HISTORIES OF A COPPER PENDANT

  by Martin Walsh

My Giriama copper pendant

There's a copper pendant hanging on my wall, one of the few examples of crafts(wo)manship that I've kept from Mombasa. I love its weight (c.75 g) and slinkiness: in my hands it feels like a miniature piece of chainmail. I can't remember now exactly when and where I bought it; maybe in the handicraft shop of Tototo Home Industries on Msanifu Kombo Street; or perhaps Labeka, the well-stocked craft shop on Moi Avenue whose owner was a member of Tototo's board. I worked with Tototo in 1985-88, studying the women's group programme that this Mombasa-based NGO ran with the support of World Education in Boston. The women's groups, scattered throughout what was then Kenya's Coast Province, supplied some of the local handicrafts that were sold in both shops (McCormack et al. 1986: 50-55; Walsh 1989: 375-376), including pendants made by Giriama women.

Kamba girl's apron (from Lindblom 1920)

I wrote a little about these pendants in my study of the Tototo-assisted women's groups and their enterprises (Walsh 1986; abridged in McCormack et al. 1986). They were generally referred to in Giriama (aka Giryama) as ndale, a name that one woman told me properly referred to the copper wire that they were manufactured with. The Reverends Krapf and Rebmann defined ndale as brass (or copper) beads (1887: 299), and noted the expression mudzele wa ndale as the name for a Kamba women's leather apron decorated with the same, and in Rabai the border of beads around a woman's dress (1887: 268). W. E. Taylor (1891: 16) likewise recorded ndale as a Giriama name for brass beads; while making it clear that the generic term for brass, ng'andu, could also refer to copper (ng'andu t'une, 'red brass', 1891: 20, 28). In her Giryama-English Dictionary Florence Deed also defines ndale as 'brass beads' (1964: 71), and has an entry for ngudhi, a 'neck ornament of ndale stitched on leather' (1964: 74).

These names are interesting because they provide clues to the history of these crafts and this particular kind of ornamentation. The Giriama term ndale is clearly related to Kamba nthale, glossed in a modern dictionary as 'brass or iron ornaments affixed to the clothes of women' (Mwau 2006:195), and in an older work as 'little brass or iron cylinders sometimes used in making old women's aprons and as ornaments on the straps of the nthũngĩ', a kind of small woven bag (A.I.M. 1939: 159, 161). According to Charles Hobley only the brass beads on a married woman's apron or kimengo were called nthale: iron beads had their own name (1910: 72). Gerhard Lindblom called these brass beads nzale (1920: 374), a local variant (or mistake) for nthale. He also illustrates a young women's neck collar called nguthi (1920: 377), a name clearly related to the Giriama ngudhi. In this case though the collar is made of iron chains, not beads or cylinders sewn onto leather. The Kamba are inland neighbours and have long been traders among the Giriama and other Mijikenda, and it may be that these items of adornment and their names were taken from them. Or they might have been introduced by the historical Segeju, a group of people closely related to the Kamba, who had a significant impact on Mijikenda society and language in the middle of the last millennium. Linguistic evidence suggests that the Segeju were adept at metal-working and transferred a number of related practices to the Mijikenda and the Giriama in particular (Walsh 2013: 35).

'Gohu elder's amulet', Cantor Art Center, Stanford University
(Accession No. 2012.114)

The ndale pendant in my possession is made of copper beads (twisted from wire) and copper chain threaded together with twine; there are also a few odd brass beads strung together with the copper ones. There's a pendant in the collection of the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University that is very similar in form, but is stitched on leather and includes a central panel of three cowrie shells. The online catalogue describes it as a 'Gohu elder's amulet', the gohu being one of the 'secret societies' that senior Giriama elders could be initiated into. Collected in 1978, it looks a lot older than this, or at least grimy and worn, so much so that it's not clear whether it was made of brass or copper beads and chain. In The Wrath of Koma, Maurice Kambishera Mumba's novel about tradition and tragedy in late colonial Kaumaland, the fictional Jibana 'medicineman' (mganga) Mokoli Mwiru uses a powerful talisman called 'Chiwele', inherited from his grandfather, to access the world of spirits and divine the spiritual affliction and possible courses of action open to his Kauma patient, Old Chembe (Mumba 1987: 6-13, 21-24, 112-113, 143). Chiwele, used here as a personal name, is described as 'a leathery object coated with small cowrie shells, which was dangling from his neck at the end of a short chain' (1987: 6). The cognate term kiwele, plural viwele, was used by modern Giriama producers as the generic name for the women's copper and brass pendants that they made (see below) and that many women first acquired when they were married. This perhaps represents the wider application of a term that was once more restricted in use, and referred originally to the chains hanging down from the amulets. Elsewhere in his novel Mumba refers to ndale as a kind of 'traditional necklace' worn by women (1987: 32, 146), and this indeed seems to be the more widely used name.      

