Fipa

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The Fipa are an ethnic and linguistic group based in the Sumbawanga and Nkansi districts of Rukwa Region in southwestern Tanzania. In 1992 the Fipa population was estimated to number 200,000

The Fipa lived on a largely treeless plateau looking down on Lake Tanganyika, appearing as a bridge joining east to central Africa and the Congo. They were a mixed popultion, Fipa, Wanda, and Nyika, with roughly 20,000 people in th 1890s. Many had come from the Congo with chiefdoms dominating a number of clans. Since iron was a precious commodity and iron somelting required technical knowledge, it was jealously guarded, resulting in a number of clans being subject to ironsmiths. (th cental chiefdom, Milansi, (the eternal village) was headed by a dynasty of ironsmiths, which exchanged its products for woven cloth.

These clans, dynasties, were later taken ovedr by an even newer immigrant group, the Twa, possibly the Tusi from the north, who were organized as a single clan and dominate others by force a cunning. While the Twa established themselves as an aritocracy, the older Milansi dynasty retained retual power and the right to install the Twa chief. It was, however, the Twa (after splitting into two chiefdoms) who exercised territorial and administrative authority through their appointed officials, with orders then transmitted to elected village headmen. The Fipa had now finally become more stratified, had even more precise borders, and were governed in a more strictly supervised manner. It had become a real state.

Nkansi, in Ufipa, was a chiefdom with a particularly extreme and elaporate form of political orgonization. (Even having a prime minister, and according to some had a life comparable to peasantry in the riches of European countries.) It became traditional to have hereditary chiefs who were surrounded by a court of at least nine titled officials and others to administer specific areas of the chiefdom.

The Queen mother was also important, having her own separate palace and court, a large estate, which paid her tribute. On the lowest level was an elected village headman with a female magistrate whose special function was to decide breaches of the public order by either sex, particularly in regards to the use of obscene language and brawling.

The judiciary could also be elaborate. Cases were first heard by a headman; from there a defendant could appeal to the district sub-chief, then to the royal courft, and finall to the chief, queen mother, and council of elders. If a person were found guilty of murder, the murderer was ordered to give a man (or woman if a woman had been killed) to the family of the murdered person. If there was no one to give, the murderer was told to choose between death and becoming a slave to the murdered person's family. If the murderer became a slave his family could ransom him. Their readiness to do so was expressed by the gift of a hoe and an agreement was reach in front of the royal court. Only the chief could impose the death penalty, which was carried out immediately by poison, spearing, or decapitation.

Until the 1860s, the Wafipa were described as still peaceful and prosperous, even though smewhat plagued by raiders. By the 1870s, however, warriors were now carrying Wahehe syle hide shields and spears, and th4e villages had become palisaded and slowly chaos, terror, warfare began to dominate the area, primarily as a result of the private army of Kimaurunga (Kimalaunga).

The rulers of Ufipa, (1860-1890) made alliances with coastal traders and the state experienced stability and outward prosperity. On entering Ufipa a visitor paid a small tribue and then became the chiefs guest. Each village provided the visitor with accommodations and carried his load to the next settlement. The Fipa were not aggressive, were said never to wage war, but generally obtained enough firearms to deter most potential aggressors by exchanging their grain for slaves with whom they then bought guns from the coastal traders.

Below the surface, however, there were a number of destructive consequences. The local weaving industry declined while the Twa chiefs were able to enforce much heavier contributions in goods, livesock, and labor from their subjects. In place of cotton, beads,and wire being exchanged, there were guns and powder going into the interior to trade for human beings. In 1889-1890, British explorer H. H. Johnson wrote of the Ufipa area: "I...have seen all human life and culture stamped out for a distance of 50 miles along the road, where only a short time before the most flourishng villages existed."

The Wafipa tended to live in concentrated widely spaced settlements of 20 to 30 round huts, no more than a few yards apart,each housing three to five each, with two surrounding corridor walls for small livestock. An inner room was for eating and sleeping. Reed mats for sleeping filtering beer were made by the women who also used a small hoe when working the fields. Men also mad the beds; a single coehide, or cowhide strips, stretched over a wooden frame with a reed mat placed on the bed before sleepint. While a total of 100 persons in a village were normal, 300 to 400 were large and not common. All wore durable cotton cloth of black and white stripes of six by five feet. It took four to five hours to cover the eitht to nine miles between seelements. Within the settlments there was strong emphasis placed on communal values; the most important being sociability.

Almost all of East Africa's people viewed forest and field to be at least somewhat antaonistic. There was hostily between cultivated land and the wildness of the bush. The Fipa in particular saw the bush as full of dangers and stressed the village as properly dominant over the surrounding bush. With the Wafipa each spirit cult was associated with rocks, mountain, groves, and lakes, and had a shrine where a priest tended a sacred python whose domestication represented man's control over nature.

Their plateau was deforested and the soil exhausted. The Fipa planted their principal crops on earth-covered compost piles of vegetation roughly a mile or more from a settlement. Tompson wrote: "They are more of a purely agricultural race than any other tribe I have seen. To the cultivation of their fields they devote themselves entirely". During the busy time of harvest, those working ghe land build round huts in which to sleep and find shelter. The main crfop was millet to be made into dry porridge and usually eaten with the fingers accompanied by beans.

