A CIVET HUNT IN PEMBA

by Helle V. Goldman

The hunters heading back to Tandavili after our first encounter (photo Helle V. Goldman)

The Small Indian Civet (Viverricula indica) is widespread in Asia, from Pakistan in the west to easternmost China, and from the Sundaic region in the south to the Himalayan foothills in the north (Choudhury et al. 2015). Its perineal gland secretions prized as a perfume and medicinal ingredient in southern Asia, the Small Indian Civet was imported – most likely from the Indian subcontinent – by traders to various places in the Western Indian Ocean (Gaubert et al. 2017). At some unknown point in the past, this included Pemba, the northern island in the Zanzibar archipelago (Moreau & Pakenham 1941; Pakenham 1984; Walsh 2007; Choudhury et al. 2015).

Like other species of mammals introduced to Pemba, Small Indian Civets became naturalised on the island. These crepuscular–nocturnal small carnivores were frequently observed early in the morning or late in the evening by Pakenham, a colonial officer stationed in Zanzibar from the late 1930s through WWII; “if one stood motionless it would pass very close”, he wrote (Pakenham 1984: 46). (What some Zanzibaris made of Pakenham’s keen interest in observing wildlife and collecting animal specimens may be surmised on the basis of the account of an elderly Pemban, who told me in 1993 that Pakenham was remembered for catching spirits in bottles. It is likelier that he was after insects.) According to Pakenham, Small Indian Civets were common on both Unguja and Pemba, the main islands of the archipelago. Yet I never caught sight of one during my anthropological fieldwork in Pemba in the early 1990s, and camera-trapping on Unguja in 2003 (Goldman & Winther-Hansen 2003), 2017, 2018 (Goldman & Walsh 2019a) and 2019 (unpublished) turned up no traces of Small Indian Civets.

Mauwa and her aunt Raya in 1993 (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

When I returned in July 2019 to Mzambarauni, in north-central Pemba, to follow up on my earlier studies with additional anthropological research, I did not anticipate that the opportunity to observe a civet hunt would come my way. The chance presented itself when I tagged along with Mauwa and a handful of her younger kin to her rice field south of Mzambarauni. I had first known her in 1992, when I lived in the thatched wattle-and-daub house across from Mauwa’s aunt. 

On our way to the rice farm, we walked in single file on the path as we headed south from the village, exchanging greetings with folks encountered en route. Some worked singly or in twos in their fields. Others collected fruit or firewood. A few led zebu cows. We passed through a patchwork of small cultivated fields and forest – a hodge-podge of wild trees and shrubs and clove, fruit and lumber trees. Some of the cultivated trees appeared well tended; most were overrun by wild vegetation.

Mauwa and her adult daughter harvest rice (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

At Mauwa’s rice plot, we deposited our gear in the small patch of shade offered by the low open-sided thatched hut beside the field. I made myself useful by planting the spinach seedlings that Mauwa had brought with her in a sack, putting them in the ground that she had previously prepared for this purpose. While the women set to work in the rice field, Rayani – the young daughter of Mauwa’s eldest son – and I played a game with twigs and pebbles that we invented on the spot. A soft-spoken settler from the mainland who cultivated a nearby field came by to exchange pleasantries and drink from the muddy spring next to Mauwa’s field. One of the women harvesting rice found the nest of a Black-winged Red Bishop (kweche; Euplectes hordeaceus) in the field. The red bishop feeds on rice and farmers consider the bird a pest.

Black-winged Red Bishop nest and eggs (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

Mauwa took a short break to boil a small pot of thin rice gruel. I took a few sips of the refreshing porridge from my cup and gave the remainder to Rayani, who seemed to be hungry. Back in the field again, the women chatted non-stop while the heaps of rice ears grew high on the mats. They were periodically carried to the side of the field, stuffed into a sack and beaten with a stout stick to separate the rice grains from the stalks. (The husks would be removed later.) I worked much less efficiently than my companions, though Mauwa heartily extolled my rice-harvesting skills to passersby, which made me laugh.

Suddenly the chaotic sounds of people whooping, dogs yipping and branches crackling reached us from the forest edging the rice field. “What’s going on?” I asked Mauwa. Her small knife never slowing as she clipped off ears of rice from the tall stalks, she told me that it was just youths out after wadudu.

Mauwa harvesting rice (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

Depending on the context, wadudu (singular mdudu) is a term for insects and other small invertebrates (including disease-causing parasites), small reptiles or undesirable wildlife of various sizes, and unspeakable creatures whose names can’t be mentioned. For example, on Unguja, Leopards (Panthera pardus) are sometimes referred to cagily as wadudu, the speakers avoiding explicitly naming the greatly feared animal, which has now in all likelihood been extirpated from the island (Goldman & Walsh 2019b). There is no single English equivalent that covers all these senses of the Swahili word, but “varmints” conveys what Mauwa meant in this case.

