Where Humans and Spirits Meet: The Politics of Rituals and Identified Spirits in Zanzibar 9780857450562

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Map of the Western Indian Ocean
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1 INTRODUCTION
2 INTRODUCTION TO ZANZIBAR: THE PLACE, ITS POLITICS AND ORGANIZATION
3 SPIRITS, POSSESSION AND PERSONHOOD
4 MAKABILA, PEOPLE AND SPIRITS
5 HUMAN CONCERNS, SPIRITS AND RECREATION OF RELATIONSHIPS
6 BETWEEN SELF AND OTHER: BODY AND MIND
7 GENDER: RELATIONS, MARKERS AND SEXUALITY
8 WOMEN, MEN AND GENDERED SPIRITS
9 CONCLUSIONS: SOCIAL IDENTITIES AND DRAMATIZATION OF THE OTHER
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

WHERE HUMANS AND SPIRITS MEET

SOCIAL IDENTITIES General Editors: Shirley Ardener, Tamara Dragadze and Jonathan Webber Based on a prominent Oxford University seminar founded over two decades ago by the social anthropologist Edwin Ardener, this series focuses on the ethnic, historical, religious, and other elements of culture that give rise to a social sense of belonging, enabling individuals and groups to find meaning both in their own social identities and in what differentiates them from others. Each volume is based on one specific theme that brings together contemporary material from a variety of cultures. Volume 1 Changing Sex and Bending Gender Alison Shaw and Shirley Ardener Volume 2 Medical Identities Kent Maynard Volume 3 Professional Identities: Policy and Practice in Business and Bureaucracy Shirley Ardener and Fiona Moore Volume 4 The Discipline of Leisure: Embodying Cultures of ‘Recreation’ Simon Coleman and Tamara Kohn Volume 5 Where Humans and Spirits Meet: The Politics of Rituals and Identified Spirits in Zanzibar Kjersti Larsen

WHERE HUMANS AND SPIRITS MEET THE POLITICS OF RITUALS AND IDENTIFIED SPIRITS IN ZANZIBAR

Kjersti Larsen

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

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5/13/08

10:53 AM

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First published in 2008 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2008 Kjersti Larsen All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Larsen, Kjersti. Where humans and spirits meet : the politics of rituals and identified spirits in Zanzibar / Kjersti Larsen. p. cm. -- (Social identities ; v. 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84545-055-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Ethnology--Tanzania--Zanzibar. 2. Tribes--Tanzania--Zanzibar. 3. Kinship--Tanzania--Zanzibar. 4. Spirit possession--Tanzania--Zanzibar. 5. Familiars (Spirits)--Tanzania--Zanzibar. 6. Ritual--Tanzania--Zanzibar. 7. Zanzibar (Zanzibar)--Religious life and customs. 8. Zanzibar (Zanzibar)-Social life and customs. I. Title. DT450.24.L37 2008 133.909678'1--dc22 2008014698 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-1-84545-055-7 hardback

CONTENTS Map of the Western Indian Ocean

vii

Preface and Acknowledgements

ix

1 Introduction

1

Considering perspectives on spirit possession – The fieldwork: people, engagement and context – The fieldwork: ritual participation – Performance, meaning and reflexivity – Ritual, communication and enactment – Knowledge, experience and forms of negotiation – The book

2 Introduction to Zanzibar: the place, its politics and organization

25

A view of the past and the present – Identity, social privileges and political reorganization – A plural society – Gender, distinctions and effects in everyday and ritual life – Gender, ritual participation and knowledge

3 Spirits, possession and personhood

42

The position of spirits – Spirits are beings with a worldly existence – Spirit possession and practices – Personhood, notions of strength and self-control – Experiencing spirits

4 Makabila, people and spirits

60

Articulation of differences and the problem of identity – Identification of a spirit – The demands of spirits belonging to different makabila – The world of spirits and human beings

5 Human concerns, spirits and recreation of relationships How the spirits reveal their presence in the human world – Communication between humans and spirits – The ritual group and the ritual framework – Ngoma ya sheitani: a celebration and a cure

81

vi

Contents

6 Between self and other: body and mind

95

Ngoma ya ruhani – States of body and states of mind – A bodily experience of spirits – Losing oneself to the spirit – Altered states of body, altered states of mind

7 Gender: relations, markers and sexuality

109

Gender and complementarity – Concealment and disclosure – Acts of disclosure and moral ambiguity – Enactment and perceptions of the body – Strict categories in a flexible universe – Gender images and human practices

8 Women, men and gendered spirits

123

A ngoma ya kibuki ritual – Matters of affection, pride and self-control – Presentation, representation and excess – Comedy, parody and the ways of humans and spirits – Body, aesthetics, and gender images – On reflections and acts of transgression

9 Conclusion: social identities and dramatization of the other

145

An aesthetic moving together – Improvisation, play and the dramatization of a life-world – Reflections on embodiment and modes of knowing

Glossary

158

Bibliography

163

Index

171

Cairo

Iran

Kuwait

Pakistan

Egypt Riyadh Mecca

Muscat

Oman Saudi Arabia

Arabian Sea

San'a Yemen

Khartoum

Eritrea

Dijbouti Sudan

Addis Ababa

Somalia

Ethiopia

Uganda Kampala

Kenya

Mogadishu

I n d i a n O c e a n

Nairobi

Rwanda Burundi

Tanzania

Democratic Republic of Congo

Dar es Salaam

Mombasa

Pemba Unguja

Seychelles

Mafia

Malawi

Comoros

Zambia Lusaka

Majunga

Harare

Zimbabwe Botswana

Mauritius Mozambique

Réunion Madagascar

Gaborone Pretoria Maputo Bloemfontein

South Africa

Swaziland Lesotho

The Western Indian Ocean

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is about the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town, the capital of Zanzibar, situated on the Swahili Coast of East Africa. By focusing on relationships between humans and spirits, my aim is to grasp Zanzibari discourses on difference and sameness. My main interest is to discuss perceived distinctions between humans and spirits, between women and men, but also, between what Zanzibaris conceptualize as makabila. Thus, the book equally describes the cultural and social context that produces a particular system of possession beliefs and, in turn, is, perhaps, constructed by it. Although I approach Zanzibar Town as a culture, it should not be thought of as an entity so much as a bounded set of overlapping discourses. Zanzibar Town consists of a plurality of voices orchestrated by common themes, idioms and meanings, resonant with the participation of others in the past as well as here and now. Behind the research lies a longstanding acquaintance with the people of Zanzibar at large. I would like to thank Issak Issak for teaching me Swahili and providing me my first letters of introduction. My fieldwork in Zanzibar started when I was still a graduate student in 1984 and my first full period of fieldwork took place in 1985–1986. Since then I have repeatedly returned to the island for further fieldwork and to remain updated on the ongoing changes in people’s lives as well as in the society as such. All together I have spent more than thirty months in Zanzibar Town. I am most grateful to the Zanzibari Government and to the Ministry of Education, to the Ministry of Information, Culture, Tourism and Youth as well as the National Archives which during my different periods of fieldwork have granted me research permits. The present study is based mainly on fieldwork conducted during a one year stay in 1991–1992 and 1997. In this period Mzee H. H. Hamad along with the staff of the Zanzibar National Archives provided me with assistance and encouragement. But above all I wish to express the debt I owe to the women and men in Zanzibar who have welcomed me into their communities and invited me to be present and participate in their various rituals and ceremonies. They have also involved me in their lives, given me access to their knowledge and skills, taken care of me, nursed me when I have been sick or homesick and had the patience

x

Preface and Acknowledgements

not only to listen to all my questions, but even to answer them and to engage in extensive discussions. Any list of individuals will be plagued by omissions, but in particular I would like to thank the following for their hospitality, support and kindness: the family with whom I have lived since my first fieldtrip to Zanzibar, the late Jussa Siddique, his wife, children, daughters and sons-in-law to whom I am forever grateful; Zainab Abdulla Suleman, my dear friend and helper in the field, and her extended family who always make room for me. I am also grateful to the late Bhabhi and Maryam, to Khairun, Zubeda, Zaynab, Zakia, Amina, Bi Nyonyo, Libna and her family, Bi Nefissa and her family as well as Nayla and Bi Asha, Bi Ashura, Bijubwa, Bwana Ali Ashur, Mwalim Majid, the late Mwalim Omar, Mzee Pongwa, Bwana Hussein, the late Bwana Mrisho, as well as the late Mzee Hassania and his wife Nilofa. I also wish to thank Suleman and Jena as well as Minaz and his family in Dar-es-Salaam, and Khatija in Oslo, who always open their hearts and houses for me. My research has been funded by the Norwegian Research Council for Science and Humanities. Many people have contributed to my thinking on the various issues presented in this book. Hence, I wish to thank colleagues at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo and at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. I also wish to thank the scholars at The Centre for Cross Cultural Research on Women, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, and my gratitude goes in particular to Shirley Ardener, Dr Lidia Sciama, Dr Jacqueline Waldren, Nkechi Nwankwo, Dr Francesca Declich and Dr Regina Bendly for stimulating and enjoyable seminars and discussions. I also wish to thank Professor David Parkin for having provided critical comments on an earlier version of this text and Professor Pat Caplan for invaluable remarks and for sharing her extensive knowledge about Swahili society with me. Many thanks also to my colleagues José Kagabo and Jean-Claude Penrad at Centre d’Études Africaines, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, who have invited me into their research milieu and to Professor Jean-Claude Galey for his confident and unfailing support. My gratitude goes also to Dr Tamara Dragadze, one of the editors for Berghahn’s ‘Social Identities Series’ for her highly appreciated comments on the manuscript. The librarians at the Department of Ethnography, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Nancy Frank and Frøydis Haugane, have provided me with much needed literature. Still, in the end, I dedicate the whole work to the women, men and spirits of Zanzibar without whose generosity, cooperation, and welcome my research was sure to have failed. Kjersti Larsen Oslo 2007

1 INTRODUCTION

This book deals with the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town. The spirits involved are known to Zanzibari women and men as masheitani (sing. sheitani) or majini (sing. jini) and the rituals performed on their behalf generally are called ngoma ya sheitani (sing. ngoma ya sheitani). Focusing on the phenomenon of spirit possession, and the relationships it creates between humans and spirits, provides a way to apprehend how this society is constituted and conceived and, thus, to discuss Zanzibari understandings of what it means to be human. It illuminates Zanzibari understandings of the nature of human relationships, both in terms of ideals and of lived reality. For the world that I am about to explore is inhabited by both human beings and spirits. The phenomenological perspective enables me to examine the practical philosophy and logic behind spirit possession beliefs and practices. It focuses attention on significant aspects of personhood and social relationships in this multicultural society on the East African coast. These aspects relate to the perceived distinctions between humans and spirits, women and men, and also between what Zanzibaris name as makabila (sing. kabila), locally translated into ‘tribes’. Still, the discussion that follows is motivated not by an exclusive interest in the meanings of distinctions as such, but rather by an interest in questioning the ways difference is conceptualized and articulated within this particular context. The term ‘distinction’ is chosen to denote difference within a common cultural universe, and not across different universes (see Bourdieu 1989). Distinction as used in this discussion does not necessarily mean that categorization and classification are hierarchically organized. Moreover, it is important to note that the term distinction is used in a broad sense so that it sometimes conflates classification and categorization, and sometimes refers exclusively to matters of identity. My aims are to reveal meanings relating to culturally shared distinctions and to analyse how people live with their transgressions of these distinctions. In doing this, I wish to explore how spirit possession as a common institutionalized phenomenon is experienced differently according to the various positions and points of view of the participants. Closely