Traditioonaly all lland belonged to the chief. Any Fipa could plant wherever he wished as long as payment made to the local official, for while there was no shortage of land there was a shortage of fertile land, and distances between settlements tended to increase. Fishing was supposed to be important in the area of Lake Rukwa,(Although the Germans make no mention of fish products found in Kimaurungs's Boma) Lake Tanganyika, and the surrounding rivers.

The most important tasks of the men was hunting wild animals, building huts and granaries, collecting firewood, making and spreading compost piles, cutting grass, and threshing millet. The threshing was often done by cooperative groups of kinsmen and neighbors.

The women's most important tasks were drawing water, weeding, cooking, plastering huts and granaries, winnowing, pounding grain, sweeping huts, using the coil method to make pottery, and raising children.

Ironsmiths were hereditary specialists and the knowledge was integrated with magic and a specialbag of magical incredients was passed from father to son. The Twa chiefs of the Wafipa, any of his family, and all women were forbidden to visit the site of a kiln or forge, while all other visitors had to acknowledge the smith's authority with a payment. The smith and his assistants were supposed to abstain from sextual intercourse, for the smelting and forging of ironwork was a very specialized craft totally bound up with knowledge and magic, using very particular incredients from doctors and sorcerers.

Spinning and weaving locally grown cotton was universal and always the work of men. The cloth was open, heavy, strong, and durable, was white with a black-stipped border and five by six feet long, sufficient for the toga-like dress worn by men and women (Somewhat as the Wahehe are said to look).

Aside from extracting two or four lower incisors before or after pubery, the Wafipa had no initiation ceremony for either sex. It was general practice among unmarried girls to extend their 'labia minora' by constant manipulation. This was thought to enhance their sexual attractivenes and favor giving birth. If a birth was difficult, the midwives asked the name of the unborn child's father, for it was thought that unconfessed adultery could cause death in childbirth. At the birth of a girl, the father brings firewood on his head, when a boy was born a bow and arrow is carried in the father's right hand. Following death a meeting of kin decides the issue of inheritance and a widow is assigned to the heir, if she is willing.

If woman died in childbirth the unborn child was cut from the brelly and placed on its dead mother's back inside the grave while the women would weep ant chant inside of the hut with the corpse; the men would sit quietly outside. Following the burial the hut in which the woman died was tatally destroyed. The dead were not 'thrown away', Sangu style.

Fipa diviners blamed illness on sorcery, terrirorial or ancestral splirits, and a neighbor or relative. Commoners tended to blame sorcery alone. Illness made it necessary to discover its cause: an ancestral spirit, a divinity, a demon, a sorcerer, or even a witch, (Fipa witches were supposed to be carried upside down at night by their wives, work evil and be all that was opposite of being good) for only with the discovery of the cause could appropriate measures be taken, such as sacrifices, ritual burning, or certain medicines, etc.

The Wafipa, as most Africans, had a supreme god, Umweele, the creator of ultimate power in the world. There was, however, no cult to this god, although it was common for those needing help to utter Umweele forgive me, and worship was directed to lesser and closer divinities, the most important and terrible being Katai, said to be the enemy of domestic animals, the bringer of smallpox, and other diseases. Katai could come as a dog with shining eyes, in dreams, a mouse in a hut corner, a beautiful youth, of even smoke. (It must be remembered that the African concept included the souls of animals, spirits, and humans being interchangeable)

When an epidmic occurred, dances were forbidden, children ceased plying noisy games, and water-pots were covered. Katai could, when she was in a kindly mood, also cure illness and heal suffering. When Katai was in an evil-minded mood, she could be appealed to for revenge or spite. Ther was no agreement on the sex of Katai. In the north it was male, in the south female.

There were other more localized spirits. Hills, lakes such as Lake Tanganyika, large trees, oddly shaped rocks, groves of trees could all be the home of a spirit. Truly large tame pythons, representing truly large pythons, representinhg the spirits of these places, would coil themselves on specially made stools and receive offerings of millet porridge and meat from worshipers. Worship was often conducted by a hereditary priest (often seemingly possessed) of a particular spirit.

Lastly, there was the cult of ancestral spirits. These were thought to inhabit the threshold of their descendants' huts. Periodically the ownwer of a hut would honor them by sprinkling the walls and floors with water and flour.

Twins were considered divinities having special powers over rain and crops. They could also cause epidemics. They were publicly acclaimed, being carried arouond the village on a tray and scrifices were communally held in their honor st the new moon. They were not killed or allowed to die through starvation as with so many other groups. They were in fact so important as to be especially honored by having sacrifices offered at an altar erected by their parents outside their hut during harvest time or epidemics.

Prophet Kaswa is said to have prophesied the coming of Europeans: "There are coming terrible strangers who bring war; they will surely come. O you people, you are going to be robbed of your country: you will not even be able to cough." It was not until 1905-1919 that the Wafipa began seeking employment with Europeans.

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