Bomani in 1985

I could probably ferret more information out of the literature, and Mijikenda colleagues and scholars more familiar with their culture could no doubt tell me much more (please do!). I wasn't aware of any of this when I was first working for Tototo. I did, however, learn something about the contemporary making and marketing of Giriama ndale pendants when I was undertaking the third of my women's group case studies in a village some 20 km north of Malindi. Bomani Women's Group had its origins in an adult education class (ngombaru) that started in 1973; Tototo began working with the group in 1978, at the very beginning of its women's group programme. When I arrived to study the group in late 1985 it was best known for its bakery project: for a time this had been the showpiece of Tototo's programme. But the first enterprise that Tototo had fostered in Bomani involved the production and sale of ndale. Here's what I wrote about it in my 1986 report:

  More lucrative [than a group farm] while it lasted was the handicraft trade initiated by Tototo. This was based upon the production of traditional Giriama ndale necklaces for the tourist market. The women bought lengths of ndale copper wire from specialist producers and fashioned these into viwele, heavy pendants, and virangi, with brass and coloured beads added. 1½ feet of wire, bought for 1 sh, was enough to make 2 or 3 viwele, the commonest product, sold to Tototo for 10 sh each, while virangi fetched 20 sh. Women report being able to make up to 100 or 150 viwele in a week and at one point group members engaging in this trade are recorded as making between 35 sh and 500 sh each in a fortnight. Tototo shop records show that in 1978 14,969 sh was paid out to individuals and 920 sh to the group, which took the proceeds from one necklace in every batch an individual produced. This money was ploughed back into the bakery along with the money raised from group subscriptions. The women, however, produced more necklaces than the Tototo shop could sell, and after 2 years the trade came to a halt along with other forms of handicraft production which Tototo had attempted to introduce. Looking back upon this enterprise group members blame Tototo for its failure, an experience similar to Mkwiro's [another group that I studied]. The local, Malindi, market for necklaces remains small -- they are bought by Kamba middlemen and sold to tourists in the town -- and ndale production is not a significant source of income in Bomani; much the position when the group's trade with Tototo started. (1986:

A young member of Bomani Women's Group in 1985

There's more detail in my field notes, though group members gave different accounts of the sequence of events and the role of the various actors. According to Bomani's chairwoman, they were shown how to make ndale in 1978 by Daudi Mtingi, one of the three older men (wazee) who had started the adult education class that gave rise to the women's group. He was already marketing the ndale made by his two wives, who were founder group members, taking the pendants to Kamba middlemen in both Malindi and Mombasa. Tototo started taking them for sale in Mombasa in the same year: the pendants were collected every Thursday or sometimes taken to Mombasa by the group's secretary, Esther Kenga (who later became a Tototo employee).

According to another group member, Mary Ngonyo, they bought strings of ndale beads that had already been made by folding small lengths of copper ('red') or brass ('white') wire around pieces of thread (nyuzi) using a special instrument, and it was these strings that they bought at the price of a shilling for each length of around 1½ feet. The women then added coloured beads (virangi), bought in the local shops, to make neck pieces, and chains (viwele) to make the pendants, which were rather easier to produce. At first they just took them to Malindi for sale, but found it difficult to sell them. It was Esther Kenga who first wrote to and visited Tototo. There were around 20 women in Bomani Women's Group at this time. They were joined by women from the nearby village of Madzayani when they heard that there was a market for ndale, though after Tototo stopped taking the pendants they left to form their own group. As well as ndale, Tototo also persuaded the Bomani women to produce small woven bags, baskets, and straw hats for sale. But all this came to an end when Tototo told them to stop. By this time running the bakery had become the group's main focus. Some women continued to make both copper and brass ndale as well as other items of women's jewellery, and two or three years before I did my research Kamba buyers had begun coming directly to the village to purchase them. The group's chairwoman still kept a few pendants to show guests and in 1985 had presented some to a group of official visitors from Zimbabwe.