When I asked her to clarify which wadudu the boys were hunting, she said they were going for ngawa. On Unguja, ngawa refers to the African Civet (Civettictis civetta), a small carnivore species that I camera-trapped in 2003 in Jozani–Chwaka Bay National Park (Goldman & Winther-Hansen 2003, 2007). On Pemba, where there are no African Civets, ngawa refers to the Small Indian Civet (Viverricula indica).

Small Indian Civet, camera-trapped near Ngezi (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

A few days before, I had asked Ilaria Pretelli, a friend doing research in a village at the edge of Ngezi Forest, near the north-western tip of Pemba, to set up my camera trap near her house for a couple of nights. The trap netted a single video of a Small Indian Civet. Later, the trap was moved to inside Ngezi, where another civet was captured on video.

As I snatched up my notebook and camera and dashed off into the bush to find the hunters, Mauwa called out to give them a head’s up: a European was coming to talk to them. I found the youths close by. They had killed a civet just minutes before. One of the young hunters held up the specimen for me to photograph. The group comprised about ten youths in their teens and early twenties, accompanied by their dogs. Having successfully bagged a civet, the boys were eager to go home and rest but some of them allowed me to briefly detain them so I could ask some questions.

Three of the young hunters and their catch (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

I learned that they hailed from Tandavili, which was the closest village. They comprised a loosely organised group of friends that had started out by catching the civets that bothered their household chickens. Later they expanded their activities to the bush surrounding the settlement. Every three or four days they set out to hunt Small Indian Civets, Marsh Mongooses (chonjwe; Atilax paludinosus), Vervet Monkeys (tumbili; Chlorocebus pygerythrus) and snakes of any variety. These are all animals deemed harmful to people (snakes), crops (vervets) or poultry (civets and mongooses). Sometimes they also go out singly or in pairs to hunt birds with slingshots.

The dead civet (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

Whatever the hunters catch, they feed to the dogs, they said. None of the targeted species contains anything of medicinal value, they told me, and none of the meat is consumed by people in the area. (Although there are local exceptions (Walsh 2007), Islam prohibits the consumption of reptiles, monkeys and animals bearing fangs, i.e. carnivores.) The dead civet whose killing I had arrived just too late to witness was going to be roasted over a fire to remove the fur and then given to the dogs. (The dogs looked like they would have benefited from a good meal.) I gave the most talkative of the youths the telephone number of my hostess in Mzambarauni and he agreed to call the next time they were going hunting.

Hunting (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

According to Walsh (2007), clubs that hunted civets were active at least up to the 1990s. Information about such groups and their activities is scant. During his stay on Pemba over a hundred years ago, Craster heard of Wild Boar (nguruwe; Sus scrofa) hunts there: “they told me that a party of men armed with big knives would start out with as many dogs as they could collect, and walk through the bush till the dogs found a pig” (1913: 284). The boars, which had been introduced centuries earlier by the Portuguese, were not eaten by Muslim islanders; the flesh was given to the dogs, and non-Muslim Africans ate it too. Other species taken opportunistically, such as the Blue Duiker (paa; Cephalophus monticola), were eaten irrespective of religion (Walsh 2007: 88).

Hunting dogs (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

Writing about 20 years after Craster, Wilson observed that the main method of hunting pigs – animals viewed by the colonial authorities as a serious impediment to agricultural production – was with spears and dogs; pit-traps and snares may also have been used (1939: 48). He complained that hunting was “often regarded [by Zanzibaris] more as a sport than the reduction of a pest”. Along with setting out poison to reduce the pig population, the British “encouraged the various pig hunting clubs by the offer of prizes and rewards” (Wilson 1939: 49). Although the resulting boost in hunting activity was short-lived, hunting continued on both islands. By the time of my visit in 2019, Pembans whom I asked said that all, or almost all, of the island’s boars had all been killed and consumed by villagers of Makonde origin, whose roots lay in south-east Tanzania and northern Mozambique.

Hunters crossing Mauwa's rice field (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

After answering my questions, the band of youths crossed Mauwa’s rice field and vanished among the trees on the opposite hillside. Days passed while I investigated family histories and other matters that had nothing to do with wildlife in Mzambarauni. Two days before my departure from Pemba, when I had given up hope of hearing from the young hunters, one of them rang my hostess in the evening with a message for me: the boys were going hunting the next morning. I was to meet them in Tandavili at six if I wanted to come along.

With considerable reluctance, my hostess unbarred and unlocked the front doors of her house and let me outside at 5.30 the following morning. She wasn’t happy about me setting off in the predawn dark and “cold” (it was about 18°C). I knew that she was concerned for my safety. In Pemba, malevolent spirits, often operating at the command of witches, are believed to be common. To walk alone in the night invites trouble. She was only slightly reassured by the knowledge that I was going to meet up with my assistant on the way.

