Through African Eyes

Through African Eyes 1966-1967 Chief John Mdeka, Usagari village, Tanzania Chief Gordon Mwansasu, Magistrate, Rungwe, Tanzania Barrie Reynolds, Curator, Rhodes-Livingston Museum, Zambia arlier in 1966, just before I left Usagari village and before Ian Harker and I splashed across the Ugalla river, Chief John Mdeka came by the compound where I lived. I had invited him to see a copy of an old book by a German missionary Epriest, Father Boesch, which had drawings of traditional Nyamwezi tools and artifacts. He sat in my canvas chair turning the pages and murmuring “Yes, yes,” as he saw things he remembered as a child.The next day he came back, this time with an object wrapped in an oil- stained cloth. He laid it on the table, pushed it towards me and took the cloth away. It was an old Nyamwezi mask. Mdeka slowly pulled two beaded objects from his pockets, put them next to the mask, and looked up. He was not smiling. Nyamwezi wooden mask, (kifuniko, carved circa 1925), given to the author “These are for you. Take them, Meela (Miller),” he said. “Guard in Usagari village, Tabora them for us. Nobody here wants them. People no longer believe in the District, Tanzania in 1964. power of masks.” Separate objects made from glass beads, leather With his elbows on the table, the Chief draped one of the beaded straps and cow hair objects over the mask. I sensed he might be worried about giving the which allowed different things away, perhaps of betraying the ancestors. configurations on the “What about one of the museums—the one in Dar is....” mask for ritual purposes. He shook his head. “I know about them. They are corrupt. They (Author’s collection) will sell it to wazungu (Europeans). They won’t keep it. You have it, Milla. You keep it.” Chief John said my gift was an execution mask, worn to hide the identity of the person who sentenced someone to die. He reported people were mainly executed for adultery with a chief’s wife, and that the condemned were carried to a large outcrop of rocks near Unga hill. There, the tendons in their ankles and legs were slashed with a machete and they were left to the hyenas. It happened at sunset. Usually only a few bones were found the next day. The beaded objects were called “kishingo,” and were put on the mask to pronounce sentences for different crimes. “Why else were people executed?” I asked. 78 ENCOUNTERS WITH WITCHCRAFT THROUGH AFRICAN EYES 79 78 ENCOUNTERS WITH WITCHCRAFT THROUGH AFRICAN EYES 79 For the first time that afternoon, the chief smiled. “Your subject, Meela. For giving the death sentence to people who practiced witchcraft.” Chief Mdeka remembered how other Nyamwezi masks were used to depict stories, particularly for teaching children or for initiation into secret societies. He said they were meant to shock, to suggest protec- tion against witches whom he described as “people who poison others, do bad things, and can be hired.” The chief said his most frightening childhood memories were of witchcraft stories being enacted at night, with drumming and dancing near a big fire, the children made to sit together and keep their heads low to the ground. “Why low to the ground?” I asked. “I think to make those who played witches look bigger,” he said. When Mdeka got up to leave he patted the old mask on its nose, then looked at me and took my hand in both of his. “Return here when you can, Meela. Tell us how our mask likes living in your country.” My new mask, plus the lion skulls near Usagari, and the three painted fimbo sticks that I had seen on the trip with Ian Harker made me wonder about other items used by alleged witches—the poison containers, carved items, lion claws, and tiny ceremonial spears. I was curious about how Africans see witchcraft and started drawing or pho- tographing anything I ran across. My new research site in southern Tanzania was in a beautiful, tea- and coffee-growing area just north of Lake Malawi called Rungwe District. Here again the African District Commissioner welcomed me, approved my fieldwork and gave me a stack of papers to read on Rungwe agriculture. I found a village called Sesso, rented a tiny workers’ house on the tea estate next to the village and settled down to my research. The second person I met in Sesso village was another former chief named Gordon Mwansasu. He was the counterpart to ex-Chief John Mdeka in Usagari, but there the similarity ended. Chief Mwansasu had been educated in one of Tanzania’s elite secondary schools, sent for 80 ENCOUNTERS WITH WITCHCRAFT THROUGH AFRICAN EYES 81 administrative training and later, as a young chief, taken to London with