Feeding the next generation, Bomani 1985

The failure of collective marketing is an all too familiar tale. Selling local handicrafts was a great idea, but supply and demand weren't always well matched. Tototo's handicraft operation had problems of its own: staff often lacked key marketing and other business skills, and the shop wasn't particularly well run. To make matters worse, some managers were suspected to be dipping their hands into the till or fiddling the accounts -- widespread practices in an era of rampant corruption at every level of society. It's ironic that just as field staff were advising women's groups on how best to manage their various enterprises, their colleagues in Mombasa were sometimes struggling to manage the NGO's own affairs. Although Tototo received extensive help from World Education and other partners, the shop lost the comparative advantage that it once had, and the organisation itself was eventually closed down. Nevertheless, in the heyday of pendant production and marketing a fair number of these attractive handicrafts must have found their way into the hands -- and perhaps even around the necks -- of visitors to the coast. I imagine that they are still made in at least small quantities, though I can't see any evidence of this on the internet.

Kamba girl's necklace (from Lindblom 1920)

Disappointed though they were by Tototo's actions, the ndale episode wasn't an entirely negative one in the history of Bomani women's group and the evolution of local gender relations (and as it happens, greater disappointments were to come, detailed in my 1986 study). There are two particularly heartwarming stories that deserve to be told and remembered in this context.  One is the role that Daudi Mtingi played in fostering and supporting the adult education class, an associated nursery class, and then the women's group -- as well as introducing them to ndale production and marketing, he also provided significant assistance to the bakery business by injecting capital into it at a time when it was floundering, and then selflessly handing the profits over to the group. The second is a story that I've already told in brief in an article about the gendered control and use of income from group activities, which explains why women's income generation doesn't necessarily translate into their empowerment within joint households (Walsh 1987). Following a long personal struggle to attain economic independence and the right to educate her son, Bomani's chairwoman, Jumwa Kiti, encouraged group members to invest their profits from pendant sales in goats, and kept their money in safekeeping until they had accumulated enough to do so. This acted as a check on husbands' ability to commandeer their wives' ndale profits, and though it didn't stop some of them from later appropriating their wives' livestock, it did enable a number of group members to accumulate and exercise a degree of control over assets that wouldn't otherwise have been possible.

It's quite likely that the pendant hanging on my wall was made by one of those women, and possible that it contributed in its own small way to her greater empowerment and the improved welfare of her children. It might equally have been a token of hope that turned to disappointment, as her newly-acquired wealth was seized by a greedy husband or her expectations of greater profit were dashed by Tototo. And whatever the case, it may well have helped to line the pockets of one of that organisation's less scrupulous employees. I can only guess. But I feel much more satisfied having these and other possible histories to ponder than I would have done without knowing anything about my shining pendant's past.  

References

A.I.M. 1939. A Kikamba-English Dictionary. Compiled by: The Language Committee of the Africa Inland Mission in Ukamba (third unrevised edition, 1970). Nairobi: The Literary Centre of Kenya for The Afrolit Association.

Deed, Florence 1964. Giryama-English Dictionary. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau.

Hobley, C. W. 1910. Ethnology of A-Kamba and Other East African Bantu Tribes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krapf, L. and Rebmann, J. 1887. A Nika-English Dictionary (edited by T. H. Sparshott). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Lindblom, Gerhard 1920. The Akamba in British East Africa: An Ethnological Monograph. Uppsala: Appelbergs Boktryckeri Aktiebolag.

McCormack, Jeanne, Martin Walsh and Candace Nelson 1986. Women's Group Enterprises: A Study of the Structure of Opportunity on the Kenya Coast. Boston: World Education, Inc.

Mumba, Maurice Kambishera 1987. The Wrath of Koma. Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya.

Taylor, W. E. 1891. Giryama Vocabulary and Collections. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Walsh, Martin 1986. Interim Report for a Study of Income Generation and its Effects among Women’s Groups in Kenya’s Coast Province. Report to World Education Inc., Boston.

Walsh, Martin 1987. Buying power? Some outcomes of income for women. Reports (World Education Inc., Boston) 27: 14-16.