2

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

tied as they are to social relations, notions of difference and conformity disclose a series of internal discontinuities that, in their turn, express the multivocal propensity within what constitutes a shared universe of values. The core of my argument is that such notions of distinction, along with the fact that people aspire to ideals and values that in many cases negate their own lived experiences, create ambiguities. And that it is precisely these ambiguities that are presented, represented and contemplated through the phenomenon of masheitani. A main interest is to explore whether ngoma ya sheitani makes possible a reformulation of cultural values and self-knowledge. Does the phenomenon of masheitani allow for the coexistence of contradictions, ambiguities and paradoxes? To what extent can it be said to provide contexts where people may present, represent, and construct moral meanings? Moreover, may this phenomenon really bring about change or does it mainly disclose contradictions? In response to these questions, my main argument throughout this book is that within the context of spirit phenomena people reflect upon and negotiate aspects of their reality. In particular it concerns what it means to be human and the significance of distinctions embedded in gender and what is locally denoted as kabila (pl. makabila) and translated as ‘tribe’. The presence of spirits and the rituals performed on their behalf provide openings through which people represent and construct moral meanings and, thus, relationships that are constitutive to this particular society. Hence I have called this book Where Humans and Spirits Meet: The Politics of Rituals and Identified Spirits in Zanzibar. The spirits invest social life with moral debate and practical activity. When humans and spirits meet an enactment of lived experience takes place where the practice and conventions of social interaction, and the material conditions of certain historical and physical circumstances, form part of the enactment (Lienhardt 1961; Kratz 1994). In order to discuss Zanzibari understandings of and experiences with the phenomenon of masheitani, I place the analysis within a framework where spirits are real, being aware of the fact that the description of masheitani is, in its turn, another construction of a life-world. However, by stressing that this world – dunia – consists of both human beings and spirits, my construction remains connected to a Zanzibari point of view. An analysis of categories and classifications is significant to an understanding of the construction of the central aspects of this social world. Human beings and spirits are considered to be different kinds of beings sharing a common reality. The distinction between them should be understood as one of ‘differences of nature’ (Bourdieu 1989). Distinctions between the reality of spirits and the reality of human beings are manifested through the sharing of a common body. Human beings and spirits converge in their physical presence: the one is a precondition for the other. Perceived differences between women and men, and between what Zanzibaris identify as makabila, are also important distinctions with respect to both human beings and spirits. The term kabila (pl. makabila) are, as already mentioned, locally translated into tribe or population, in the commonsense meaning of the

Introduction

3

term. In the Zanzibari context kabila, denotes people who see themselves and are seen by others as originating from certain places beyond Zanzibar, for instance Arabia, India, the Comoro Islands, and various places on the mainland or even from within Zanzibar itself (this is discussed in detail in Chapter 2).1 While individual persons may become inhabited by spirits of both the same and the opposite gender, the spirits inhabiting them will always belong to a different ‘tribe’ and may even be of a different religion than the person inhabited. Moreover, through embodying spirits of both the same and the opposite sex, as well as being confronted with gendered spirits, women and men in Zanzibar Town are faced with their own gender images – even those aspects which are usually not visible, such as the ‘taken-for-granted’ differences of sexed bodies and gendered behaviour or performance. Thus when humans and spirits meet, distinctions between genders and between what is perceived as different makabila, and the social forms associated with the different categories, are both explored and reflected upon. Other relevant distinctions also apply in the Zanzibari context. Notions and degrees of self-control, the separation between the private and the public, and between concealment and disclosure, are all important. Spirits may also challenge these distinctions and, in this respect, participate in the Zanzibari field of morality. Through the phenomenon of masheitani, ideals and values celebrated in the human world are exposed and may be reconsidered. In this context, both the more explicit and the more implicit understandings of what it means to be human, to be a human being and not a spirit, to be a woman and not a man and vice versa, as well as the meaning of kabila, are emphasized. Thus, one way of understanding the rituals of spirit possession is to approach them as a genre of cultural performance (Turner 1987) where distinctions between self and other are articulated and explored. The spirits are not only other they are also presentations and representations of the other, and the opposition between self and other is a matter of morality. While recognizing, as Zanzibaris themselves do, that spirits and humans are different beings, I shall nevertheless argue that through the process by which human bodies become inhabited by foreign, gendered spirits, people are moved into becoming ‘an other’. By using the phrase becoming ‘an other’, I wish to establish a relationship between human beings and spirits that Zanzibaris’ themselves do not refer to. In my analysis I actually diminish the distinction between humans and spirits to argue that human beings, through their knowledge of the other, turn themselves into spirits. My claim is that the presence of spirits is tied to what is conceptualized as mimesis, or a physical form of othering (see Taussig 1993; Kramer 1993; Benjamin 1955, 1979). Hence, I take the term mimesis to denote a process through which relations of the other to the self (or also the self in the other) are brought to our awareness. In this perspective, spirits are seen both as an embodiment of the other and as representing ideas of the other. This perception is closely tied to the human body and experienced in terms of the physical body – literally, of an embodiment. Here I follow Maurice

4

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

Merleau-Ponty (1962),2 who asserts that we are our bodies and without them we would be impossible. He argues that: ‘The body is the meaningful core which behaves like a general function and which nevertheless exists, and is susceptible to disease’ (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 147). Following this approach to being, meaning, and knowing, I relate experience to the body as the original knowing subject from which all other forms of knowledge derive. In the context of spirit possession, where spirits inhabit human bodies, spirits transform the bodies they inhabit as well as people’s perceptions of them. Through such processes of enactment, a person is moved by feelings, perceptions, emotions and evolving thoughts. The considerations involved in the enactment move the person to the extent of becoming transformed: becoming ‘an other’ and experiencing moments of otherness. The phenomenon of masheitani embraces what is identified as mimesis or the enactment of an other. In order to capture the process by which spirits materialize through and transform the perception of human bodies I have used notions of embodiment. Following Judith Butler’s perspective, some of the elementary structures of embodiment include: to do, to dramatize, and to reproduce (1988: 521).3 Recently, the term embodiment is also understood to include an existential condition of social life4 (Csordas 1994). In the Zanzibari context, human beings become inhabited by spirits in the sense that persons for a period of time live both in altered states of body and in altered states of mind. In this sense, to embody spirits involves perceptual experiences and performative acts, that is, both different modes of presence and engagements with the world. The discussion will show how the phenomenon of masheitani is experienced and explained by Zanzibari women and men with reference to the physical body. By using the terms ‘embody’ and ‘inhabit’, rather than ‘possession’, I also emphasize the bodily presence of spirits: spirits materialize in this world through the human body, that is, the body understood as a biological, material entity. People would, for instance, often say that the spirits ‘wear a person’ (anamvaa) – an expression that indicates a particular notion of self and personhood. With regard to conceptualizations of the self, it is important to remain aware of the fact that although everywhere individual persons have an intuitive feeling of personal identity through time, and of boundaries between oneself and others (Rosaldo 1980, 1984), there are variations between cultures and within societies with regard to people’s ideological or commonsensical understandings of the relationship between self and other.5 The process of being inhabited by spirits concerns ‘being in the world’ and thus, following Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the world as people experience it as embodied subjects (Merleau-Ponty 1962). It concerns existence both in terms of ideals and in terms of values and lived experience – or, to follow the Zanzibari point of view, an existence blending human beings and spirits. This understanding is, as I hope to demonstrate in this book, related to culturally constructed conceptions of the person. The phenomenon of masheitani comprises both what can be seen as a presentation of spirits in the human world

Introduction

5

through bodies – perceived as the other – and a representation of ideas of the other or of various others. Therefore, the distinction of otherness explored in this book is of two kinds: the capacity of individual persons to create within their own selves a sense of otherness and the extent to which humans can, through becoming an other, namely a spirit, enter new fields of understanding. This understanding also creates a further capacity for empathy. It brings an ability to experience the emotions and dilemmas of other members of society and to act upon them by actually, through the presence of spirits, changing the status of the person(s) in question and, thereby, the social situation. Concentrating on Zanzibari perceptions of the spirits and the phenomenon of possession opens up a field for understanding the ambiguities inherent in life as lived, such as the marking of distinctions and the transgression of the very same distinctions. In many ways possession can be seen as a means of coping with life within the existing social parameters (Lewis et al. 1991). However, spirit possession is not only a means of coping with life; rather, it is part of life and, as such, it is also part of what constitutes existing social parameters.

Considering perspectives on spirit possession Within anthropology the phenomenon of spirit possession is widely discussed, and the broad concept of possession covers a variety of specific beliefs. The different kinds of possession phenomena vary significantly with cultural contexts, local perceptions of reality and social conditions, and are not found with equal frequency (Bourguignon 1979: 249).6 Still, what can be drawn, more generally, from the literature on spirit possession is that there is an overall indigenous understanding that spirits and spirit possession concern health, illness, suffering and healing in one way or another, including social recognition. Following Ioan Lewis’ influential perspective, possession is often interpreted mainly as oblique strategies used by the powerless to achieve goals when they lack access to legitimately available means and resources: the spirits are used in order to command attention, redress grievances and extract concessions from superiors (Lewis 1966, 1969, 1971, 1990).7 One reason why I am critical to such approaches is that assumptions about marginality often seem to be left unquestioned. To approach the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town in terms of marginality would mean that other significant problems concerning the field of morality would have to be left out. Although spirits are often involved when people might find themselves in miserable life-situations the possession phenomenon is not restricted to people who are ascribed marginal positions within this society. Furthermore, despite the fact that not all Zanzibari women and men participate in the rituals performed on the spirits’ behalf or even experience spirit possession during their life, the phenomenon of masheitani forms part of a Zanzibari reality; it is not peripheral within a Zanzibari lifeworld. Consequently, I chose to build on earlier insights

6

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

from studies exploring the cultural construction of self and personhood (Crapanzano 1973, 1980; Lambek 1981, 1993; Boddy 1989; Sharp 1993; Stoller 1995) emphasizing the importance of regarding people’s experiences of possession as genuine and not merely seeking to explain them as something at once less dramatic and more clinical than they appear. These are insights I find important. Focusing on the spirits as beings involved in a local reality, I move closer to Zanzibari understandings of the complexities of life and social relationships. This approach makes it possible for me to comprehend and interpret the acts and statements of Zanzibari women and men to whom the spirits are real. In their view, the phenomenon of embodying spirits is not explained as a projection or as a way of revealing hidden dimensions of one’s personality or as a strategy to command attention. The actions and reactions of spirits inhabiting human bodies are simply seen as expressions of others (i.e., spirits), acting through human bodies. The existence of the spirits as such is not understood to be within the persons whose bodies they use. Their existence is defined as outside the human body and beyond human beings. The spirits are conceptualized as beings, who, when present in the human world, are disembodied. Hence, in order to be physically visible in the human world, spirits need and so use the bodies of human beings. Although spirits are understood to inhabit and use the bodies of human beings, they do not merge with the persons whose bodies they use; nor are the persons whose bodies are used by spirits understood to be the spirits.8 In Zanzibar, people clearly differentiate between the person who is inhabited by a spirit and the inhabiting spirit. Each spirit, as each person (mtu), is seen as unique and different from everyone else. Still, I argue that the spirits also constitute an aspect of a Zanzibari understanding of what it means to be human. By focusing on Zanzibari notions of the spirit, the possession phenomenon and relationships between human beings and spirits, I can grasp important aspects of Zanzibari perceptions of their life-world. Before entering into the discussion, I will say a few words about the fieldwork on which this book is based. My wish is to illustrate how I came to see the spirits. I shall also give a brief account of what Zanzibaris consider the ways and capabilities of the spirits known as masheitani or majini.

