THE WHALE AND THE PANGOLIN

by Martin Walsh

A pilot whale in Pongwe Bay, Unguja, Zanzibar (photo by Yaroslav Alexandrov)

‘Was there a proto-Bantu word for ‘whale’ and other mischievous questions’ is the characteristically thought-provoking title of an unpublished paper (last updated in 2012) by my good friend Roger Blench. As Roger points out, there is no listed proto-Bantu form for ‘whale’, though it is quite possible that early Bantu speakers were familiar with marine creatures, and certainly so once they spread from their putative homeland in southern Cameroon down the west coast of equatorial Africa. The rest of the paper sets out the lexical evidence for knowledge of marine fauna in northwest Bantu, including a generic term for whales (2012: 21-22).

This word did not, of course, make it across or around the central African rainforest to the eastern side of the continent. How, then, did Bantu speakers name whales when they first encountered them on the shores of the Indian Ocean? Knowledge of whales doesn’t require possession of a fully-fledged maritime culture, just familiarity with the seashore. As we know, whales can become stranded on beaches, as well as washing up when they are dead, as reported in my January 2012 post on ‘A pilot whale in Pongwe’.

There are more than 30 species of whale in the western Indian Ocean region (Richmond 2002: 398), and according to the TUKI English-Swahili Dictionary, nyangumi is the common Swahili name for all of them. Indeed, it’s the only name given for whales in both online TUKI dictionaries (English-Swahili and Swahili-English), which are our best guide to contemporary Standard Swahili. Older dictionaries, however, give variants of this term, which has an invariant plural – in the lingo of Bantuists it has 9/10 (singular/plural) noun class prefixes and takes 1/2 animate agreements.

There are even more variants of nyangumi in the different dialects of Swahili, as well as other names. Here’s a provisional list of the generic term for whales in all the dialects between Somalia in the north and Mozambique in the south for which I have data. I’ve also included terms from other Sabaki languages, which are Swahili’s closest historical relatives.

Swahili and other Sabaki language names for whales

Language and dialects	Attestation and noun class pairing (if known)	Source and comments
Swahili
Standard	nyangumi 9/10	Johnson 1939a, 1939b; TUKI 2019a, 2019b
	nyamngumi 9/10	TUKI 1981
Mwiini	yama 9/10 ~ iyama 5/4	Kisseberth 2016. Cf. nama 9/10 ‘meat, flesh’
Bajuni	muungumi ~ nngumi 3/4	Sacleux 1939; Nurse 2010
Pate	mngumi	Sacleux 1939
Amu	mngumi	Sacleux 1939
Pemba	mngumi	Sacleux 1939
Mvita	mngumi	Sacleux 1939; Abdulaziz 1979
	mgumi ~ nyamgumi	Binns 1925
Unguja	nyamgumi 9/10	Madan 1903
	mnyāngumi 3/4	Sacleux 1939, 1959
	nyangumi 9/10	field notes 2016
Mafia/Ngome	nyamabahari 9/10	Kipacha 2004. Cf. nyama 9/10 ‘meat’ + bahari 9/10 ‘sea’, lit. ‘flesh (animal) of the sea’
Koti	nangumi (1a/2a)	Schadeberg and Mucanheia 2000
Lower Pokomo
(New Testament)	ḅungumi	The British and Foreign Bible Society 1901; BTL 2019
Mijikenda
Giryama	mungumi	United Bible Societies 1951
Comorian
Ngazidja	ngume 3/4	Fischer 1949
	mngome ~ mngume 3/4	Ahmed-Chamanga and Gueunier 1979
	nduju	Fischer 1949. Cf. Lafon 1991, nduju 9/10 ‘dolphin’
	ndundju	Ahmed-Chamanga and Gueunier 1979
Ndzuani	ndruju 9/10	Ahmed-Chamanga 1992, 1997, Cf. fumba-ndruju 5/6 ‘dolphin’
Maore	mongume	Ahmed-Chamanga and Gueunier 1979

The Swahili names from Brava in Somalia (Mwiini) and northern Mafia island (Ngome) in Tanzania are euphemisms that allude to the animality, and perhaps edibility, of whales as large creatures of the sea. Comorian ndruju and variants seem to have been borrowed from Malagasy trózona, ‘whale’, or an earlier form thereof (see Simon 2006: 439). As Sander Adelaar (1989: 17) has pointed out – and kindly expanded upon while I was writing this post, this was originally a loanword from Malay *duyuŋ, ‘dugong’ – the English name of which is ultimately from the same source.

Derek Nurse and Tom Hinnebusch (1993: 665) tentatively reconstructed proto-Sabaki *mungumi 3/4 ‘whale’, citing the Amu, Unguja, Giryama, and Ngazidja forms. Allowing for errors in transcription, the expanded list provides additional support for this reconstruction. The only real anomaly is the initial consonant in Lower Pokomo ḅungumi, assuming that this isn’t a mistake made by different generations of Bible translators. Given that most Pokomo live along the Tana River and not near the sea, then perhaps we should not be surprised to see them using a skewed form of the name of a creature they were unlikely to encounter.

