Water Brings No Harm. Matthew V. Bender
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and notable locations. Across the mountain, people considered vihamba to be the permanent property of the families that resided on them. Fathers provided elder sons with a homestead at the time of marriage, each containing at least a piece of the original estate. The youngest son inherited the remainder of the original homestead, including the original buildings and the most centrally located gardens. Yet women performed the bulk of the labor in these gardens; men assisted by clearing land and irrigating.24
Some families also developed secondary fields known as shamba in the foothills at the edge of the agroforest zone. On these plots, they cultivated grains such as maize and eleusine (Eleusine coracana, or finger millet). The practice of cultivation in the foothills differed markedly from cultivation in the vihamba in that crops were usually grown in monoculture. The most important shamba crop was eleusine, used primarily for producing an alcoholic brew called mbege. In times of drought, it could also be used as a famine food. For eleusine, planting took place just after the kisiye, and the crop grew to maturity during the dry period with irrigation. The cultivation of this crop during the dry season as opposed to the rainy season has been explained as a defense against vagrant animals. Dundas notes a story in his writings that attributes the practice to the misfortune of a farmer named Salia. One day Salia tried to scare off elephants that were ravaging his eleusine.25 Because of the rains, his gunpowder was damp, and he was unable to load his weapon to shoot at them. As he tried to dry his powder, he caused an explosion that killed himself and thirty-nine other people. Learning a lesson from this misfortune, people then refused to plant eleusine in the rainy season, instead planting it after the rains so that it would ripen in the dry period. Despite the prevalence of this story, it is more likely that the practice started because eleusine ripens better with the direct sunlight of the dry period. It may also reflect that eleusine was a prestige crop. Because men performed the bulk of labor related to the crop, the practice helped distribute labor more evenly over the course of the year.
FIGURE 1.1. A kihamba (Matthew V. Bender)
Social development centered on the vihamba and agricultural life. According to Moore, mountainside society initially consisted of “many small, fairly autonomous settlements, most composed of several localized patrilineages [kishari, pl. vishari], a few consisting of one very large patrilineage.”26 These were led by the most senior men. Settlements tended to be located at the highest points of the ridges where land was flattest. Over time, neighboring communities developed greater connections with one another. Moore notes, for example, that the practice of developing age-sets (rika) cut across the settlements.27 On Kilimanjaro, age-sets were corporate social groups that served as units for organizing corvée labor and warfare.28 Each initiation class formed a division, or ilumbo, within the age-set. These units provided an important means of organizing much of the cooperative work of the mountain. It is important to note that water management remained outside the age-set system, and age-sets were never mobilized for irrigation projects. Given the topography of the mountain, the increasing cooperation among neighboring groups made sense as a means of facilitating access to resources. Settlements closer to the forest had prime access to timber and water, while those closer to the plains had better access to goods procured from beyond the mountain, notably iron ore and pottery. Mifongo, originating above areas of settlement and used as far downhill as the shamba lands, acted as connecting arteries through the mountain ridges, encouraging cooperation throughout any given ridge. Thus, water influenced the development of these communities by being a divisive force, separating communities onto different ridges while also fostering partnership between those uphill and downhill on the same ridge.
Political centralization followed these lines as well. The institution of chieftaincy developed gradually as dominant families on each ridge asserted increased authority over others. In most cases, these families were located farthest uphill, in the areas of greatest water abundance. By the early nineteenth century, cooperating settlements on the same ridges had coalesced into around forty chieftaincies, each led by a chief (mangi). The largest of these from west to east were Siha, Machame, Kibosho, Uru, Moshi, Kirua, Kilema, Marangu, Mamba, Mwika, and Mkuu. Wamangi governed in partnership with councils of lineage heads, called njamaa, and their main claim to power was likely their control of the warrior age classes.29 Each chiefdom consisted of districts called mitaa (sing. mtaa), administered by district heads called wachili (sing. mchili), who were appointed by their mangi.30 Over the nineteenth century, the power of the wamangi grew alongside the rise in regional trade and an increase in warfare among groups on the mountain. It is important to note that their role did not include control of land, surface water, or irrigation.
The ability to control rain proved crucial to the wamangi and clan heads’ claim to authority. Rainmaking knowledge tended to be held by ranking members of clans and by professional spirit diviners (wamasya, sing. mmasya). In times of drought or flooding, these individuals made offerings to spirits deemed important to the water supply. These powers could be used for the benefit of the people, or to further one’s political interests. Wimmelbücker notes the example of Mashina, a chieftainess who ruled Mamba at the beginning of the nineteenth century.31 According to oral narratives, she turned against her own people and ordered her rainmaker, Kisolyi, to hold back the rains in order to bring famine and punish her people. She was later ousted from power. This story illustrates the power of a mangi to command control of rainfall, as well as the power of the people to depose leaders who mismanaged the resource. Another example Wimmelbücker provides is Makimende, a mmasya who became renowned for his rainmaking skills during the drought of 1897–99.32 He traveled throughout the southern chiefdoms, and he became a close confidant of Mangi Marealle. A few years later, his medicines proved ineffective, and Marealle sentenced him to a punishment of fifty lashes and having his cattle taken away. These two examples indicate how one group of specialists did not have a monopoly on rainmaking. Rather, rainmaking knowledge could be exercised by elders, wachili, wamangi, and wamasya, often in competition with one another.
In addition to their economic practices and social structures, the peoples of the mountain shared common rituals and forms of spiritual expression. Initiation, midwifery, burial rites, and worship practices developed very consistently. A collective notion of spirituality, based on the mountain’s geography, lay at the heart of these. It framed the mountain as having four regions of spiritual significance: the vihamba, the homeland of the living; the rainforest, the home of the spirits (waruma, sing. mruma); Kibo, the dwelling place of the creator Ruwa; and the lowlands, the surrounding plains devoid of life and full of dangers and evils. Most daily worship centered on reverence to the waruma.33 Though they dwelt primarily in the rainforest, they frequented forest groves, waterfalls, banana groves, and dracaena plots, and they possessed the power to intervene in everyday events. If people lived in harmony with the spirits, then the spirits would ensure abundance and peace. If people did not, then harmful outcomes would ensue. This was especially important for water, as many springs were thought to be controlled by waruma who would cut the water flow if they became agitated.34 To retain good relations with the spirits, the living made offerings and included them in rites and rituals. Professional diviners, the wamasya, could be called upon in dire situations, as could other ranking members of the clan deemed to have knowledge of the spirit realm. People also developed the notion of a supreme spirit known as Ruwa.35 They considered him to be the creator of the mountain, the one who shaped vitality out of the desolation of the plains. Linked to notions of life, fertility, protection, and goodness, he nurtured his peoples by providing the fertile soils of the vihamba and the waters that filled streams and rivers. According to Anza Lema, people regarded Ruwa as the giver of rain, and they “delighted in the sound and feel of the rain, sensing its promise for a good season in which they harvested plenty and prospered.”36 They also considered rain to be Ruwa’s spittle or saliva, a symbol of health, happiness, prosperity, well-being, and favor.37 Reverence to Ruwa took the form of veneration and spitting in the direction of Kibo as well as ritual offerings of animals and mbege made in watercourses.
Despite the presence of numerous shared cultural, economic, and religious