The fieldwork: people, engagement and context During my various periods of fieldwork I have lived in the same neighbourhood and in the same household, while regularly staying over (shinda) in two other households.9 With every stay, my circle of friends, informants and familiar acquaintances grew significantly. Being a woman anthropologist in a sexsegregated society has influenced my position and degree of acceptance within this society. I have, however, lived and moved with Zanzibari women and men in a variety of their everyday and ritual activities. I know more women than men, and I have spent more time with women than I have with men. Male informants included specialists in matters of illness and health and ritual leaders, as well as

Introduction

7

male members of the ritual groups and male participants in the various rituals. While I have related to the fathers, brothers, brothers-in-law, uncles, grandfathers, husbands and fiancés of all the women I know, I could never accompany any of these men to events or encounters where they were to meet only other men. The people I lived among gave me a range of advice on things to do in order to understand a Zanzibari way of life, including suggesting that I study the Qur’an. Following their advice, during one of my first periods of fieldwork I went almost every day to a teacher (mwalimu) to read and discuss the various chapters and verses of the Qur’an – an exercise through which I acquired a thorough understanding of Zanzibari interpretations of the Holy Book. Knowing that I went to study the Qur’an, women and men also insisted on discussing matters of religion with me in order to make me understand, as they said, even better. During the same fieldwork and following years, I researched themes relating to the formation of female gender identity focusing on, among other things, the female initiation ritual unyago. The aim of unyago is to teach young women about the social, practical, emotional and sexual aspects of married life, and what it means to be considered an adult woman. Furthermore, I studied ongoing processes of change, both ideological and material, as these relate to modernity and modernization (see Larsen 1990, 1991, 1993, 2000, 2004). The social and imaginary lives presented in my previous work and in this book are in many cases those of women, for the reasons mentioned above. Yet it should be noted that discussions of men’s positions in this society, as well as scenes from the lives of particular men, are also included. Thus, this discussion of the phenomenon of spirit possession is based on a long-term relationship to a particular place and the people living there. When I started fieldwork in Zanzibar Town I was already competent in the Swahili language – a competence that has over the years further developed. I have never worked with an interpreter, being able to engage with people and participate in the different kinds of discussions and exchanges that take place during everyday and ritual life. In mentioning language skills and verbal participation, I also include modes of understanding that extend to irony, metaphors, gestures and body postures. Without a thorough understanding and a current practical knowledge of Swahili, I would not have had the courage and confidence to centre my discussion of the phenomenon of masheitani from a Zanzibari point of view – how it is experienced and felt, as well as its various consequences with regard to the formation of social relationships and society, more generally. This does not mean that an analysis of linguistic and semantic concepts necessarily results in an understanding of experience. Rather, my contention is that in order to approach other peoples’ experiences, one has to be able to engage both actively and passively in a wide range of unplanned social contexts. This is only possible if we also participate linguistically and perceive within a given social world. The women and men who made my fieldwork possible cover a large spectrum, from poor people, who do not know what they will eat the next day, to wealthy

8

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

and even rich people. However, in terms of economy, most of the informants fall somewhere in between. Some work in governmental offices and some within the private sector, for instance in work related to tourism. Some are teachers or nurses, while others are involved in trade. Most of the women run various forms of small-scale businesses from their homes or, as they say, biashara ya pesa ndogo (small money business). Among the informants, some are unemployed and take on causal labour whenever possible, while others live on remittances provided by family members abroad. What they all share is a wish for a better life – a life filled with more contentment and happiness: good health for themselves and those close to them, improved health services, a more secure livelihood and increased employment possibilities, better educational facilities for their children, and political stability. While some of the informants have higher education, most of them have only between five to eight years of schooling. Many of the elderly women and men have never attended school other than the Qur’an school (chuo or madrasa). Through individual women and men I have been introduced to households, families and neighbourhoods, and various ritual groups, and thus there are women and men belonging to a wide age range among the informants. Furthermore, they belong to what they perceive as different makabila, and thus denote themselves as Makumbaro, Wangazija, Waarabu, Wapemba or Waswahili.10 All informants are Muslims; the majority are Sunni Muslims, but some are Shia Muslim. Although Sunni and Shia each relates in part to a different theological discourse with regard to the status of spirits and the rituals performed on their behalf, both participate in ngoma ya sheitani. In this society, women and men from all makabila and with all kinds of economic and educational backgrounds may each, during different periods of their lives, become involved with spirits. In Zanzibar Town there are no particular groups or categories of people who either become inhabited by spirits or who do not. To embody spirits is not an experience restricted to women or men who on the basis of specialized knowledge can act as spirit-mediums. There is a shared idea that everybody could become inhabited by a spirit. What is discussed is how to relate to the spirits. Whether people become involved with the spirit phenomenon or not depends on the kinds of events or situations that occur in their lives. It seems, however, that the involvement of spirits in everyday-life becomes recognized as acute by both women and men, in situations of social or economic misfortune, when significant relationships are at stake or, when incurable illness becomes part of their lives. This being said, there are, however, people who do not want to participate in the various ngoma ya sheitani as well as those who do not wish to attach themselves to particular ritual groups. These women and men would argue that it is morally unacceptable to accommodate and celebrate the inhabiting spirits – the spirits, they hold, have to be exorcised (tolewa) by a shehe (religious leader) or mwalimu. There are also women and men who argue that although spirits should be accommodated in order to ensure good relationships with the spirits, they will not participate in ngoma ya sheitani. In their opinion these contexts are like parties

Introduction

9

where women and men only pretend that they become inhabited by spirits and make fools of themselves in public. Zanzibaris who hold this opinion of the rituals would rather deal with their spirit in more private settings with the assistance of a ritual leader or a mwalimu at his or her place with only a few close family members present (Larsen 2007). As I have argued elsewhere (Larsen 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001) and will show throughout this book, the spirit phenomenon in Zanzibar Town cannot be considered peripheral; nor are the people who participate in the rituals, either as ritual leaders, members of the ritual group or as audience, to be considered marginal members of society. Moreover, the spirit phenomenon does not exclusively concern women. Rather, women and men participate on an almost equal footing. In addition, the phenomenon of embodying spirits is not, as mentioned above, an exclusive experience, restricted to unique women or men who act as spirit-mediums, but rather something that everyone can expect to experience during their life. The spirits are part of the daily life of women and men, young and old. At this point, I wish to state that in order to protect the cherished privacy and anonymity of the women and men who have welcomed me into their neighbourhoods, houses and lives, I have changed their names and identities whenever necessary.

The fieldwork: ritual participation I was first introduced to the phenomenon of masheitani during a fieldtrip to Zanzibar Town in 1984. In their discussions women and men regularly touched upon the ways and means of the spirits, and I often heard music and songs, which I was told came from various ngoma ya sheitani. But I was not present at any ngoma ya sheitani until I returned to Zanzibar in 1985, to conduct a year of fieldwork. The aim of my fieldwork at that time was not to study the so-called possession phenomenon, but, as the spirits formed part of people’s everyday lives, I continuously overheard discussions about them, and I attended several ngoma ya sheitani. Returning to Zanzibar in 1990, I was again confronted with the presence of spirits in the lives of women and men and the importance they ascribed to ngoma ya sheitani. For instance, one afternoon a young man suddenly came to the house where I was living. He was known to have (kuwa na) a relationship with a spirit called Maimun, who could be called upon (itwa) in situations where the spirit’s advice was needed. I realized that the mother and the elder sister of the household had invited the man, because they wanted to consult his spirit (Maimun) about certain issues. They wanted to ask the spirit about the illness of a family member, its reason and possible cure, and, moreover, whether a coming marriage in the family would be a good one or not. In another situation, when I was discussing the fact that many children are brought up by women other than their biological mother (mama mzazi), a woman told me that she was actually brought up by a spirit called Mkurumpembe. When I asked how this was

10

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

possible, she said that Mkurumpembe was the spirit of her aunt with whom she lived for several years during her childhood. ‘It was the spirit rather than my aunt who actually raised me’, she said. Furthermore, when I visited a woman called Halima, who was ill, her spirit, called Shehe Suleiman, suddenly inhabited her. Halima started coughing and then began to shiver. Her aunt, who was in the room, immediately asked for incense and when it was brought, held the incense jar under Halima’s chin. The spirit, who had now reached Halima’s head, spoke through Halima. He claimed, so that all present in the room could hear him, that he was the reason for her illness. The spirit, Shehe Suleiman, said that he punished his seat (kiti) – that is, Halima – because she had acted arrogantly towards him recently by not attending the various ngoma ya sheitani that had been arranged in the neighbourhood. Now, he said, in a voice heard by everybody present, he would only stop punishing Halima if she promised to perform a ritual on his behalf. Halima’s mother and aunt, who were also in the room, promised on behalf of Halima that the ritual would be performed in due time. During this stay in 1990 I was again present during several rituals, and, having completed my research focusing on the formation of female genderidentity (Larsen 1990), I felt ready to delve into the world of spirits. More importantly, I had become quite familiar with Zanzibari modes of being and with the fact that for them spirits were a part of their daily reality. I knew enough about a Zanzibari way of life to respect the presence of spirits. The act of becoming inhabited by spirits is not perceived as deviant or abnormal; rather, to have (kuwa na) a spirit who inhabits you at will is seen as quite normal. This is a point I find important. For Zanzibaris, the human world is intertwined with the spirit world; in this, they live what most Westerners would probably call a magical-realistic reality. When I returned to Zanzibar Town in 1991, the ethnographic focus of my fieldwork explicitly became the study of masheitani and ngoma ya sheitani. During this period people often asked me if I was not afraid of getting a spirit myself. They said that if I regularly participated in the rituals the spirits might come to like me, and thereby attach themselves to me. ‘You will get a spirit yourself ’, they told me as a warning. In order to stress their point, both women and men would tell me about a foreigner or, rather guest (mgeni), who in the early 1980s had studied ngoma ya sheitani in Zanzibar Town. They claimed that she had had to run away, having been harassed by Christian spirits from Madagascar (masheitani ya kibuki). ‘You know’, women and men told me; ‘spirits are not for fun.’ Spirits are of an ambiguous nature, and relationships between humans and spirits, like the relationships between humans, are associated with happiness and suffering, joy and sorrow, contentment and fear. Both humans and spirits celebrate the state of raha – that is, bliss and contentment in life. I was formally introduced to leaders of various ritual groups (vilinge; sing. kilinge) through a woman called Zainab, whom I had known and spent a lot of time with since 1985. She introduced me to leaders and members of various ritual groups, asking them to welcome me and make me understand the meaning of the spirits and their rituals. Generously, they accepted me – probably more because of

Introduction

11

their relationship with Zainab than for myself alone, or for my research interest. Initially Zainab also introduced me to several specialists on issues related to spirits and matters of illness and health, its causes and cures. In the course of fieldwork I came to know other specialists both through Zainab and through other people I knew. Gradually, I started to attend rituals. The rituals are usually arranged in and around the house of the leader of the ritual group in question. This means that the rituals are actually performed inside the various neighbourhoods in Zanzibar Town and are, practically speaking, easy for everyone to reach and attend. The rituals called ngoma ya sheitani are not exclusive in the sense that only those belonging to a particular ritual group or close relatives of those involved can attend. On the contrary, an audience is expected. Thus there is no secrecy attached to the rituals as such. However, a ritual leader will always have knowledge about how to relate to the spirits that she or he would be very reluctant to share with others. Similarly, members of a ritual group will amongst themselves share knowledge about the remedies appreciated by their particular ‘tribe’ of spirits that they would not share with those who are not part of their group. During ngoma ya sheitani, I participated as part of the audience and sometimes as a friend of the person arranging a ritual on behalf of her or his spirit. Slowly I came to know the incense, music and songs, dressing codes, aesthetic norms and body movements particular to the various kinds of spirits and, thus, the different rituals. With time I could more or less actively partake as an audience member. In contrast to many other persons among the audience, however, I did not regularly experience a spirit climbing to my head (pandwa kichwani). The spirits present interacted with me, greeted me, asked questions, danced with me and offered me incense, their special remedies and medication, food and drinks. Usually I would inquire about various events and incidents during the rituals as well as afterwards and ask both those who had been present as part of the audience, members of the ritual group and the leaders about the events that had taken place. I would also discuss the rituals and events with other people in the audience, and with women and men who had not been present at a particular ritual or who would not, for various reasons, frequent such rituals. In general, I would always discuss spirits, relationships between humans and spirits, and the structure and meaning of rituals with people who attended and with those who did not, as well as with women and men who made a point of not being involved in matters concerning the spirits and their rituals. Most specialists in matters of illness and health (such as waganga and walimu) have knowledge about spirits, and some would also arrange rituals on behalf of spirits in order to cure illness and suffering. I often visited and spent days with different women and men who were considered to be specialists. I was also present during consultations, and I discussed the phenomenon of masheitani, as well as matters of illness and health, suffering and bliss, relationships between humans and spirits, and the presence of God, with the specialists and their ‘patients’. The specialists on their side shared their knowledge with me, as much as they thought possible and advisable. The patients told me about their problems