Walsh, Martin 1989. Tototo Home Industries: assistance strategies for the future. In C. K. Mann, M. S. Grindle and P. Shipton (eds.) Seeking Solutions: Framework and Cases for Small Enterprise Development Programs. West Hartford: Kumarian Press, Inc. 365-385.

Walsh, Martin 2013. The Segeju Complex? Linguistic evidence for the precolonial making of the Mijikenda. In Rebecca Gearhart and Linda Giles (eds.) Contesting Identities: The Mijikenda and Their Neighbors in Kenyan Coastal Society. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. 25-51.

BIRDS OF OMEN AND LITTLE FLYING ANIMALS WITH WINGS

by Martin Walsh

[This is the corrected text of an article that appeared in March 1992 in the East Africa Natural History Society Bulletin, 22 (1): 2-9. A pdf version (with minor diacritical marks that can't be shown here) can be downloaded from the site of the Ethno-ornithology Research and Study Group.]

The following notes set out to solve a simple linguistic puzzle: why do the Mijikenda of the East African coast have more than one word meaning “bird”? Why is the generic term for avifauna in some dialects the name of a particular species in others? And why do some Mijikenda dialects have no special term at all, but refer to birds in general by circumlocutions such as “little creatures”, “flying animals” and “animals with wings”? The answer to these questions leads far beyond an account of the principles or accidents of local taxonomy. Perhaps surprisingly, it reveals something of a forgotten episode in coastal history; while in general it provides an introduction to the relatively unexplored field of ethno-ornithology, in this case as exemplified by the practices and beliefs of the Mijikenda.

First, a few remarks about the people and language in question. The Mijikenda inhabit a large part of the East African coast and its immediate hinterland, between the Tana River in the north and the Usambara Mountains in the south. Until relatively recently they were known as the Nyika or “people of the wilderness” in implied (and unkind) contrast to the urbane Swahili of the littoral. Their modern name is a reference to the original “nine villages” or kayas in the lowland rainforest said to have been occupied by the different ethnic groups which comprise the Mijikenda today: the Giriama, Kauma, Chonyi, Dzihana, Kambe, Rihe, Raßai, Duruma and Digo. All of these people speak mutually intelligible dialects of the same language, also called Mijikenda. Its closest linguistic relatives are Pokomo, Comorian, Swahili and Elwana, which together with Mijikenda form the Sabaki group of the North East Coast Bantu languages. The dialects of Mijikenda, meanwhile, can be divided on phonological grounds into two groups, northern and southern. Southern Mijikenda consists of Raßai, Duruma, and at least two varieties of Digo: the remaining dialects, the most widely spoken of which is Giriama, belong to the northern group. Available evidence suggests that these two groups began to diverge less than 500 years ago and that the emergence of the modern Mijikenda dialects thus postdates the first appearance of the Portuguese on the East African coast.

The Mijikenda dialects share most items of basic vocabulary. The word for “bird”, however, is not shared in this way: instead a number of different terms are in use. To make matters more complicated, it seems that their application varies within as well as between dialects. Moreover, it is evident that this usage is in a continuing process of change, and has been since records of the language were first made by the missionaries Krapf and Rebmann in the middle of the last century.

Basically three terms are involved: nyuni, ts’ongo and, variously qualified, nyama. Nyuni is recorded as the generic term for birds in Dzihana, in 19th century Raßai, and among some, but by no means all, speakers of the northern and southern varieties of Digo. In Duruma, however, it refers solely to woodpeckers, one and probably more species of the family Picidae. In Kauma and northern Digo nyuni is also recorded as referring to a particular bird species, though whether these are woodpeckers too remains to be clarified. The second term, ts’ongo, has a much wider currency as a generic term: it has been recorded with this meaning in all of the dialects except Dzihana (on which lexical information is too sparse for its use to be ruled out) and Duruma. In Duruma, though, ts’ongo is the name of a bird, otherwise unidentified, which feeds upon sorghum and other grain crops. Early records indicate that ts’ongo had the same restricted meaning in 19th century Raßai and suggest that it has only displaced nyuni as the generic term for birds in the relatively recent past. The third word, nyama, is the common Mijikenda term for animals (and their meat) and appears in a number of different forms and expressions. In Duruma nyama ya kuburuka, literally “flying animal”, is the generic expression for a bird. Similar phrases, meaning “animal with wings” are recorded for northern Digo (chinyama cha maßa, mnyama wa maßa) as well as Giriama (nyama wa mahaha). Giriama also use the diminutive form kanyama, “little animal”. The overall result, as can be seen, is an extremely irregular pattern of usage and distribution which does not, for example, conform neatly to the division of Mijikenda into northern and southern groups nor the further subdivision of these into individual dialects.

