by
Martin Walsh
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| 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.
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| 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).
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.
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| 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:
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