Where, then, did the ancestors of the Swahili and other Sabaki speakers get this word from? There’s no obvious connection between *mungumi (with the root *-ngumi) and another tentative proto-Sabaki reconstruction, *ngumi 9/10 ‘fist’ (Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993: 669). I don’t know if there are cognate whale names in other languages along the Tanzanian coast. The record of nyangumi in a modern vocabulary of Zigua (Mochiwa 2008: 52) might reflect recent borrowing from Swahili. An alternative possibility is that the transfer went in the opposite direction, i.e. that the Unguja and related forms aren’t inherited, but derive from Zigua or another mainland language.

A Termminck's ground pangolin in Iringa (video still by Martin Walsh)

The only similar name that I have come across is given to a very different animal in the drylands of central Tanzania, a long way from the Indian Ocean. Temminck’s ground pangolin, Smutsia temminckii, is called nyamung’umi (9/10, plural zinyamung’umi) by some speakers of the Gogo language (Swynnerton 1946: 30; field notes 2002), abbreviated to nyamumi by others (Rugemalira 2009: 83). Is this just a coincidence? What’s the connection, if any, between these little-seen scaly ant-eaters in the interior of Tanzania and the world’s largest marine mammals?

Gogo, a West Ruvu language, is classified in the same wider group of languages as Zigua and the Sabaki languages: Northeast Coast Bantu (NECB). As the name implies, NECB speakers occupy a large swathe of territory that begins in central Tanzania and sweeps eastwards and northwards, following the Indian Ocean coastline up to southern Somalia. They were presumably the first Bantu to arrive on the coast opposite Zanzibar, and perhaps the first to encounter beached whales on this side of the continent.

The ancestors of the Gogo and other NECB speakers would have been familiar with ground pangolins, which can be found everywhere in the hinterland of the Tanzanian coast. Is there anything that would lead them to dub whales with the same name? A clue may lie in the comparative rarity of pangolin and inshore whale sightings. Among the Gogo and their neighbours, encounters with pangolins were traditionally treated as auspicious events, triggering ritual actions that typically ended in the sacrifice of the animal (for examples see Walsh 1995/96, 2007).

Could it be that the stranding of a whale was viewed as a similarly auspicious event by early NECB settlers on the coast? Was the whale, like the pangolin, thought to offer itself for sacrifice? And did this lead whales to be dubbed with the same name, or a version of it?

I am, of course, letting my imagination run riot. The Gogo name for the ground pangolin, nyamung’umi, doesn’t seem to have a wider distribution, and I don’t know its etymology: it might even be a recent euphemism. Reflexes of proto-Bantu *kákà 9/10 ‘pangolin spp.’ are widespread in East Africa. Swahili kakakuona is one of them, though evidently borrowed from Nyamwezi ngakákύβonwá 9/10 (Maganga and Schadeberg 1992: 268, 305), perhaps via Gogo, which also has a related form, written as ngakakuona by my research assistants in 2002.

It may even be that Gogo nyamung’umi was itself borrowed from the coast (cf. the Swahili form nyamngumi). Whatever the case, the switch to or from velar nasal ng’ /ŋ/ would have to be explained. Likewise, the comings and goings of different prefixes and noun class designations, reminiscent of a case I’ve discussed elsewhere (Walsh 2004). Still, in the absence of alternative hypotheses, I find it difficult to resist speculation. There are certainly cases in which deep cultural knowledge is needed to make sense of an otherwise opaque etymology. This one is a long shot, but every now and then long shots hit the target.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks again to Yaroslav Alexandrov for letting me use his photos from Pongwe. I'm also very grateful to the wonderful Bonny Sands for LOT Project dictionaries (many more than are referenced here!), and Sander Adelaar for putting me right on ndruju. They’re real linguists, and the usual disclaimer applies.

References

Abdulaziz, Mohamed H. 1979. Muyaka: 19th Century Swahili Popular Poetry. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau.

Adelaar, Alexander A. 1989. Malay Influence on Malagasy: linguistic and culture-historical implications. Oceanic Linguistics 28 (1): 1-46.

Ahmed-Chamanga, Mohamed 1992. Lexique comorien-(shindzuwani)-français. Paris: Editions l’Harmattan.

Ahmed-Chamanga, Mohamed 1997. Dictionnaire français-comorien (dialecte shindzuwani). Paris: CEROI-INALCO / L’Harmattan.

Comorian dictionaries

Ahmed Chamanga, Mohamed and Noël-Jacques Gueunier 1979. Le dictionnaire comorien-français et français-comorien du R. P. Sacleux (2 vols.). Paris: SELAF.

Binns, H.K. 1925. Swahili-English Dictionary: Being Dr. Krapf’s Original Swahili-English Dictionary Revised and Re-arranged. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Blench, Roger M. 2012. Was there a proto-Bantu word for ‘whale’ and other mischievous questions. Unpublished paper. Online at http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Niger-Congo/Bantu/Was%20there%20a%20proto-Bantu%20word%20for%20whale.pdf.

BTL 2019. Bible Translation  and Literacy, Pokomo Language Project. Online at https://kipfokomu.com/en/homepage.