Given the relative youth and closeness of the Mijikenda dialects, it is unusual to find their speakers at variance over the term for such a basic feature of everyday life. The coastal mosaic of forest and shrub hosts a rich avifauna which the Mijikenda are much less indifferent to than a quick glance at their generic terminology would suggest. Birds play a significant practical role in the lives of rural Mijikenda, and not just as crop pests or shooting practice for children. They provide an occasional source of meat as well as other specialized products like the feathers (especially of vultures) for fletching arrows. Perhaps more importantly, birds act as sensitive indicators of changes in the weather and local environment, and they help to identify, for example, the most poisonous Acokanthera trees or, in the case of the Black-throated Honeyguide, the sources of wild honey. Their economic importance is underlined by the fact that the Mijikenda have a large vocabulary to describe the different bird species they know (but none, for example, to describe different kinds of butterfly). Thus the published dictionaries, although they are far from complete, include more than one hundred different names of birds, and there are no doubt many waiting to be recorded, not to mention identified. Why then so some Mijikenda call birds “flying animals”? And why are there such basic differences in terminology that one speaker’s bird is another’s particular species and vice versa?

The answer to these questions turns upon the role which birds play as omens of the future, and the way in which Mijikenda beliefs in this respect have developed over time. To begin with, let us look at the general form of these ideas. Like their Swahili neighbours, not to mention many other peoples in the region, the Mijikenda believe that certain birds, most notably owls, are harbingers of misfortune. On top of this, however, the Mijikenda have a much more specific set of beliefs about the role of birds as omens. We owe the most detailed description of these beliefs, or at least one variant of them, to J.B. Griffiths, a Methodist missionary who lived among the Duruma of Mazeras for some 35 years. His account, which was published in 1935 (see the bibliographic note at the end of this article), is reported in full below:

“They [the Duruma] are in the habit of taking the auspices of two birds which are called Jelele and Kokota. Jelele has a deep blue coat and a red beak, and makes its home in a hole it burrows in the bank of a watercourse or a pit. It is never heard except when it screams in flying from tree to tree. Kokota has a brown coat with regular rows of white circular spots and a reddish crest, and makes its home in a hole it digs in the bole of a dead tree. It is frequently heard to call “Nje-nye-nje” after a spell of tree-tapping, the taps being so rapid that one can hardly take count of them. They are shy birds and are not often seen near dwellings.
The nature of the omen is determined by the position of the birds at the time one hears them. If the birds are in front of one, it is a warning not to proceed; and if they are behind one, it forebodes trouble in one’s absence. If they are on one’s right, it foretells of good health with scarcity of food; and if they are on one’s left, it foreshadows plenty of food and poor health. But if the one is on one’s right and the other is on one’s left, or if a Jelele or a Kokota is on one’s right and another Jelele or Kokota is on one’s left, the omen is that of good health and success.
The second, fourth and eighth of the first and second decades of the moon and the second and fourth of the last three eight days of the moon are called the “Days of the Birds.” They are the auspicious days of the people. Travelling, removing, building, cultivating, planting, harvesting, sacrificing: in fact, everything of importance, domestic or tribal, is commenced on one of these days.
It was well known to me that they were in the habit of listening to these birds, but it was a long time before I understood why they did so. One morning, when I was on a journey, a Jelele flew screaming across our path, and I heard the man who was in front of me mutter to himself: “I wonder whose shade that is.” That gave me my first cue. I have toiled many years among these people since then, and I have no doubt that they regard these birds as the mouthpiece of the shades, and that is why they consult them. They listen to the birds to find out the disposition of the family shades.”

This passage provides a fascinating picture of the way in which a people’s ideas about birds can permeate their everyday lives. Unfortunately nothing more is known (at least to this author) about the jelele, its identity (could it be a kingfisher?) and its role as a bird of omen. The kokota can be positively identified as a woodpecker, if not the Nubian Woodpecker, Campethera nubica, then one of the related species with a red crown or nape – or, equally probable, all these together. Kokota is also recorded as a term for woodpeckers among the Giriama and Raßai. Meanwhile, contemporary Duruma from the Taru area contradict Griffiths by saying that their name for this bird is nyuni and that it is the Digo who call woodpeckers kokota.

