a mother-in-law or at a neighbour and the worst part about it are that
the mother-in-law or neighbour would reciprocate in like manner with more
insults. This way, kanga have lost some
of their mystique.
Kanga have to be subtle and mysterious, in soft colours
with gentle designs.
That is when we used to feel like women. Nowadays, the young women do not spend enough
time on our traditional etiquette. They
are too strident, too vocal, too blatant.
There is no more mystery. They
wear a kanga as a utilitarian piece of cloth not as a cloth with great meaning
and taboos. You cannot win a war with
overt fighting. You have to be subtle
and victory is ever sweeter that way.
The old ways have been eroded and few young women know that one of our
weapons was the kanga which we used to great advantage”.
Somo – teacher who guides a
young girl through rites de passage
Mwari (Single)
Wari (Plural) – initiates in the rites de
passage.
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