12

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

and the cures they went through – at least, those which they were willing to share. Both the leaders and the members of ritual groups I knew, as well as the specialists in matters of health and illness, claimed that I, like most people, had several spirits. They all advised me to arrange rituals on behalf of my spirits and, thus, to welcome them. Only then, they explained, would the spirits really assist me in life. I was reluctant to do this, and I have constantly postponed the arrangement of these rituals. One may then ask – what am I afraid of? As time went by I came to accept the reality of spirits, a point that may illustrate the extent to which the phenomenon of masheitani permeates Zanzibari reality. During the fieldwork, both people and spirits challenged me regularly. Let me explain through an illustration. During a ritual called ngoma ya kibuki – a ritual performed on behalf of Christian spirits from Madagascar, called masheitani ya kibuki – the spirit named Ndamarufali, who had embodied a woman called Bi Fatima, came over to where I was sitting and put a khanga over my head. Then the spirit Ndamarufali took the censer, held it under my chin and, while holding one hand on top of my head, started to move my body in a circle. This is known as one way to call upon spirits in order to get them to inhabit people. As this was happening I began to tremble, and one of my legs started to move to the rhythm of the music in the way special to the movements of spirits of this kind. At the same time I felt what I afterwards conceptualized as a sort of sadness, as if everything that was going on around me was happening far away. Suddenly the spirit Ndamarufali moved away from me, and after a short while I returned to my former state. Afterwards I was told by people present that a sheitani ya kibuki had passed through my body (pitia), although the spirit had not risen to my head. They asked me how I had experienced this, and when I told them how I had felt in this situation they confirmed that this was exactly how one feels when one is about to be inhabited by a spirit. By this time, I had become accustomed to Zanzibari ways of describing various states of body and mind related to the process of being inhabited by spirits. By describing my physical and mental state of being through a Zanzibari vocabulary referring to emotional states, I received reactions that to a certain extent may, of course, have shaped my own experience of what happened. This experience resembles the relatively early discussion of possession by Alfred Métraux in Le Vaudou Haïtien (1968) where he describes the potent connection and interaction between the spectator and the participants, the audience and the performers, and argues that what both the audience and the performers experience in the wider ritual context, with regard to shifting states of body and mind, is closely interlinked. During another ritual, also performed on behalf of Christian spirits from Madagascar, I was told by various women present that it had become absolutely clear to them that I was inhabited by a sheitani ya kibuki. These spirits, being Christian, drink a lot of brandy when they celebrate. They also give out brandy to people present whom they like, and who have to accept the brandy given to them by spirits. The spirits drink brandy from cups, and the people to whom they

Introduction

13

offer brandy have to drink it all immediately. This being a lavish celebration, I received a lot to drink from various spirits. After a while the ritual leader told me to approach her. I went over to where she was sitting and, as expected of me, kneeled in front of her. She put a khanga over my head, held the censer under my chin, put her hand on top of my head and moved my body in a circle. After a short while I fell to the floor and resumed awareness only when one of the other women present poured the medical water belonging to these spirits in my face. Thereafter, two other women brought me to the back yard, where they poured more of this special water on my head. By then I had a terrible headache and felt drunk, and Zainab brought me home and I went to bed and fell asleep. When I eventually woke up, I felt more or less like I have in other situations when I have had too much alcohol to drink. As I slowly recovered, several people who had been present at the ritual told me that it was now absolutely clear that I had a sheitani ya kibuki. The reason that I fell to the floor when the ritual leader had called on my spirit was that the spirit had risen to my head and then left again. I answered that, in my opinion, I had reacted in the way I did because I had drunk too much brandy too early in the morning. However, it was explained that ‘this time a spirit was in your head and when the spirit left she or he did not take the brandy with her or him. The spirit wanted to teach you manners (alikutia adabu), because you think the phenomenon of masheitani is only fun.’ Saying this they were implying that I did not understand that the phenomenon of masheitani also concerns responsibilities and the process of establishing relationships. Furthermore, I was told: You believe this thing happened to you just because you were drunk. But you fell down when the ritual leader was calling on your spirit. It was because of the spirit that you fell to the floor. Other times when you have been drinking during these rituals you have not reacted like this, nor have you become drunk, or the drunkenness has disappeared when dawa (medication in this context referring to the special water)11 has been poured on your head (kogeshwa) and the spirit has left. Those times the spirit took the brandy with her or him when leaving and not like this time when the spirit decided to leave the brandy in your head in order to teach you a lesson (atcha ulewi kichwani chako kukutia adabu).

Thus the acceptable conclusion of this event seemed to be that my being affected by the alcohol during this ritual was not because of my drinking too much, too early; rather, it was the spirits who had made me react in the way I did. People make a clear distinction between human beings (wanadamu) and spirits as well as between a person (mtu) and a spirit. The body of a person may be inhabited and used by a spirit, but the spirit and the person are never intentionally confused. Through the phenomenon of masheitani, familiar bodies are transformed into physical expressions of foreign personalities. Women and men easily recognize a spirit when they see or feel one. They also know when a spirit is passing through a body. In the previous example, I provided a different explanation for my reactions, one which they would not accept. They knew that

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Where Humans and Spirits Meet

a spirit had passed through and, later on, that a spirit had climbed to my head. Thus, people had verified what they already knew: namely that I had at least one, if not several, spirits. But how did they know? First of all, they suspected it because they know that most people do have a spirit. Second, their suspicion was based on their general knowledge of the spirits’ behaviour and their attraction towards humans. Third, they knew from my bodily and mental reactions whether I was actually approached by spirits. Fourth, they recognized it through my explanations of how I felt. By observing me and listening to how I described my state of mind and body, they recognized and explained something about me that I myself did not realize – or at least not in their way. They rejected my explanation about having had too much to drink. This also illustrates the fact that relationships between humans and spirits are perceived to change over time; the relationship between a person and her or his spirit is not static. In my case, the spirit had suddenly decided that it was time to teach me a lesson. Thus, the spirit made me suffer. The explanation for my misery is related to an understanding that spirits may actually inflict illness or sufferings on humans in order to make their demands clear and acted upon. Human beings and spirits exist within the same space; they communicate and they understand each other. On the one hand, spirits know the ways of humans; they know how to get people to act and react, as they want. On the other hand, humans possess the ability to understand spirits: their actions, reactions and intentions. I suggest that the phenomenon of masheitani concomitantly opens up and controls people’s experience of the world, of other people, of themselves and their place in the world, and of the other. It allows for the coexistence of contradictions, ambiguities and paradoxes, and provides contexts where people present, represent and construct moral meanings. At this point, a discussion of performance, ritual and the relationship between ritual and everyday life will perhaps clarify the theoretical considerations that support my further approaches and discussions.

Performance, meaning and reflexivity In order to grasp central aspects of the phenomenon of masheitani in Zanzibar Town, I draw interchangeably on material from both everyday and ritual life. Throughout the discussion I maintain the indigenous categorization between ngoma ya sheitani as rituals and all other encounters between human and spirits as part of everyday life. When spirits reveal themselves in contexts of everyday life, the transformation is handled by the people present in prescribed, although quite informal, ways, whereas the rituals are spectacular events, marked off spatially and temporally as special. The rituals performed on behalf of spirits appear to be relatively autonomous and different from the ways of daily life, yet the themes referred to during rituals concern women’s and men’s experiences from everyday life. Spirits will, for instance, bring up issues and events taking place in the lives

Introduction

15

of their human seat as well as those concerning other people present. In this sense, humans and spirits are chained together in everyday as well as in ritual life. Ngoma ya sheitani are ritual through which illness and suffering are healed, and harmony and happiness are restored in the lives of those concerned. But the ritual is also a setting where relationships between humans, between spirits, between humans and spirits, and humans, spirits and God are portrayed and problematized – it is, in Victor Turner’s words, a social drama. Ngoma ya sheitani, then, are events where people may reflect upon their own reality in the sense that the unseen and implicit, that which is not defined and talked about, but sensed, in everyday life, is actualized. This is possible because human beings and spirits, although they are different kinds of beings, move within the same moral and aesthetic universe. During rituals humans and spirits interact on the spirits’ terms. This implies that certain distinctions celebrated in the human world are to be openly transgressed, while others are actually emphasized. In the ritual instance, the spirit world is merged with the human world, and people can see themselves in opposition to the spirits but they can also recognize themselves in the spirits. The rituals can be seen as social dramas where plural reflexivity, i.e., the ways in which a group or community seeks to portray, understand, and then act on itself, may take place (Turner 1977: 33). Meanings are generated in social space through performance. The participants are engaged in the interactional creation of what can be called a ‘performance reality’. Ritual and genres of cultural performance are in Victor Turner’s words ‘magical mirrors of social reality: they exaggerate, invert, reform, magnify, minimize, de-colour, re-colour, even deliberately falsify, chronicled events’ (1987: 42). Rituals are rendered meaningful because in one way or another they concern aspects of everyday life. Performance is a fundamental dimension of any culture and important in the production of knowledge about culture. Performance is not simply about learning cultural rules by routine; it is about coming to an understanding of social distinctions through the body (Bourdieu 1977). Thus, performance may represent one way of grasping the construction of difference as well as the inscription of difference in human bodies. Furthermore, through performance people may both enact and extend their knowledge about difference and sameness, about who they are or are not, and about various others. In ngoma ya sheitani, the behaviour of spirits is concomitantly characterized by its similarity to human behaviour and by its transgressions of significant distinctions, such as that between concealment and disclosure. The difference between humans and spirits is one of excess rather than reversal. As such, parody seems to play an important part in ngoma ya sheitani. Linda Hutcheon defines parody not in terms of satire but rather as repetition with critical distance (Hutcheon 1985: 6), where difference is marked through similarities or resemblance. She claims that parody is always intended and that the intention is to parody certain conventions. Thus in order to parody one has to recognize this intention and possess the capacity to identify the reference that will make the

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Where Humans and Spirits Meet

parody understood as such (ibid.). In the case of the Zanzibari spirit phenomenon, I am reluctant to ascribe clear intentions to either the spirits’ actions or people’s relations with spirits. At the same time, I hold that both the spirits’ doings and sayings, and the interactions between human beings and spirits, may appear to people present as a parody of human life. Moreover, important in rituals is the dimension of play, which makes possible communication about how reality could have been different (Hutcheon 1985; Kapferer 1986). Rituals may give the participants a possibility of experiencing ‘reality’ in the sense that people reflect on other contexts of meaning in the performance setting and in the social and cultural world out of which the ritual emerges. As such, performances form part of the language of aesthetics.

Ritual, communication and enactment To embody a spirit can be described as a performative and physical form of othering. The body becomes both a focus for difference and also a locus for the articulation of difference and sameness. The opposition between self and other becomes apparent through the art of mimesis. Human bodies become the seat of the other and as human bodies perform, the other may appear. Performance theorists argue that what ritual does is communicate, and it is through this function that ritual indirectly affects social relations and perception of realities. It is, however, more appropriate to say that ritual or, also, ritualized enactment includes communication. This implies that the purpose of ritual is not necessarily: ‘to communicate or express ideas to people, who already know them, and from whom, rather than from the ritual itself, the anthropologist in practice learns them’ (Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994: 73). Rituals do not only express aspects of reality; through performance reality is negotiated. Rituals provide a basis for dialogue and reflection, and therefore make possible negotiations about a common understanding of social reality. The ritual elements of improvisation and play form an important part of this process of negotiation. As mentioned the purpose of ngoma ya sheitani is not communication as such; the purpose is healing, in the broad sense of the term. Yet, the ritual includes communication between human beings and spirits. At another level, the ritual makes possible also communication and exchange of ideas between humans and spirits, between members of a ritual group and the audience, as well as between the different participants; it offers a presentation and representation of the lives and ways of others. Moreover, different moral norms and various forms of communication characterize dailylife and rituals involving spirits: ngoma ya sheitani make different dimensions of women’s and men’s lived reality and experience available, both to the anthropologist and to people themselves – although in different ways. Rituals are special forms of social actions which go beyond ordinary form of communication and, with respect to ngoma ya sheitani, include an explicit focus on aesthetics and body language – that is, mimesis in the sense of an active

Introduction

17

representation based on a knowing subject (Benjamin 1955; Taussig 1993)12 and what Judith Butler (1988) calls performative acts. A performance-based perspective is useful when approaching Zanzibari discourses through the spirit phenomenon. I adopt Judith Butler’s argument on the performative aspect of gender (Butler 1988, 1993, 2006). Rather than seeing acts and gestures as expressive of gender, gender reality is, according to Butler, performative (1988: 527). Following Butler (2006: 185), sexual differences should be understood as the outcome of the performance of sexual distinctions. The body, in addition to being a locus of sexual differences, is also a vehicle for performing sexual distinctions. Similarly the body may become the vehicle for performing other significant differences such as, in Zanzibar, those related to kabila. Performance acts may either conform to or contest the expectations which are grounded in perceptions of, in the case of gender, sex understood as primary sexual characteristics (Butler 1988). Through the phenomenon where gendered spirits are inhabiting sexed bodies, ambiguities inherent in understandings of gender and gender distinctions are disclosed. Gender and gender distinctions are then represented both as grounded in the physical differences of female and male bodies and as culturally constructed. The sexual differences of spirits are disembodied as well as what is perceived as different distinctions associated with kabila and yet are immediately recognized by human beings through the spirits’ transformations of human bodies by means of aesthetics. The fact that a female body when inhabited by a male spirit may be perceived as a male body illustrates to what extent differences are symbolically elaborated. In other words, the concepts of man and woman and categorizations referring to kabila carry a load of meaning with referents which are much wider and more abstract than the facts of a mere human physiology.