Whatever the case, there are a number of indications that the ideas and practices described by Griffiths did not originate with the Mijikenda, but were borrowed from elsewhere. Both jelele and kokota appear (because of the presence of the non-inherited phonemes /j/ and /t/) to be loanwords in Mijikenda, and though the latter is clearly related to Swahili gogota, also a woodpecker, the immediate origin of both words is unclear. More significant, perhaps, is the fact that analogous beliefs do not exist among, or at least have not been described for, the Mijikenda’s closest relatives, the Pokomo, Swahili and other speakers of Sabaki languages. If this specific set of ideas about birds of omen did not originate with the Mijikenda themselves, then where did it come from?

A first clue comes from the following passage, taken from Gerhard Lindblom’s classic 1920 monograph on The Akamba. After mentioning the role of owls as birds of ill-omen, Lindblom goes on:

“The most important and best known of all prophesying animals is also a bird, the ŋgomakomi, a red-headed species of woodpecker, to which the natives listened, especially in former times, before marching out on plundering expeditions. It is considered to be a good or bad omen according to the side on which one hears his pecking. The interpretation varies to some extent in different parts of Ukamba; the following detailed account is from Kikumbuliu, the south-east part of the country.
If the bird is heard straight in front, one will “see blood”, i.e. get scratched in the thickets, be gored by a rhinoceros or wounded in fighting, etc.; which of these things is most probable depends on the object of the expedition or the environment one is in or is going to be in. To hear the bird in front in an oblique direction and high up is also a bad sign, whereas if it is low in the same direction it only means that the listener will return without having effected his object. The left side is, on the other hand, the good side (in other districts the bad one), and if the bird is heard on that side, one has prospects of acquiring women, cattle and other wealth. Finally, if it is heard from behind, it denotes that the listener will carry a burden, so that if he is going out hunting he will probably shoot something, if he is about to cut the honeycombs from the beehives, he may be pretty sure of a good result, and similarly with those who are going to steal cattle, etc.
This woodpecker is looked upon as a messenger from the ancestral spirits; it is not killed, and its flesh may not be eaten by men. This prohibition does not apply to women, probably because as a rule they do not know of this bird, as they seldom have cause to go out into the desert, where the bird principally stays. In the immediate neighbourhood of Machakos, where trees are very rare and the bird is consequently not found, only a very few people seem to know of it. The Akamba who live there also carried out most of their campaigns on the steppe, where they probably had no opportunity of observing it.
The natives state that even certain animals, such as the giraffe, wild boar, etc. are so shrewd that they listen to and understand the ŋgomakomi’s call.”

Lindblom continues his account by giving the special Kamba names for the different directions from which the woodpecker is heard, before concluding with an anecdote about a travelling party which turned back home after hearing the birds call on the second day of their journey. The beliefs he describes are sufficiently similar to those of the Mijikenda to enable us to posit some connection, but different enough to render it unlikely that they were borrowed directly by them. Similar ideas are also held by at least two East Nilotic peoples, the Turkana and (as Lindblom also noted) the Maasai. Again, some kind of connection can be posited, though it is not clear between whom or in which direction, and further elucidation of this wider pattern of diffusion remains beyond the scope of the present article.

The connection between the Kamba and the Mijikenda is a tangible one. Most Kamba live far to the west of the Mijikenda, the two peoples separated by the vast semi-arid expanse of the Tsavo. For the past 200 years or more, however, Kamba have traded with the coast, while by the mid-19th century significant numbers of them were settled permanently in close proximity to the Raßai and Duruma. The Kamba also speak a Bantu language, though it is not very closely related to Mijikenda nor even a member of the North East Coast group to which the Sabaki languages belong. Instead, Kamba speech is classed together with that of the Kikuyu, Meru and others living in the vicinity of Mount Kenya as belonging to the Central Kenya Bantu, or what is otherwise known as the Thagicu group of languages. Most of the cultural and linguistic ties between the Mijikenda and Kamba arose not as a result of their direct contact but through the historical influence of another member of this group, the Segeju. And it is to these people that we must look to find the immediate source of Mijikenda ideas about birds of omen.