a dozen chiefs for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. He was a thin, bouncy and balding man, forever shaking hands with everyone he met, including children. He had retired two years before as a local court magistrate and, with his wife, now ran a coffee farm and banana grove near my village. He drove a small brown pickup truck, and when walking, carried a tattered briefcase which he claimed had been given to him by the Queen. One afternoon I saw him in Tukuyu town buying supplies and invited him to stop by Sesso village. He came the next afternoon. “So you want to show me African art?” he said as he climbed out of his pick-up truck. “This will cost you tea and two spoons of sugar.” He Rungwe District, Mbeya was smiling, but leaned against the truck until I brought out two can- Region, Tanzania, 1966. vas chairs, a little camp table and the file of photos. (Map by Ellen Kozak) 80 ENCOUNTERS WITH WITCHCRAFT THROUGH AFRICAN EYES 81 “What am I looking for?” he said, without much interest. “I’m trying to understand witchcraft.” I said. “I want to see witchcraft as Africans do who have grown up with it—through African eyes. This is my own collection of photos and my own sketches about witchcraft. I wonder if you would....” “I don’t believe in witchcraft…” he said with conviction. “It’s rub- bish, it’s destructive and dangerous to old people. We have laws against it.” He seemed annoyed, and I struggled to get the conversation back on track.“Chief Gordon, I understand,” I said, pouring his tea and push- ing the sugar bowl to him. “It is important because so many people get hurt in these witch-hunts. There is a lot of violence in western Tanza- nia, even on the coast. All over. Even Kenya, even Uganda.” “I want you to know I am not a believer,” he said. “I’m Christian… more or less.” “I don’t believe in “Chief, you are my teacher,” I said quietly. “I’m trying to under- witchcraft…” stand what Africans believe about witchcraft. It is very confusing because there are so many reports. Can I read you a summary?” “OK...sure,” he said, gesturing for more tea, and now apparently relieved I understood he did not believe in witchcraft. I hurried inside to get the file, growing uneasy that I was about to tell an African what non-Africans write about a sensitive subject. “OK,” I said. “First, witches are thought to be living people, humans with mysterious powers and bad characters. These “witches” are seen as solitary, selfish, envious, brooding, bad-tempered, cunning and deceit- ful. They are believed to often roam at night, be able to travel at great speeds, fly or ride on hyenas and be in the neighborhood if someone sees fast-moving lights or distant fires. They rob graves, use human body parts to make medicines, and eat rotten animal flesh, particularly frogs and snakes. They are cannibals.” I paused, took a sip of tea. The chief was watching me intently. “Witches can make you sick,” I continued, “send illness via insects, and injure people without being seen. Witches often have physical defects and disabilities, ugliness, deformity, red or misaligned eyes. They may smell bad. They may have odd manners, odd speech, pecu- liar behavior and wear outlandish dress. 82 ENCOUNTERS WITH WITCHCRAFT THROUGH AFRICAN EYES 83 “In some ethnic groups, witches are thought to be sexual perverts. They may engage in incest, bestiality, sodomy, adultery and homosexu- ality. They are outsiders—unsociable and devious, the opposite of the ordinary, which may be indicated by images of creatures that are upside down or inside out. They can be traitors, enemies of the people, or political extremists. Ordinary people are expected to be friendly, frugal, and shar- ing. Witches are the opposite, prone to excess and repugnant behavior.” Chief Gordon sat there, now staring at his teacup. He didn’t say anything, but again began to flip through my folder of sketches and photos. “All right,” he finally said. “A lot of those ideas about witches are still around. Some have been dropped, and some are only talked about by elders, and no one group of people believes all that. I think that is a list of traits across East Africa...of the Bantu people, the farmers, not the pastoralists.” I wanted him to say more but at that point he pulled out three pho- “A lot of those tos from my file and laid them on the table. They were the images I had ideas about found a year earlier in the gloomy basement of the British Museum, witches are images of witches painted on the walls of a chief’s house that were pho- tographed by a colonial officer in 1932.

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