Knowledge, experience and forms negotiation Within ritual, emotions and discourses on emotions are part of the language through which transformations are marked. In general usage emotion, or affect, appears as something inherently complex: it involves both meaning and feeling. Emotions, or affects, are subjective experiences that necessarily involve typical kinds of physical feelings and cultural meanings. As knowledgeable and reflective actors, people engage creatively with the world and, as Catherine Lutz and Geoffrey White argue, emotion concepts are likely to be actively used in the negotiation of social reality. Emotions may represent a critical link in the cultural interpretation of action (see Lutz & White 1986) and between categories of people and classes of beings, e.g., female and male, old and young, humans and spirits. The semantic uses of the body and of the space in which it moves are important dimensions in studies of emotions, which also have bearing on my analysis of the phenomenon of masheitani and ngoma ya sheitani. Acting, dancing and moving represent symbolic transformations of human experience,

18

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

but if the code of the body language is not apprehended, the empirically perceived messages will be misunderstood. In ritual contexts the behaviour of spirits is evaluated on the basis of their emotional expressions such as bodily movements, facial expressions and dance.13 Moreover, the meanings assigned to aesthetic representations are not intrinsic, but depend on the meanings that are assigned or associated with various bodily movements and facial expressions in different sociocultural contexts (Hanna 1988). Body language, as we conceive of it, is not a function of the individual mover or dancer; it is a shared language about experience – that is, experience not only as thought but also as sensation and perception (see Merleau-Ponty 1962). Dance and bodily movements are in addition to gestures, music, graphic representations, painting, sculpture, and the fashioning of symbolic objects important within the ritual communicative system through which a group communicates about itself (Turner 1977). Foucault (1977, 1985) reminds us about the primacy of practice over belief. Our bodies are trained, shaped, and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity and femininity: not chiefly through ideology, but through the organization and regulation of the time, space and movements of our daily lives. In the process of being inhabited by spirits, people can observe the distinction between self and other and experience otherness in relation to gender, ‘tribe’ and religion. Through mimesis understood as a creative process, people may actually become transformed into the other. As Taussig, following Benjamin (1955), argues: ‘the ability to mime and to mime well, is the capacity to other’ (Taussig 1993: 19). Kramer, using the term mimesis in a discussion about spirit possession phenomena, claims that people, through the process of mimesis, become moved by their knowledge of the other. They become, he argues, moved by it to the extent of becoming bodily possessed (Kramer 1993: 60–69). Involved in this movement – both in the sense of being moved and in understanding the process of transformation – are, precisely, aspects of aesthetics, body language, emotional concepts and the senses. Physical senses and thus sensual experiences are essential in the process of transformation whereby humans become inhabited by spirits. In order to call spirits and to make them happy, Zanzibaris appeal to the spirits’ sensory experiences: sight, through colours, jewellery and flowers; flavour, by serving and consuming food and drink; sound, through flattering words and use of special formulas and terms as well as certain sorts of instruments, music and songs; and smell, through the use of incense and flowers, rosewater, perfume and aromatic oils. Smell, sight, taste and sound involve aesthetics, and aesthetics carry the potential for crossing barriers and invoking transformations. It is through a focus on aesthetics that the world of experience and meaning takes form and can potentially be transformed (Sørum 1991). Concentrating on sensory experiences, processes of transformation that are essential to a ritual context can, according to Paul Stoller, be made visible and social memory evoked (1989, 1995).

Introduction

19

The ritual frameworks that actually mark and define the context establish certain ways to interpret unfolding enactments, even though meaning and experience related to the senses are not always shared by the participants. Rituals do not necessarily evoke feelings or express the mental orientation of individuals in any sort of direct and spontaneous way. But the ritual framework may enable a certain desired transformation by creating an appropriate, authoritative occasion for it: that which remains implicit, although sensed in everyday life, should be actualized within the framework of the ritual. Through ritual, more implicit aspects of everyday life may be revealed both to the participants and the audience as well as to the anthropologist. Yet the ritual performance can best be understood when related to and seen in the light of the everyday life of women and men. Rituals are rendered meaningful because in one way or another they concern aspects of everyday life.14 In ngoma ya sheitani, the behaviour of spirits is concomitantly characterized by its similarity to human behaviour and by its transgressions of significant distinctions, such as that between concealment and disclosure. The ritual elements of improvisation, parody and play make possible a process of reflection and enactment. Improvisation requires, however, a mastery of body codes together with the skills to intervene in them and to transform them. Whenever improvisation is a performative strategy in ritual, it places ritual within the domain of play. It is the playing and the improvising that engage people and that generate simultaneous discourses, which oscillate between states of harmony and disharmony, order and disorder (Drewal 1992). At this juncture the importance of excitement and joy, as well as humour, becomes apparent (Lambek 1981). Being aware that women and men in most societies have different experiences and positions within a given life-world, it is important to consider how and in what ways gender makes a difference and is inscribed in ritual organization and experience. This means that in order to render women and men’s symbolic communication meaningful, the messages have to be examined in relation to their respective experiences, activities and positions outside contexts marked by more sophisticated communication associated with ritual life. Rituals order and communicate experience with reference to social ideals and values and in this process they may also be reconsidered. Before pursuing these themes, I will present the organization of the book.

The book In the second chapter, I give a brief introduction to Zanzibar and Zanzibar Town and thus what characterizes this particular place and life-world. I draw some lines from the past to the present so as to set the significance of kabila in perspective and also to discuss more recent political and socioeconomic changes showing how these have influenced peoples’ lives and how people perceive society and their position within it. The chapter also briefly discusses gender – a prevalent

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Where Humans and Spirits Meet

distinction in society. As gender is a significant dimension of social organization, I go on to exemplify the extent to which a gender dimension influences ritual participation and is inherent in perceptions of knowledge (elimu, maarifa) and being knowledgeable (mwenye elimu; mwenye maarifa). Chapter 3 gives an account of the possession phenomenon and the spirits’ position within this particular Muslim universe. The chapter elaborates how and why the spirits are perceived as beings of this world as well as exploring the social, physical and emotional complexity inherent in the relationship between humans and spirits. Ending the chapter I provide a description of how spirits are experienced. The story of a woman called Fatma Abdirahman serves to illustrate to what extent humans and spirits are interlinked and thus, may influence each others’ lives. Although spirits adhere to certain distinctions celebrated by human beings, they also challenge others such as those referring to gender, knowledge and authority. Chapter 4 concerns the importance of difference and notions of conformity. The thrust of my argument lies in discussing the perceived distinctions between different so-called ‘tribes’ of spirits, and how these are articulated and understood. I am also interested in ideas concerning the similarities and conformity inherent in the construction of difference. My aim is to illustrate how the articulation of distinctions among the spirits evokes images of distinctions in the Zanzibari society. The phenomenon of masheitani represents, I argue, a possibility through which people may experience otherness, both on an individual level and on the level of society. The spirits, however, also interfere in and influence the lives, relationships and, thus, the well-being of human beings. In Chapter 5, I analyse the healing aspects in my description of spirits and their rituals. Although the healing aspects are not a particular focus of this book, they are the explicit concern for the people involved. Hence, I explain how spirits are approached in order to facilitate communication and to ensure that people have some influence on the spirits’ demands. In order to demonstrate the extent to which the rituals are about healing, I present a case history. Still the fact that the spirits are considered to belong to different makabila and, moreover, that distinctions are made between humans and spirits, also turn the rituals into a presentation as well as a representation of Zanzibari perceptions of difference both between self and other and self and non-self. This latter point, in addition to the dimension of healing, is elaborated in this chapter. In Chapter 6, I explore how people experience the phenomenon of embodying spirits – the sharing of the body and discriminations made between humans and spirits. I illustrate how people articulate their experiences with the spirits with reference to the physical body and the importance of distinguishing between the person whose body is inhabited and the spirit who, for a certain period of time, is using and controlling this body. Considering the degree to which people underscore the distinction between people and spirits, I examine their relationships with spirits and include in this examination their perceptions of self-control (jizuia) and good manner (adabu) – perceptions that are also related to gender.

Introduction

21

In Chapter 7, I examine what can be denoted as a Zanzibari gender system. I discuss the expectations associated with women and men in this society, and focus on gender differences associated with the established gender images. Then, I turn to observed transgressions of the very same images. The focus is on sexuality, authority and conduct with respect to ideas of strength (nguvu) and selfcontrol (jizuia). These notions, I argue, are particularly elaborated in rituals performed on behalf of Christian spirits from Madagascar – which will be the focal point of the following chapter. In Chapter 8, I concentrate on a ritual performed on behalf of Christian spirits from Madagascar (ngoma ya kibuki). In this society, where ngoma ya sheitani is performed by both women and men together, I have chosen to discuss the one kind of ritual performed primarily by women. The reason for my choice is that ngoma ya kibuki is the only ritual where the spirits appear as married couples. I argue that the ritual ngoma ya kibuki represents both an ideal image of Zanzibari gender ideology and a dramatic rehearsal of the contradictions within it. It seems that humans and spirits move together at the interface between the physical body and the idiom of aesthetics and performative acts. As the description of this ritual reveals, when it comes to the question of who is representing whom, one may sometimes be left in a state of some confusion. Chapter 9, as a conclusion, discusses to what extent living in a multicultural and sex-segregated environment may provoke ideas of the other and experiences of otherness. I explore the question of the other, the experience of otherness, and the ways in which the phenomenon of masheitani is involved in this problem, both directly and indirectly. Through the phenomenon of masheitani, where human bodies are perceived as the seat for both a human self and a spirit self – of both self and other – ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in life as lived are presented and represented, being first negotiated and then acknowledged. As different beings acting, reacting and enacting in this world humans and spirits comment upon each other. The presence of spirits forces people to face central concerns in their lives such as sexuality, religious ideas and practices as well as identity matters. It concerns, as I will demonstrate throughout this book, relations that are constitutive of society.

Notes 1. The term kabila (pl. makabila) is translated locally as well as in Swahili – English dictionaries into tribe or population. Currently, ‘tribe’ is seen as a colonial-rooted term; inaccurate and old-fashioned having colonialist connotations. Thus, in order not to create any unnecessary misunderstandings, I will mainly use the vernacular term kabila (pl. makabila) when referring to this distinction people use about themselves and spirits, but sometimes and, when appropriate, I will also apply the local translation ‘tribe’. In everyday-life, Zanzibaris use the term kabila as a categorical distinction about themselves and about spirits. The term is used in order to differentiate between themselves

22

2.

3. 4.

5.