Who are or were the Segeju? It is tempting to say that if Segeju history had not happened it would have been impossible to invent; although this is precisely what earlier historians, misled by the Segeju’s own traditions, tried to do. A reliable picture, informed by linguistic research, has only begun to emerge in the past decade, and many of its details have yet to be filled out. The following is a brief outline.

Contrary to earlier speculation, the linguistic evidence makes it clear that the Segeju originate from the same area as other Thagicu speakers, most probably somewhere on the upper reaches of the Tana River. Indeed the different names by which the Segeju are known are all variants of the name Thagicu, which was given to the language group because of its widespread occurrence in the historical traditions of different members: “Segeju” itself is derived from the Swahili version (wasegeju, whereas the Mijikenda call them asagidzu, the Sagidzu). Sometime in the 16th century, possibly before, the ancestors of the modern Segeju migrated down the Tana River and settled near to the coast. There they became involved in shifting patterns of conflict and alliance with their neighbours, including the different Swahili communities in the area. This brought them to the attention of Portuguese visitors to Malindi, where the first reference to the Segeju dates from 1569. Before the end of the century they had achieved considerable fame for their military exploits in support of the ruler of Malindi. The Portuguese portrayed them as barbarous pastoralists who subsisted on fresh blood and milk, fearless warriors who kept the genitals of their victims as trophies of war. This notoriety was, however, short-lived. The Segeju were pushed south by another, much larger, group of pastoralists, also responsible for destroying many Swahili settlements along the coast: the Galla or Oromo. By the mid-17th century a number of Segeju had settled in and around Bwiti on the north-east edge of the Usambara Mountains. Their modern descendants are mixed farmers who call themselves Daisũ (cognate with Thagicu) and still speak a Thagicu language. Meanwhile, still in the 17th century, a significant section of them moved down to the coast where they acted as mercenaries for the Swahili of Vumba Kuu (near Vanga), subsequently settling in the territory they had helped to conquer. Today most of these Segeju live on the coast between Tanga and the Kenya-Tanzania border, where they speak a dialect of Swahili and/or a variety of Digo as their mother tongue.

The history books are largely silent about past relations between the Segeju and Mijikenda. Likewise the Segeju themselves, although they do recall more recent relations with their Digo neighbours. By contrast, recorded Mijikenda traditions have a lot to say about the Segeju, especially their shared conflict with the Galla and subsequent flight south. Some northern Mijikenda – Chonyi – even go so far as to claim that they were once Segeju. This is not as far-fetched as it may seem, if it is taken to mean that some Segeju were absorbed by the Mijikenda during this early period. Indeed, it becomes a very real possibility when the linguistic and other cultural evidence is considered. This evidence indicates a very close interaction between the Mijikenda and the Segeju in the past. The Mijikenda lexicon, for example, is replete with loanwords from a Thagicu language which can be conclusively identified as that once spoken by the Segeju, the direct ancestor of modern Daisũ. Similarly, and in conjunction with the linguistic evidence, many cultural practices of the Mijikenda can be traced to the Segeju. The picture which emerges confirms, corrects, and at the same time is much richer than that bequeathed to us by the Portuguese. It shows, for example, that the Segeju were much more than just livestock herders and efficient fighters: they were also traders and left an important legacy of political organization and ritual practice.

Mijikenda ideas about birds of omen are part of this legacy. The existence of parallel beliefs among the Kamba, close relatives of the Segeju, is only one indication of this. Much stronger evidence, however, comes from the terminology employed by Mijikenda to refer to omens and the practices associated with them. Many of these terms were borrowed directly from the Segeju, as can be surmised from their phonological characteristics and the fact that cognates can be found in other Thagicu languages. This includes the word for a portent or ill-omen, mudhana (as recorded in Giriama and 19th century Raßai). Likewise verbs reported to mean “to seek an omen from the birds” (given as kudhecha or kudheja) and “to meet with a good omen” (recorded as kudhenja). Also belonging to the same set is another expression recorded from Raßai, kuera nyuni, “to take the bearing of birds when seeking an omen from them”, recalling that it is the direction in which they are heard which determines the interpretation of the omen. The wider vocabulary of prediction and prophecy is similarly permeated with Segeju loanwords. One of these is the name of a bird, called madhio or mario. These are described as large birds which are rarely seen except in flocks circling in the sky, and whose appearance is taken as a sign that the rains are imminent.