Two of the hunting dogs, one with an amulet (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

It was light by the time we reached Tandavili. With the kind assistance of several villagers, we located the dozen or so youths who were setting out to hunt that day: some were just tumbling out of bed and pulling shirts over their heads upon our arrival, while the others had already loosely assembled at the edge of the forest. The informal leader of the group was a young man who went by the moniker Maasai. Another member was nicknamed Tekno. He brought his dogs Fanta, Ready and Simba. Another boy was known as Taekwondo, who came with his dog Ashoo. Then there was Abdalla and his dog Sharo. Ahmed, otherwise known as Hosama, and his friend Hamadi brought their shared dog Firimbo. Unlike the other dogs, Firimbo was on a lead because she had pups and would peel off to rejoin them if given half a chance. The dogs were small and nervous and some of them were thin. They seemed accustomed to ungentle handling.

The hunters pause to consider their next move (photo: Helle V. Goldman)

The group moved almost without pause, up steep forested hills, down into rice valleys, through mud and streams, across humpy cassava fields, and into dense stands of trees and undergrowth. The morning dew made the going slippery in places. Striving to keep up with lean young men one-third of my age (none of whom had my complement of double hip replacements and a reconstructed anterior cruciate knee ligament), I took photographs and video only when the group slowed down and was in fairly open, flat terrain. When I lost sight of the hunters in the thicket or they temporarily broke apart, the dogs’ yapping and the racket the youths made – a continuous stream of whoops, exhortations and loud popping vocalisations (alveolar clicks?) aimed at exciting the dogs – allowed me to keep tabs on them.

Early on, excitement ran high as the dogs surrounded an animal in a clump of thicket (this occurs in the video below at about the 48-second mark). When the hunters realised it was a bushbaby (komba; Otolemur garnettii, aka Greater Galago) they left it and drew the dogs away. They don’t bother with bushbabies – not even to feed to the dogs – since these small nocturnal primates are not considered pests.

The hunt was called off about an hour and a half later. There had been no takings that day. According to the youths, this is not an uncommon outcome: on some hunts they kill one or two civets or other varmints, but more often they go home empty-handed. They attributed this to the effectiveness of their hunting forays. There was more I would have liked to inquire about, but I could not keep the young men from their breakfasts any longer. 

References

Choudhury A., Duckworth J.W., Timmins R., Chutipong W., Willcox D.H.A., Rahman H., Ghimirey Y. & Mudappa D. 2015. Viverricula indica. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015: e.T41710A45220632. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2015-4.RLTS.T41710A45220632.en. Downloaded on 12 March 2021.

Craster J.E.E. 1913. Pemba, The Spice Island of Zanzibar. London: T. Fisher Unwin.

Gaubert P., Patel R.P., Veron G., Goodman S.M., Willsch M., Vasconcelos R., Lourenço A., Sigaud M., Justy F., Joshi B. D., Fickel J. & Wilting A. 2017. Phylogeography of the Small Indian Civet and origin of introductions to Western Indian Ocean islands. Journal of Heredity 108: 270–279.

Goldman H.V. & Walsh M.T. 2019a. First videos of endemic Zanzibar servaline genet Genetta servalina archeri, African palm civet Nandinia binotata (Mammalia: Carnivora: Viverridae) and other small carnivores on Unguja Island, Tanzania. Journal of Threatened Taxa 11(10), 14292-14300.

Goldman H.V. & Walsh M.T. 2019b. Classifying, domesticating and extirpating the Zanzibar leopard, a transgressive felid. Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift (Norwegian Journal of Anthropology) 30 (3-4): 205-219.

Goldman H.V. & Winther-Hansen J. 2003. First photographs of the Zanzibar servaline genet Genetta servalina archeri and other endemic subspecies on the island of Unguja, Tanzania. Small Carnivore Conservation 29: 1–4.

Goldman H.V. & Winther-Hansen J. 2007. Lights, camera, action. Africa Geographic 15: 24–25.

Moreau R.E. & Pakenham R.H.W. 1941. The land vertebrates of Pemba, Zanzibar, and Mafia: a zoogeographical study. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 110: 97-128. 

Pakenham R.H.W. 1984. The Mammals of Zanzibar and Pemba Islands. Harpenden: privately printed.

Walsh M.T. 2007. Island subsistence: hunting, trapping and the translocation of wildlife in the Western Indian Ocean. Azania 42: 83-113.

Wilson F.B. 1939. Notes on Peasant Agriculture and Industries in Zanzibar Island. Zanzibar. National Archives, File no. AU2/54.