Water Brings No Harm. Matthew V. Bender
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of these efforts, the men gathered at the home of the meni mfongo and celebrated with a meal and mbege.
Emergency maintenance had to be carried out much more quickly. Once the meni mfongo had been notified of a break or blockage, he sounded a call to the men using a horn. Those who heard the sound of the horn knew to assemble at his home the next day prepared to carry out whatever maintenance was necessary. The meni mfongo then organized those who came, proceeded to the location of the problem, and supervised repair of the canal. This work was likely much less pleasant than routine maintenance as it most often took place during the rains, when temperatures were cooler, the rivers higher, and the terrain muddier.
Another important management task of the meni mfongo was his setting a timetable for use of the canal: who could use it and when, and how much water could be used at a given time. Guidelines varied widely across Kilimanjaro, as they reflected local circumstances such as the size of the canal and the number of users. In most cases, meni mifongo allowed users to draw as much water as they needed for domestic purposes but required it be taken in the mornings, when the water was usually clearest, most clean, and thought to possess healing powers. This allowed women, the primary collectors of domestic water, to complete this work in the mornings and dedicate their afternoons to cultivation. For irrigation, meni mifongo granted each user a specific period of time in which he could open his branch canal and irrigate his lands. This reflected how time, rather than volume, was the standard for water measurement before the twentieth century. In some areas, a turn lasted half a day, so one user could irrigate from sunup to midday and another from midday to dusk. Irrigation rarely took place at night. The criteria by which the meni mifongo set the timetable reflected the individual politics of each canal. Gutmann noticed that in Marangu, irrigation began with the users who were farthest downhill on the right side of the mfongo. “Then follows the one who lives higher up, and so forth to about the middle of the country. Then the sequence shifts to the left side, again beginning with the one living farthest down. If the left lower half is finished, the upper half follows the same sequence until every user had had a chance to water. Then the series starts all over again.”61 This pattern could be flexible depending on the availability of water. Two or more users could share a turn if the canal had sufficient flow. If one user’s crops began to wither, the meni mfongo could require that the “person who has the water . . . must turn the water over to the man with the dry field.”62 The meni mifongo reserved special privileges and the right to alter the timetable at any time. For many canals, they claimed complete rights to the water on every third day.63 Since irrigation for a whole day was rarely necessary, they would then grant those who needed more water part of this day in exchange for vegetables, eleusine, or mbege.
In addition to a timetable, most canals had bylaws covering issues ranging from access to cleanliness. These functioned as a legal code for the canals, enforced by the meni mifongo and backed by possible punishments. The following are bylaws enforced for canals in Kilema:64
• One is not permitted to break the timetable.
• One must close one’s own canal after irrigating so that others may use the waters.
• One must attend all activities of the canal, such as maintenance.
• One must not deliberately dirty the canal.
• One must not accidentally dirty it by washing clothes or eleusine in or near it.
• One must not bathe in the canal.
• One must obtain cooking water in the mornings.
• One must dig a pit for the disposal of dirty water so that it will not flow back into the canal.
Violation of these bylaws by anyone, including women and children, resulted in punishment. The most common was a fine; if one violated a bylaw, the entire family would be banned from the canal until one or more barrels of mbege were delivered to the meni mfongo.65 For severe transgressions, the violator and his or her family could be banished from the mfongo entirely. Children were taught from a very early age to respect the bylaws of the canals, and if they were caught urinating in them, playing in them, or in any way fouling them, they could be punished by whipping. Furthermore, special prohibitions existed for pregnant women. Aside from the normal restrictions against women’s performing any labor on canals, expectant mothers were prohibited from crossing canals or approaching their intakes.66
While conflict among the users of a canal fell to the jurisdiction of the meni mfongo, the mangi played a role in conflicts among users of different canals within a chiefdom. For example, if a canal drew too much water from a river, leaving downstream canals dry, the mangi could set limits on the upstream canal or order that the intake be reconstructed to reduce flows. These sorts of conflicts were more prominent in the dry months, when the rivers were lower and farmers needed to irrigate eleusine. Disputes over a water source between chiefdoms could be adjudicated through negotiation or warfare. By the nineteenth century, wars stemming from control of mifongo became increasingly common, the victorious chiefdom winning the right to claim as much water as it wished.67 The wamangi had little direct involvement in water management, aside from these limited roles, until the twentieth century. Rather, these duties remained in the hands of local specialists and societies of users.
SPIRITUAL AND CULTURAL MANAGEMENT
While physical management of water resources was extremely important, this was not the only way in which these resources were managed. Given the centrality of water to cultural and spiritual practices, we must think of water management and of those who manage it in much broader terms. By looking in depth at the spiritual and cultural dimensions of water, and how these properties were managed, we see that management of water resources on Kilimanjaro encompassed a wide range of actors and therefore was inherently local and decentralized.
Managing the spiritual properties of water was vital in these communities. It was the abundant streams, rivers, and rainfall that allowed people to grow bananas, brew beer, and construct mud houses. Water, more than anything else, distinguished the vihamba from the foothills and the lowlands. Lack of water meant death. Knowledge of water’s importance had brought the people to Kilimanjaro and, in their minds, separated them from dryland peoples such as the Maasai. In popular imagination, the mere idea of leaving the mountain for the plains generated tremendous anxiety. Charles Dundas observed:
Not only is the magnificence of the mountain such as [to] compel attachment, but as soon as the mountain dwellers leave it, life becomes intolerable for them. The plain affords them neither their accustomed food nor abundance of water, down there they become the victims of malaria, a prey for the ferocious lion, the blundering rhinoceros and the crafty buffalo, or the loathsome crocodile, all of which are unknown on the mountain, and finally they are exposed to the burning heat. Nothing affrights the mountain dweller more than the threat of being sent to a dry country.68
The association of the mountain with all that was good and the plains with evil and danger was so powerful that it persisted into the twentieth century.
The association of water with life and lack of water with death fostered other dichotomies, including the mountain versus the plains, civilized versus uncivilized, and pure versus impure. The most powerful of these was good versus evil. Mountain peoples believed not only that water was inherently good, but also that it had the power to eliminate evil by purifying both the landscape and its people. According to accounts from elders, Ruwa created the mountain itself as a way to distinguish good from evil and reward those peoples he considered to be good.69 He also used the powers of water to keep evil from reclaiming the mountain. One example, recorded by Dundas, is a fable very similar in style to that of the great flood in the Bible’s book of Genesis.70 It involves a great man, Mkechuwa, who died and left behind much wealth to his children. They showed little sympathy for the poor. Ruwa, angered by this, sent his minister to the community disguised as a man with boils all over his body. The man went to the people and begged for food, as well as fat to anoint his boils. Most turned their backs on him, saying, “Have you no shame?” At last he came to a man of mercy, who offered him food, washed his whole body, and anointed him with fat for his boils. At this time, the minister revealed himself to be the minister of Ruwa. He told the man to