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

with reference to places of origin beyond Zanzibar. This implies an understanding that most Zanzibaris are ‘originally’ not from the island itself, but that their ancestors have, at a certain point in history, arrived from other places, settled in Zanzibar and, then, become Zanzibaris. ‘Tribe’, in this meaning, should not be assumed to carry the same meaning as the term constructed by colonial governments (see Middleton 1992: VIII). Zanzibaris constantly refer to their own kabila as well as that of others. Still, this does not necessarily imply the presence of an ‘inferior’ form of political organization, a political system of ‘tribalism’ or a political process based on ethnic groups, ethnic differentiation and explicitly formulated group interests. Zanzibaris refer to themselves as belonging to different makabila, locally translated into ‘tribes’. The translation of kabila into tribe probably refers to an idea of having occupied a specific geographic territory in the past and of sharing in life-style, customs and habits. However, they also recognize themselves as belonging to a general category of Zanzibaris and, in other situations, as Tanzanians. The various makabila or ‘tribes’ should rather be seen as a form of subgroups of the general category Zanzibaris, whose members share common cultural elements such as language and religious beliefs. Among scholars who have worked in the coastal region of Eastern Africa some refer to kabila as ‘tribe’ while others use ‘ethnic group’ or ‘ethnic origins’ or, even, clan. For instance, while Johan Middleton (1992) and Kelly Askew (2002) prefer ethnic origin, clan or ethnic group, Fritz Kramer (1993) uses tribe, especially, when he refers to local classifications of spirits in Swahili societies. In her discussion of how to refer to local classification in Madagascar, Leslie Sharp notices the problem of translating the relevant vernacular terms ‘ethnie’ or ‘tribu’ into ethnic group and reminds us that ‘the concept of ethnicity is one of perspective and scale’ (Sharp 1996: 53). Merleau-Ponty rejects Descartes’ dualism and rationalism, which disqualifies our bodies from the process through which we come to know ourselves, each other and the world. He writes that ‘bodily experience forces us to acknowledge an imposition of meaning which is not the work of a universal constituting consciousness, a meaning which clings to certain contents (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 147). Other important works by Judith Butler to be consulted are Gender Trouble, 3 ed. (2006) and Bodies that Matter (1993). Another term used about embodiment, when regarded as an existential condition, is ‘bodiliness’ (Csordas 1994: 4). According to Thomas J. Csordas, the term bodiliness may become too static as it does not imply the directionality of the ‘something else.’ Csordas prefers a phenomenological perspective based on Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the ‘living body’ to bodiliness, as a basis for expanding the meaning inherent in the concept embodiment. Moreover, Thomas Ots (1994: 116–118) argues that ‘living body’ is tied to the German concept Leib, while bodiliness bears similarities to the concept Körper. Both terms refer to the body. Körper takes its root from the Latin corpus and refers to the structural aspects of the body or also the objectified body – even the dead body or corpse. Leib refers to the living body, to the body with feelings, sensations, perceptions and emotions; it refers to the body as individual. Leib connotes an awareness of life in which perceptions and feelings, emotions and the evolving thoughts and considerations are all intimately grounded (ibid). A body of the anthropological literature on the self draws, explicitly or implicitly, on the work of George Herbert Mead in Mind, Self and Society (1934), where he examines the nature of self-consciousness. Mead emphasized the human capacity for self-awareness, the ability to distinguish self from other and the apprehension for self-continuity, as universal

Introduction

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

23

attributes. Still, this does not imply anything about the various understandings of the self that are prevalent in particular cultures and societies (Moore 1994b). For instance, the degree to which the so-called mind is separated from the body and the manner in which enactment and motivation are seen as arising internally or externally to the self varies. Concepts like the conscious and unconscious may also be perceived as culturally specific, as can ideas about the bounded and unitary character of the self. Erika Bourguignon has found that ninety per cent of all societies have some sort of institutionalized culturally patterned forms of altered states of consciousness and that fifty-two per cent of these are associated with spirit possession (Bourguignon 1979, 1973 in Crapanzano and Garrison 1977). Ioan Lewis’ (1966, 1969, 1971, 1990) perspective on spirit possession as a strategy used by the powerless to achieve goals when they lack access to legitimately available means and resources has inspired excellent studies of spirit possession phenomena in relation to considerations of power, whether domestic conflict or resistance to colonial and imperial domination (Fry 1976; Lan 1986; Sharp 1993), or in terms of social roles and functions, including the therapeutic role of possession (Karp 1991; Spring 1978) or, also, as significant events explaining causes and treatment of psychosocial stress rooted in, for instance, women’s domestic roles (Smith 1954; Caplan 1975; Strobel 1979; Constandinides 1977, 1982). According to Fritz Kramer, ‘a generally recognized difference of some sort between the portrayer and the portrayed is a prerequisite for mimetic behaviour’ (1993: 250). I have conducted fieldwork in Zanzibar since 1984 and have stayed there for periods of varying lengths lasting from between one to three months and up till one year at the time; 1984, 1985–1986, 1990, 1991–1992, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2006. Makumbaro are from Kutch in Gujerat (the term -kumbaro indicates that they originate from a caste who were said to be that of potters, that is, kumbar). Wangazija come from the Comoro Islands. Waarabu are from Arabia, and Wapemba are people from the island of Pemba. The term Waswahili usually denotes people of an unspecified African descent. The term dawa when used in relation to curing, healing or processes of mending something or someone, in a Swahili speaking context, it usually means medicine, medicament, anything supplied by a doctor including traditional health care providers. In daily life it can also be used to refer to that which sooths, for instance, desire or greed, or as an agent to cause harm or also, in general, about that which causes an effect. Concerning possible effects caused by external agencies, mental illness is often suspected to have been caused by someone reading Halbadiri, a liturgical invocation usually used to destroy a person who has wronged the one doing the reading. When Halbadiri is read, the person whom the reader intends to harm will be affected only if she/he is guilty. Halbadiri incorporates passages from the Qur’an, and the names of the participants at the Battle of Badr. The power involved in the reading is said to be that of the angels, whose intervention was decisive in assuring victory when Prophet Mohammed and his followers went to war against the nonbelievers at Badr. However, the term dawa or in Arabic, dawah, has a wide range of meanings, especially within Islamic theological discourse, where it refers to the responsibility to ‘invite’ all into the way of Islam or also the Islamic cause. Spirit possession forms part of a mimetic faculty (Benjamin 1955; Taussig 1993; Kramer 1993; Stoller 1995). Through mimesis understood as a creative process, rather than as a kind of neutral imitation, people may become transformed into the other. Generally, emotions have been understood as psychological processes that respond to cross-cultural environmental differences but retain a robust essence, untouched by

24

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

cultural or social factors. Many anthropologists have questioned this position (Rosaldo 1980; Howell 1989; Abu-Lughod 1986; Lutz 1988; Lutz & Abu-Lughod 1990). Lutz and White (1986) argue that emotion concepts are likely to be actively used in the negotiation of social reality. Emotions, they suggest, may represent a critical link in the cultural interpretation of action, and between categories of people and classes of beings. 14. Caroline Walker Bynum (1986) argues that universally women during rituals examine their position in the world. According to this perspective, women’s rituals should, universally speaking, be seen as a reflection of experiences in everyday life (Keyes 1986).

2 INTRODUCTION TO ZANZIBAR: THE PLACE, ITS POLITICS AND ORGANIZATION

I will in the following chapter give a brief introduction to Zanzibar and Zanzibar Town and to the historical and social processes which are relevant in this context. I shall stress the underpinning importance of ideas of kabila and gender in this society – ideas which are closely tied to the conceptualization of difference and thus, to the distinction between self and other. But let me start with Zanzibar as a place. Zanzibar forms part of the wider Swahili coast, which runs from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique.1 Situated in the Indian Ocean about 40 km from the Tanzanian mainland, Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous polity in the United Republic of Tanzania that consists of two main islands – Unguja, with a population close to 650,000, and Pemba, with a population of 350,000 – and some smaller islands, the biggest among them being Tumbatu.2 Zanzibar Town, with a population of about 200,000, is situated on the island of Unguja. It is divided into Ng’ambo and Mji Mkongwe or Stone Town, which used to be the seat of the former Sultan of Zanzibar. Stone Town stands on a peninsula; most of the lagoon was filled in many years ago, so that only a creek separates Stone Town from the main body of the island. Today Stone Town is cut off from the main body of the island by wider asphalt roads and relatively heavy traffic. Ng’ambo stretches out in a wide radius on the other side of the creek or, rather, the road. When in Zanzibar, I have lived in Ng’ambo – in a neighbourhood called Vikokotoni. Most of Zanzibar Town’s inhabitants live in Ng’ambo – only about 15,000 live in Stone Town itself. Stone Town was previously mainly inhabited by wealthy people of Arab and Indian decent, while Ng’ambo, meaning ‘the other side of the Stone Town’ was to a large extent inhabited by people of African descent, but who were not necessarily poor.3 Nowadays, the population of both Stone Town and Ng’ambo is mixed in relation to decent and socioeconomic position.

26

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

Both Stone Town and Ng’ambo present a maze of narrow and crooked alleys running between houses, twisting and turning this way and that. The houses are so close together that you can touch both sides of the street at the same time. The houses in Ng’ambo are mainly single storey with fenced or enclosed courtyards and baraza. Most of the houses in Zanzibar Town are built from limestone or cement, but in Ng’ambo there are also houses built of mud (udonge) and wooden poles (fito). Most of the houses have a walled courtyard (uwanja).4 The buildings in Stone Town have three, four and even five stories, are mainly built of limestone (although some newly built houses use cement) and have the huge carved wooden doors that are typical of the Swahili coast. The ground floor is often a workshop, a shop or a restaurant. In Stone Town one gets the impression that the four- and sometimes five-story buildings are very old, but in fact they are not. None of the houses with the heavy carved doors, fine courtyards and archways is more than approximately 150 years old. Originally, the houses were flat-roofed, but nowadays they are covered with corrugated iron sheets and with various constructions added comparatively recently, so that from the air the city has the look of a shanty town strewn with minarets from the many mosques as well as spires from the Anglican and the Roman Catholic cathedrals. Stone Town is still the city centre with the town’s administration, embassies, hotels and guest-houses, banks, ministries, cinemas, mosques – almost fifty mosques in all – as well as two churches and three Hindu temples. Stone Town is also the location of many of the town’s schools, and four times a day the streets in Stone Town are flooded with children in school uniforms.5 Many of the more recent tourist hotels and guesthouses as well as restaurants and cafés are to be found inside Stone Town, which is also the main shopping area, although its main street extends beyond the area called Darajani and into Ng’ambo. The divide between a Stone Town and a Ng’ambo characterizes Swahili urbanity from Lamu to Kilwa. The duality is firmly rooted in the historical-material context of mercantilism and plantation slavery (Sheriff 1987; Middleton 1992; Penrad 1995; Myers 1995; Glassman 1995) and is usually seen as a matter of, as Pouwels puts it, a difference between the haves and the haves not – the basic division in coastal town society (Pouwels 1987). Still, in Zanzibar this distinction was never clear cut.

A view of the past and the present During the nineteenth century Europeans came in increasing numbers to trade in the Indian Ocean, and Zanzibar became an international port of call.6 Explorations and caravan trade with slaves and ivory expanded into the interior of Africa. The slave trade, which initially was on a small scale, increased markedly, both for export and for domestic labour to work the newly established plantations in Zanzibar and other places along the coast. Around 1840, the then Sultan of Muscat and Oman moved his capital to Zanzibar Town and established the Zanzibar Sultanate.7 When the Zanzibari Sultanate became a British protectorate

Introducing Zanzibar

27

in 1890, the Sultan was still recognized as the legitimate ruler of an Arab state. Encouraged by the Sultan, a period of extensive immigration followed. Merchants, craftsmen and builders from Gujarat in India and Hadhramaut in Yemen came to settle on the coast and established expanding businesses. The variety of nationalities in Zanzibar Town must have been quite great at the beginning of the twentieth century. There were merchants from many parts of Asia and traders and fishermen from the Hadrahmaut, Madagascar and the Comoros. People from the Comoros had also come to Zanzibar as Islamic scholars and later, as civil servants in the colonial administration. There were Somalis and Ethiopians working as cattlekeepers and headservants, and peoples from what are now Malawi, Mozambique and Zaire as well as mainland Tanzania: Makua, Yao, Ngindo, Zigula, Saramo, Gogo. Gradually, both the free population and the then slave population became part of a sociocultural universe where Islam represented the ideals and values of an encompassing life style. With time, a unique lifestyle has emerged, distinctly Afro-Arabic, Islamic8 and urban and, yet, notions of makabila remain significant.