Fischer, François 1949. Grammaire-dictionnaire comorien. Strasbourg: Société d’Édition de la Basse Alsace.

Johnson, Frederick 1939a. A Standard Swahili-English Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press.

Johnson, Frederick 1939b. A Standard English-Swahili Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press.

Kipacha, Ahmad 2004. Kingome-English lexicon. Swahili Forum 11: 179-209.

Kisseberth, Charles W. 2016. Chimiini-English Dictionary and Chrestomathy. Online at http://swahiliendangered.cdh.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Chimiini-Lexicon-and-Chrestomathy-February-2016.pdf.

Lafon, Michel 1991. Lexique français-comorien (shingazidja). Paris: Editions L’Harmattan.

Madan, A.C. 1903. Swahili-English Dictionary. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Maganga, Clement and Thilo C. Schadeberg 1992. Kinyamwezi: Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Mochiwa, Zacharia 2008. Kizigula: Msamiati wa Kizigula-Kiswahili-Kiingereza [Zigula-Swahili-English Lexicon]. Dar es Salaam: Languages of Tanzania (LOT) Project, University of Dar es Salaam.

Nurse, Derek 2010. Lexicon for Ki-Bajuni = Ki-Gunya = Ki-T^hik^huu. Online at http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~dnurse/bajuni_database/wordlist.pdf.

Nurse, Derek and Thomas J. Hinnebusch 1993. Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Richmond, Matthew D. (ed.) 2002. A Field Guide to the Seashores and Eastern Africa and the Western Indian Ocean Islands (2^nd edition). Dar es Salaam: Sida/SAREC & UDSM.

Rugemalira, Josephat M. 2009. Cigogo: Kamusi ya Kigogo-Kiswahili-Kiingereza / Kiingereza-Kigogo / Kiswahili-Kigogo [Gogo-Swahili-English / English-Gogo / Swahili-Gogo Dictionary]. Dar es Salaam: Mradi wa Lugha za Tanzania, Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam.

Sacleux, Charles 1939. Dictionnaire Swahili-Français. Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie.

Sacleux, Charles 1959. Dictionnaire Français-Swahili (2^nd edition). Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie.

Schadeberg, Thilo C. and Francisco Ussene Mucanheia 2000. Ekoti: The Maka or Swahili Language of Angoche. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.

Simon, Pierre R. 2006. La langue des ancêtres Ny Fitenin-dRazana: Une périodisation du malgache de l’origine au XV^ème siècle. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Swynnerton, G.H. 1946. Vernacular names for some of the better-known mammals in the Central Province, Tanganyika Territory. Tanganyika Notes and Records 21: 21-38.

The Bible Society of Kenya 1951. Chuwo cha Malagano Masha ga Bwana Wehu Jesu Masihi Mokoli Wehu [The New Testament and Psalms in Giryama].  Nairobi: The Bible Society of Kenya.

The British and Foreign Bible Society 1901. Chuo cha Ḍamano Ibfya ḍya Ḇwana na Mubfonya Jwehu Yesu Kristo [Pokomo New Testament]. London: The British and Foreign Bible Society.

'Whale' in Pokomo, Matthew 12: 40

TUKI 1981. Kamusi ya Kiswahili Sanifu. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press.

TUKI 2019. Kamusi ya Kiswahili-Kiingereza. Online at http://www.elimuyetu.co.tz/subjects/arts/swa-eng/index.html.

TUKI 2019. English-Swahili Dictionary. Online at http://www.elimuyetu.co.tz/subjects/arts/eng-swa/index.html.

Walsh, Martin T. 1995/96. The ritual sacrifice of pangolins among the Sangu of south-west Tanzania. Bulletin of the International Committee on Urgent Anthropological and Ethnological Research 37/38: 155-170. Online at https://www.academia.edu/708993/The_ritual_sacrifice_of_pangolins_among_the_Sangu_of_south-west_Tanzania.

Walsh, Martin T. 2004. Variability and compounding of affixes in Hehe animal names (Tanzania). Paper presented to the 34th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics (CALL 34), Leiden University, 23-25 August. Online at https://www.academia.edu/1691467/Variability_and_compounding_of_affixes_in_Hehe_animal_names_Tanzania_.

Walsh, Martin T. 2007. Pangolins and politics in the Great Ruaha valley, Tanzania: symbol, ritual and difference / Pangolin et politique dans la vallée du Great Ruaha, Tanzanie: symbole, rituel et différence. In E. Dounias, E. Motte-Florac and M. Dunham (eds.) Le symbolisme des animaux: L'animal, clef de voûte de la relation entre l'homme et la nature? / Animal Symbolism: Animals, Keystone of the Relationship between Man and Nature? Paris: Éditions de l’IRD. 1003-1044. Online at http://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/divers16-08/010041952.pdf.

Walsh, Martin T. 2018. The Swahili language and its early history. In S. Wynne-Jones and A. LaViolette (eds.) The Swahili World. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 121-130. Online at https://www.academia.edu/36719077/The_Swahili_language_and_its_early_history.

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.

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