the Swahili Resource website
Caplan archive
Topics studied: kinship and descent, land tenure, spirit possession
The historical setting: immediate post-independence period, optimism, but issues of Rhodesia and S. Africa. TANU, ujamaa
Problems and issues: my age, getting to know people, trust
What I wrote: about kinship and descent, boys’ circumcision and girls’ puberty rituals
Funding: University of London, Goldsmiths Company
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A document obtained by Pat Caplan in Kilindoni, district capital of Mafia Island, in 1966. A version of this story appears in the booklet by Chris Walley: ‘Historia ya Chole kama inavyosimuliwa na wenyeji wake’, 1997
Court case Amina Bakari (English)
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In 1965, MM divorced his wife for alleged adultery with a local shop-keeper and she sought revenge. She sued her ex-husband for the maximum amount of property, and village meeting after meeting heard disputes about ownership of their bed, their coconut fields, and so on. The wife also tried in vain to persuade the shopkeeper to marry her, but he refused, although he did divorce his own wife. She then tried to persuade one of her cross-cousins, the Diwan of the village, to marry her. Cross-cousins are not only preferential marriage partners but also have a joking relationship, and therefore sexual banter is common between them. She took this man's hat, and refused to return it. He finally lost his temper and struck her, whereupon she went to accuse him of assault before the Village Development Committee, which referred it to the District Court in Kilindoni. Amina eventually won her case, although she was still husbandless.
First Fieldwork on Mafia Island, 1965-7 (English)
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In the 1980s, after my third field trip to Mafia Island in 1985, I began to write a book about my experiences of doing fieldwork, first as a young postgraduate carrying out my field research from 1965-7, then with a return visit in 1976 to make a film with the BBC, and finally about another visit in 1985 to research the topics of food, health and fertility. I wrote the first drafts of ten chapters, five pertaining to the first and longest period of fieldwork and two on each of the second and third visits. For a variety of reasons, the book was never finished, although I have used much of the material in various other publications and thus saw no reason to include it here.
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In this piece, which constituted the first four chapters of the unfinished manuscript, I present an account of my first experience of fieldwork with all its delights and problems. The material is highly personal and draws upon my own diary, and letters to my parents (referred to in the text as M and D) and my partner (referred to as LC), as well as my notebooks (referred to as NB and numbered). I conclude by describing what happens after fieldwork – the painful process of writing up: seminar papers, a Ph.D. thesis1 and first publications2, with conflicting advice from my two supervisors and my own uncertainty about where my focus should lie.
Interview with Mohamed Juma on witchcraft 1966 (English)
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Before leaving Kanga village after a stay of a year to go and live in Baleni village, this conversation is one of the very few that I tape-recorded during this first period of field- work, with Mohamed Juma the spirit possession singer: I was puzzled about the distinction between two kinds of witches – wachawi and wanga, so I asked him to explain to me what wanga do. For more information on links between witchcraft and spirit possession (not discussed below), see Caplan 1997
Kalewa songs from Baleni Village, 1966 (English, Swahili)
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I spent 3 months living in Baleni village from later 1966 to early 1967. The songs here, mostly women’s impromptu kalewa songs, were not tape-recorded but written into my notebooks (NB), together with a literal translation of each followed by its ‘inside’ meaning. The dominant theme is flagged up in bold
Songs recorded in Kanga village, Mafia Island, Tanzania, between 1965 and 1967 (English, Swahili)
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In this version I have changed the order and put like with like e.g. kalewa, taarabu etc. ‘NB’ means notebook, and each is numbered. Informants who helped decipher meanings included Mwaharusi Haji (see other interviews with her on this website) and Mwahadia Athman (a pseudonym for the wife of Mohamed – they are the subjects of my book African Voices, African Lives (1997).