Identity, social privileges and political reorganization A categorization of the population according to perceived place of origin carries both political and social significance. During the period of British rule (1890–1963), Zanzibar remained a state where the power of an Arab landowning class was encouraged (Othman 1980). Until 1964 the official categorization of Zanzibaris according to places of origin matched, to a large extent, socioeconomic categories. Generally speaking, landowners and plantation owners and holders of higher positions within the state bureaucracy, dominating the political arena, were Arabs from Oman (Wamanga). Merchants and moneylenders, but also some landowners and holders of positions within the state bureaucracy, were Asians (Wahindi). Slaves on the plantations or in the homes of Arab and Asian families had African origins (Waswahili). When slavery was abolished in 1907, former slaves became workers on the clove plantations, servants, manual workers, peasants or fishermen together with immigrants from the mainland. But there were also Zanzibaris who had never been slaves yet who found themselves on the outskirts of this system. Among these were the Washirazi, who claimed to be descendants of early immigrants from Persia, and the Wahadimu, who are said to be the indigenous Zanzibaris together with the Watumbatu, who are from the island Tumbatu. There were also the Washihiri, whose origin was Hadhramaut in Yemen and who, in contrast to those denoted as Arabs from Oman (Wamanga), were neither landowners nor part of the political elite but rather peasants, fishermen and petty traders. When Zanzibar gained independence from Britain in December 1963, the Sultan remained the constitutional monarch of Zanzibar. Independence neither represented an institutional change (Bennett 1978; Lofchie 1970) nor

28

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

transformed Zanzibar into a more African state (Othman 1980). However, dramatic changes occurred some months later, when in January 1964 there was a revolution in Zanzibar. The revolution has been described as a struggle between proprietors and nonproprietors, a distinction that was, however, never clear-cut (Lofchie 1970; Cooper 1980; Sheriff 1987). Scholars have to a large extent perceived difference marked with reference to places of origin in terms of ethnicity and ethnic groups, in order to understand and explain the 1964 Revolution. Following from this the Revolution has been seen as an ethnic conflict, and not as a political and economic conflict expressed in the language of ethnicity. The problem with this approach, when applied to the analysis of a multicultural society such as Zanzibar, is that it tends to reify a certain pattern of delineation between categories and groups of people and fails to recognize the fact that people usually embody several identities. Recently this perspective has also been criticized for not paying enough attention to the political and economic processes taking place in Zanzibar before, during and after Independence (Lofchie 1970; Sheriff and Ferguson 1991). Seen through the latter perspective, the 1964 Revolution was a violent upheaval with the aim of eliminating previously privileged categories of the population, while those previously underprivileged should gain a decent standard of living. Evidently, the violent revolution also changed the composition and relative presence of the various recognized makabila or ‘tribes’. One of the main aims of the first postrevolution government was to turn Zanzibar into an African state where the inhabitants should be considered and consider themselves as Afro-Shirazi, that is, of both African and Persian origin, with no distinctions beyond these. The focus for the new policies became, however, one of ethnicity. During the revolution, many land and property owners, mainly of Arab descent, as well as people of Indian and Comorian descent, were killed or forced to leave the Island. Important for the argument of this book is precisely the fact that both the politicized language of ethnicity as well as peoples’ recollections and knowledge concerning the political and economic processes of the time, continue to influence identity – yet in different contexts. A body of literature (Lofchie 1970; Bennett 1978; Cooper 1980; Babu 1991) has discussed the political upheavals and policies that followed the 1964 Revolution. Given the recent history of Zanzibar, the lives of most Zanzibaris have, from the late fifties until now, been influenced by dramatic sociopolitical changes in which most of them have had no say at all. In this context, Zanzibari women and men have truly experienced the unpredictability of life. Below, I will therefore recall some of the significant changes that have influenced people’s lives and relationships, in particular, the political reforms that people still refer to in order to describe their lifesituation. The revolution resulted in a Zanzibari government headed by the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar was established and secret negotiations with the Tanganyika Government headed by Tanganyika African Nationalist Union (TANU) started almost immediately in order to create a union

Introducing Zanzibar

29

between the two states which ended in a political agreement that is still challenged in Tanzanian politics today.9 In April 1964 a signing ceremony created the United Republic of Tanzania, ending Zanzibar’s 148 days as an independent country. After the revolution and the creation of the United Republic of Tanzania, Zanzibar was ruled by a government consisting of persons of mainly African descent. An Africanization process was started in order to fight a system where ethnic associations were claimed to coincide with socioeconomic segregation. Most of the steps taken were implemented through the use of force and the various steps were directed towards both economic and personal matters. The introduced reforms meant, among other things, that all the owners of private enterprises, regardless of size, were forced to take an African counterpart, and in 1971 owners classified as non-African did not get their business licenses renewed. In 1967 all people of Asian descent were forced to leave their positions within the governmental offices.10 Following the introduction of this policy, many of the remaining Zanzibaris of Asian origin migrated. In order to integrate the various categories of the population, forced marriages were introduced in 1970. The so-called Forced Marriage Act decreed, according to elderly people with whom I have discussed the matter, that men of African descent had the right to marry unmarried women of Arab or Asian descent, even when both the women and their families protested. Although its life was short, this Act led to a lot of misery on the part of young women and men. In the aftermath of the introduction of the Act young unmarried women also fled the island, some committed suicide, and others were married off in a hurry to cousins or other relatives. The Forced Marriage Act was not abolished until after the death of the first president Abeid Amani Karume in 1972. The intention of the Forced Marriage Act, which created suffering in the lives of individuals, was, however, to create a society where the question of ethnicity should become irrelevant. In 1977 the links between the island and the mainland were further strengthened when the Zanzibari Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) and the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) united to form a single party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Although a number of Zanzibaris were content with the political reforms introduced by this new political setting, many also interpreted the formation of the new single party as mainland interference in Zanzibar politics and way of life. This criticism also manifested itself in violent upheavals during the multi-party elections of 1995 and 2000 as well as in the preparations for the 2005 election. In the aftermath of the three multi-party elections to take place after the 1964 Revolution, there have been severe accusations and complaints that the elections were rigged by the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). This led, among other things, to violent demonstrations, incidents of political sabotage, accusations of political conspiracies and imprisonments. A new period of political and economic change began in 1985, when the Commonwealth legal system was introduced in Zanzibar, while the kadhi remained as a court of justice in family matters for those who preferred this legal

30

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

system. In the wake of the structural-adjustment programme in the mid-eighties, free enterprise was gradually reintroduced. Economic liberalization accelerated from about 1989, turning Zanzibar once again into a trading centre. Zanzibaris have also reacquired the right to hold passports and thereby to travel. With the liberalization of the economy and the privatization policy, those who have succeeded have become extremely wealthy in the course of a few years. However, the free-enterprise policy has also resulted in increased differences between rich and poor, and the differences which were already there have become far more visible in a variety of ways – for instance, with the availability of luxury goods both in everyday and ritual life. Hence, the fact that I have conducted fieldwork in Zanzibar since 1984 provides me with an opportunity to reflect upon ongoing processes of change and continuity with reference to my own field material including the life histories of people I have known. It also enables me to evaluate present events in the light of a relatively turbulent period in the lives of Zanzibari women and men. The many more recent developments, including a rapidly increasing tourist industry, have resulted in people being expelled from inherited land or fishing areas in order to secure resorts for tourists and adding to more urban migration. There have also been increased food prices in urban areas, a general decline in trading activities and possibilities, severe unemployment problems, and a more general feeling that their surroundings are dominated by people who do not follow Zanzibari morality and etiquette. All this has caused frustration (Sahle 1995; Benjaminsen and Wallevik 1998; Olsen 1999; Larsen 2000). And with the present political and economic situation, religion has also become an issue. Certain groups have begun to perceive an erosion of traditional cultural values and expressions of Islamic fundamentalism have recurred (Parkin 1994),11 although with relatively limited influence in Zanzibar Town and in Zanzibar as a whole. Due to the strict police surveillance during the late 1970s and early 1980s, people have, until recently, avoided voicing their dissatisfaction publicly in explicit political terms. Insisting on a process of political liberalization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank pressured the government into the introduction of a multi-party system and people have gradually, more and more, openly participated in political discussions again in the neighbourhoods, streets and media and some have even criticized the president, the ruling party and partymembers. In the wake of recent elections – the first in 1995, the second in 2000 and the third in 2005 – dissatisfaction and disagreement were voiced, and this had severe political, economic and social consequences for many of those who participated. Different political views expressed in terms of loyalty towards political parties have also caused enmity between neighbours and friends and even within families. Because, even though Zanzibar Town is the capital it should still be seen as a community characterized by intercommunality and crosscutting kinship and affinal ties. Furthermore, which political party one supports has to a large degree been interpreted along lines of whether one associates with an Arab or African past, and politicians have

Introducing Zanzibar

31

also in their campaigns evoked potent historical images such as slavery and the 1964 Revolution in order to argue for their programmes (Larsen 2004) and politicized labels of identifications in terms of African and Arab were again used in order to state political disagreements (Hadjivayanis 1999). Hence, the problem of identity remains complex in Zanzibar. It is historically and politically constituted and unfolds its complexity in everyday and ritual life

A plural society As a way of working against segregation with reference to origin, the official policy since the 1964 Revolution has, as discussed above, been to undercut ideas of what is locally known as kabila. Today, people do emphasize their Zanzibariness in opposition to the Tanzanian mainland while, at the same time, stressing that they are different from each other because, as they say, they originate from different places outside Zanzibar. Due to a common history of mobility, such an understanding seems to be shared by what is generally seen as the Swahili population on the East African coast. People inhabiting the East African coast are often referred to by outsiders as the Swahili although coastal people themselves often refuse to use this term. Many scholars have raised the question as to whether these people actually constitute a coherent, bounded society, and whether a shared Swahili language and culture are to be accepted as evidence that they constitute an integrated social group (Eastman 1971; Arens 1975; Salim 1976; Allen 1981; Constantin 1989). It is only recently that scholars have begun to stress the indigenous bases of ‘Swahiliness’, noting that what may appear as alien and as an Arabic veneer are illusions based on ideological and relatively recent historical trends (Abdulaziz 1979; Strobel 1979; Nurse and Spear 1985; Lacunza Balda 1993, 1997). Swahili coastal culture is a dynamic synthesis of African, Arabian and Asian ideas and practices within an African historical and cultural context, which is distinctively Swahili (see Trimingham 1964; Giles 1987; Swartz 1991; Yusuf 1992). Within this Swahili historical and cultural context, Zanzibari people prefer to denote themselves and others by referring more specifically to kabila. In my work I have deliberately chosen to use a translation of the vernacular term kabila when referring to how Zanzibaris differentiate between themselves. The term kabila (pl. makabila) is, as already mentioned, locally translated as ‘tribe’, and sometimes population. The differentiation refers to perceptions of different tabia, or habits, and desturi, or ways of being in the world. The terms tabia and desturi indicate notions of what we would call ‘cultural differences’. In the context of Zanzibar, and especially with regard to the theme I am addressing, to use the term ‘ethnicity’ would, as I have already mentioned, blur rather than clarify the meaning of makabila as it is used and understood in the Zanzibari society today. Categorization with reference to makabila should not be understood purely within a political framework. As will become clear, the social organization of