This brings us back to our original puzzle: why do the Mijikenda have different generic terms for birds? The answer lies with the Segeju and the distinctive set of ideas about birds of omen which they introduced. Before their intensive contact with the Segeju it seems that the Mijikenda had a far less developed notion of birds as omens, something akin perhaps to their current belief in the misfortune presaged by owls. Like other Sabaki speakers they had inherited a single generic term for bird, nyuni, which may already have had the secondary and extended meaning “omen”, as it does in Swahili and the modern Thagicu languages. The Segeju changed all that. By introducing a new and more pervasive complex of ideas about birds of omen they unwittingly set in motion the processes of semantic change and innovation which have given this particular segment of Mijikenda ethno-taxonomy the heterogeneous shape it has today. In the speech of many Mijikenda the secondary meaning of nyuni as an “omen”, including omens drawn from sources other than the birds, became its primary connotation. Meanwhile ts’ongo, the name of a common and gregarious species, began to take its place as the generic term for birds. The current distribution of these terms suggests that this process began in one of the northern dialects, probably Giriama, and has since been spreading south. In 19th century Raßai nyuni was still the generic term for both birds and omens: today, however, ts’ongo is used for birds. The latter name has also spread further south to the Digo: in this case, though, it has not succeeded in erasing earlier usage or preventing the adoption of other alternatives.

These alternatives stem from a different, but parallel, process, initiated by the speakers of another southern Mijikenda dialect, Duruma. Among the Duruma nyuni became restricted in meaning to the bird species which provides most of their omens: the woodpecker described by Griffiths and called kokota by other Mijikenda. In place of nyuni as the generic term for birds the Duruma adopted a neologism: nyama ya kuburuka, “flying animal”. Variations upon this neologism have since spread to other Mijikenda, including the Digo (“animal with wings”) and Giriama (“little creature”), perhaps in response to the confusion caused by the conflicting connotations of nyuni and ts’ongo. The result is today’s complex and cross-cutting pattern of usage. To all intents and purposes, this is still in a state of flux and it may only be resolved in the long run by adoption of the Standard Swahili term ndege, which is already gaining some currency among young and educated Mijikenda speakers.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from this, it is surely that there is often much more to a name or a classification than even its users might suspect. Ethno-taxonomy is typically treated as little more than a guide to identification, a diversion from more serious pursuits, and at best a source of material for parentheses and footnotes. As a serious topic of study ethno-ornithology is virtually non-existent, and it is no accident that most of the names of birds cited above await proper identification. However, the wealth of information contained in these names, not to mention the associated practices and beliefs, suggests that the collection and study of data of this kind is far from worthless, and is ignored at the cost of a fuller understanding of the human and natural environment in which we live.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

In writing this article I have drawn upon a large number of sources in addition to my own research among the Mijikenda. Many of these sources are listed in Thomas Spear’s standard, though now outdated, study The Kaya Complex: A History of the Mijikenda People of the Kenya Coast to 1900 (Nairobi, Kenya Literature Bureau, 1978).

Linguistic data are taken from L. Krapf and J. Rebmann (ed. T.H. Sparshott) A Nika-English Dictionary (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1887) and W.E. Taylor Giriama Vocabulary and Collections (London, S.P.C.K., 1891), as well as more recent work by Thomas Hinnebusch, Philip Sedlak, Wilhelm Möhlig, Derek Nurse and myself. Among the sources on the Segeju special mention should be made of Derek Nurse’s paper “Segeju and Daisũ: A Case Study of Evidence from Oral Tradition and Comparative Linguistics”, History in Africa 9, 175-208 (1982).

The two passages reproduced in the text are taken from pp.276-277 of J.B. Griffiths “Glimpses of a Nyika Tribe (Waduruma)”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 65, 267-296 (1935) and pp.293-294 of Gerhard Lindblom The Akamba in British East Africa: An Ethnological Monograph (Uppsala, Appelbergs Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1920).

Otherwise Mijikenda, and in particular Kauma, beliefs about birds are set in fascinating context in Maurice Kambishera Mumba’s novel The Wrath of Koma (Nairobi, Heinemann Kenya, 1987). Finally, and for an introduction to the ethno-ornithology of another Kenyan people, readers are recommended to turn to Anthony Barrett’s Akiyar A Ngiturkana: Turkana Way of Life (Nairobi, New World Printers, 1988), “a book of poems, stories and pictures of birds found in Turkana country”.