the Swahili Resource website
Caplan archive
Topics studied: local perceptions of modernities; food security; risk; tourism; women’s groups
Problems and issues: working with Mikidadi in 2002, the setting up of a prawn farm on Mafia
What I wrote about: modernities, witchcraft, risk
Funding: Nuffield
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Extracts from Mikidadi Juma’s diary (Swahili)
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Extracts from Mikidadi Juma’s tape-recorded diary, summer 2002, Kanga village, transcribed by Joseph Bwathondi
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Mikidadi, then aged 12, had kept a diary for me in 1966 when I had to leave the village for a month. In 2002, he was in his late forties, and had returned to Kanga to assist in my research. I asked if he would like to keep another diary, and he recorded it each evening for just over a week into my voice recorder. I have here omitted some very confidential material.
Salum Nassoro, conversation (Swahili)
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Conversation with Salum Nassor, Kanga village, Mafia Island. Taped 2002 by Pat Caplan. Transcribed by Joseph Bwaithondi, 2010.
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Salum Nassor was my neighbour and one of my greatest friends in Kanga village. He was also my most faithful correspondent over many years until his death in his eighties. His wife Masuda was also a good friend and informant, and so was one of their daughters Mgeni, who died in her forties. I also knew well most of the other ten children in this family. The idea of this meeting in 2002 when he was eighty years old was to record his life history but unfortunately most of the life history section did not record and what remains is a conversation about a variety of local current matters
Taarifa ya mwaka kogwa kijijni kanga (Swahili, English)
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Mikidadi Juma was a close friend – we called each other ‘younger brother’ and ‘older sister’. In 1966, when he was twelve, he mentioned the ceremony of Mwaka Kogwa in the diary he kept for me (qv) and again in 2002 when we worked together, he went to observe the Mwaka Kogwa in one part of Kanga village, while I went to another. This is the account which he recorded.