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perceived cultural differences that is expressed through a focus on makabila refers both to cultural substance expressed through aesthetics and to socioeconomic ideals. In this society, people’s references to makabila concern a marking of difference that is rooted in what Luc de Heusch (1997) calls a ‘socio-cultural formula’, or ‘ethnie’. The names of the different makabila referred to relate directly to perceived places of origin. The prefix wa- or ma- meaning people (of ) or m- meaning person (of ) is added to the name of the place of origin. Let me exemplify: Waarabu (people from Arabia), which in turn is divided into Wamanga (from Muscat), and Washihiri (from Hadhramout). Wabaluchi are people from Baluchistan, Wangazija are from the Comoro Islands, Wapemba are from Pemba, Watumbatu are from the island of Tumbatu, and Wahindi are people from India.12 In Zanzibar, to know one’s place of origin means that one is not ‘only a Mswahili’ – that is, of slave origin (see Arens 1975; Swartz 1979; Eastman 1984). Today, except perhaps for those of Asian origin, there is not a single specific political ranking of the different makabila, although for most people Arabness remains an aesthetic ideal. Still, there is a tendency for people to think of their own kabila as the most civilized. The term ustaraabu (being civilized or refined) denotes being like an Arab.13 Arabness is associated with Zanzibariness, while Bantuness is associated with the mainland. Women and men emphasize their Zanzibariness by referring to their religion, that is, their shared Muslim faith, hospitality, friendliness, etiquette and aesthetics: their way of being in the world. This understanding has, however, not necessarily led to a perception of being a nation, except in situations where a Zanzibari identity is marked out in contrast to that of mainland Tanzania. Still, when focusing on difference it is crucial to examine not only aspects of communalism, but also to explore how human relationships, identity constructions, conceptualizations of personhood and notions of aesthetics are formed in specific multicultural societies. In Zanzibar Town, discourses on identity taking place in relation to the phenomenon of masheitani contrast sharply with the image presented in political rhetoric. There are several discourses existing side by side on the problem of multiculturalism in this society: one based on political ideology, and the other grounded in people’s immediate relationships and everyday life experiences – and it is the latter that is the focus of this book. Living within a cosmopolitan and socially stratified society, people are very much aware of different ways of life. They continuously participate in discussions on how other makabila, and people in other places, organize and live their lives in ways different from their own. While people belong to different makabila and, to a lesser extent, have different religious convictions, they nevertheless intermingle in daily life as friends, neighbours, schoolmates, employers and employees. They also participate in important life-cycle rituals together, such as initiation rituals, weddings, funerals, and, for Muslims, celebrations and rituals such as maulidi, dhikiri and ngoma ya sheitani. With respect to intermarriage, people in general stress that women and men ought to marry within their own

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kabila, at least in their first marriage, and preferably they should marry among relatives. Nevertheless, this attitude is not necessarily followed in practice. It is common for women and men to marry non-relatives, and it is not uncommon that women and men belonging to different kabila marry each other, or have other kinds of sexual relationships such as secret marriages (arusi ya siri) which, although they are not seen as morally preferable, are not perceived as illegitimate – even less so for the men involved. However, such liaisons always result in gossip and discussion about morally commendable ways of behaving. Most people marry someone with the same religious beliefs as themselves, and different religious affiliations do represent an obstacle in questions of marriage.14 In Zanzibar, as in many multicultural societies, there is an emphasis on bodily presentation to mark difference in identity (Bourdieu 1977). In Zanzibar Town, differences in style are understood with reference to kabila and thereby cultural and social identity. Yet the fact that people admire and somehow desire, for instance, clothes associated with others shows that there exist some common standards of aesthetics. Most forms of beautification refer to fashion styles and are thus markers of difference even with regard to places of origin (Craik 1994; Benstock and Ferriss 1994). By means of aesthetics the social environment is produced and reproduced and, within it, the boundaries that both keep us apart and together. Thus, distinctions are created and manipulated through aesthetics, performance and representation. The extent to which women and men intermingle across what is commonly referred to locally as ‘tribal’ and religious boundaries varies. A tension does exist in relation to questions of makabila. People who experienced the 1964 Revolution still find it difficult to talk about what happened and from time to time some people who consider themselves not to be of African descent express a genuine mistrust of people of African origin, while the latter refer to the history of slavery, as well as to the period before the revolution, in order to express their mistrust of people of non-African origin. Differences according to kabila may be activated in order to explain why one cannot trust a person, or why a woman does not express shyness or a man respect. Political questions discussed outside formal fora are often phrased in terms of perceived places of origin. In this society kabila remains a category that marks distinctions between people. Gender, the subject of my next section, is another such distinctive category.

Gender, distinctions and effects in everyday and ritual life Gender is, in Zanzibar Town, another important marker of distinctions. The terms utu (humanity), binadamu (human being) and mtu (person) refer equally to women and men. Furthermore, the terms sheitani and jini refer both to female and male spirits. In Swahili the term – a – means both she and he. Despite these gender-neutral terms, there is, in Zanzibar Town, no such thing as a genderneutral way of being in the world (Larsen 1990, 1991, 1993). Distinctions

34

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

between women and men are stressed as essential. Their different characters, abilities and psychologies complement each other. Hence, the married couple represents the ideal unity.15 The moral code based on complementary differences between men and women can be understood in terms of a gendered moral code that regulates conduct for women and men, as well as regulating the relations between women and men (Melhuus 1993). Still, as recent work in anthropology has demonstrated, cultures may have a single model of gender or of gender images, and simultaneously a multiplicity of discourses on gender that can vary both contextually and biographically (Moore 1986; Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994; Rudie 1994; Caplan 1997). In Zanzibar Town the different discourses on gender are frequently contradictory and conflicting. Although the importance placed upon gender varies according to context, in both same-sex and cross-sex situations there is always gender awareness. Sexsegregation is an explicit moral ideal, even though, in practice, with the coming of old age, sexsegregation becomes less important for both women and men. Yet sexsegregation is never unimportant as it is tied to the notion of complementarity between the feminine and the masculine. It is with reference to marriage or the married couple that the complementarity between women and men, female and male, is explained. A focus on marriage also implies a focus on sexuality, as marriage, ideally speaking, is seen as the only legitimate context for sexual relationships. Complementarity is reflected in the organization of time and space, the sexual division of labour, a concern for bodies, emotions and reason, ideas of what it is and what it means to be a woman or a man, accessibility, approachableness as well as referring to notions of knowledge (see Larsen 1990).16 For instance, in conforming to rules of sexsegregation, women have, ideally speaking, the right to men’s help for shopping at the market, the running of errands, and as occasional escorts. Men should not, and do not, take part in housework, including cooking. This is defined as women’s work and directly associated with femininity. Men have a duty to support their wives and children – defined at its minimum as providing for their day-to-day needs and providing new clothes annually at the end of Ramadan, and to treat them fairly by local standards. In return, men have rights to their wives’ domestic labour and their obedience. Family maintenance is a moral obligation for men as well as a sign of maleness. Men who are provided for by women are often talked about in an offensive way such as: ‘He has not married, he has been married’ (hajaoa huyu Bwana, ameolewa).17 The ability to provide is explicitly linked to men’s authority over women – that is, wives, daughters and sisters. Despite the fact that women have the right to support for themselves and their children from husbands and men of their natal family, it is common that women, whether married, divorced or widowed, run some kind of small-scale business organized from the house. Thus, women have the possibility to provide for themselves and can form all-female households. There is no shame associated with all-female households as long as the householdhead is a divorced or widowed woman, that is, a woman who has been married. Concerning notions of sexuality, more attention is also paid to the distinctions between women who

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are or have been married and are therefore adult women, and those who are still unmarried, than is apparent in the case of men. There are, to my knowledge, no all-male households in Zanzibar Town. When women complain of their husbands, they formulate their disappointments in terms of their husband’s lack of ability to provide for them, being left alone too much, and of their suspicion that there is a secret wife, or one in the offing.18 For women, attending to their family and thereby satisfying the needs of male relatives, children and especially their husbands, is a sign of their virtue. In cases where a wife may overhear someone mentioning that she does not attend to her husband, this is perceived as a major insult. If a man takes another wife, a mistress, or moves out in order to live with relatives, one explanation people will definitely give is that his wife is not looking after him. It is quite common that men have several wives or mistresses. Men formulate their complaints about their wives by referring to their laziness in household tasks and their extravagance with money. More quietly, because it shames them, they complain that they are sexually unreliable. Divorce is acceptable as is remarrying, both on the part of women and men. However, both women and men voice an ideal of a harmonious permanent relationship. Women and men are defined as psychological opposites, and the two sexes are seen as interdependent (Larsen 1990). Men are perceived to be endowed with more strength (nguvu), rationality and reason (akili) than women. Because of this, men, in contrast to women, are seen as able to control their emotions, to have more self-control and to behave in morally and socially appropriate ways. Although people in everyday-life are continually confronted with examples showing that women are as reasonable as men, Zanzibaris will still hold that in personal lives it is not realistic to expect women to behave with control or to be able to plan on the basis of reason. Consequently, lack of self-control is more tolerated in women than in men. Women are said to be unable to curb their desires and to easily give in to feelings of jealousy and greed, particularly with respect to objects and information about other people. They are expected to adhere to rules of authority – that is, the authority of male relatives and husbands. In general, women also embrace this view. Still, although men are said to hold authority over women, women are not perceived as being without power in relation to men. Both women and men talk negatively about men who are said to be under their wives’ control. The negative attitude is unambiguous, especially in situations where there is no suspicion of the use of dawa, with the intention of sorcery. But both women and men hold that women can achieve what they want from men and even punish men through the use of various dawa. Men often refer to the fact that they are afraid that their wives have used, or are likely to use, certain medicaments on them in order to make them follow their wives’ demands. This is tied to the understanding that men, despite their authority as men, can be manipulated and worked against through the use of remedies. This concerns not only relationships between wives and husbands, but also women and men in general.

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Where Humans and Spirits Meet

Gender, ritual participation and knowledge The perceived difference between women and men has moral implications that influence their participation in religious rituals, access to learning and ritual positions. For instance, although most of the mosques have separate rooms for women and men, the majority of women prefer to pray in their homes. In general, both women and men hold that it is better for women to pray at home. When explaining this, men and some women refer to what they see as women’s lack of self-control. They argue that where there is more than one woman present, there will be nonsensical talk and gossip, implying that meeting other women in the mosque will cause women to forget all about religion.19 This understanding does not mean that religion and religiosity as such is an exclusively male domain. Women and men alike take part in the five daily prayers and in the fast of Ramadan. It even seems that elderly women in general are more involved in the fasting than most elderly men. It is quite common to find elderly women who fast for three months – that is, Rajeb, Shabaan and Ramadan – instead of only Ramadan. Moreover, elderly women often fast every Monday and Thursday throughout the year. Women and men alike read the Qur’an as well as religious textbooks and leaflets, and women as well as men partake in religious practices such as maulidi and dhikiri. Maulidi, the celebrations of the birth of Prophet Mohammed consisting of the eulogy of the Prophet’s life, are celebrated separately for women and men. Dhikiri is a Sufi ritual celebrating God by repeating the names of God, accompanied with Allah hai (God the living One), and certain body movements. Women and men participate either separated by a curtain or by performing in different rooms. Women hold leading positions as walimu (sing. mwalimu, Muslim teacher) in both maulidi and dhikiri. However, while a male mwalimu can lead a maulidi or a dhikiri on behalf of women, a female mwalimu can never lead a maulidi or dhikiri on behalf of men. The various ngoma ya sheitani (excepting ngoma ya kibuki which I will discuss in Chapter 8) are some of the few places where women and men participate on an almost equal footing. As the ritual begins women and men occupy different parts of the room. However, as the spirits do not practice sexsegregation, the spatial segregation of women and men diminishes as the spirits appear – as will become clear in later chapters. Although both women and men participate in various religious rituals and practices, as well as in the fields of religious and local medical knowledge and within the phenomenon of masheitani, there are some important differences with respect to learning and ritual practices, which are important to point out. While both women and men can practice as walimu, only men can become shehe (Muslim religious leader).20 Still in Zanzibar both a mwalimu, whether a woman or a man, and the shehe are understood to have maarifa, which denotes an inner perception of a kind of space hidden to the naked eye, and they are empowered to offer solutions to mental, physical and social problems through the use of

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various dawa (medicament/medicine). This implies that although only men can become shehe, women in the position of mwalimu can also use their abilities in healing practices of various kinds. Both women and men can become learned persons, and both women and men can come to possess knowledge through their relationships with spirits. In these cases, learned spirits transfer their knowledge to persons while the persons in question are asleep or knowledge is achieved by the person while she or he is cooperating with spirits in matters of healing. Both women and men may practice as fundi, or ritual leaders, and as waganga, that is, specialists in matters of illness and health. The terms mganga and mwalimu are often used interchangeably. Moreover, fundi can also be mganga or mwalimu. Still fundi can never be a shehe (religious leader). While a male specialist tends to assume an official position on the basis of his learning and thereby publicly proclaims himself as learned, female specialists tend to assume more informal positions on the basis of their knowledge and to handle their knowledge within a more private framework, although they both work from their own homes. Men often have a room they refer to as an office with a waiting room where they receive their patients, while women receive their patients in their homes as if they were only being paid a social visit. A male specialist will present his assistant as an apprentice (mzaidizi) rather than as a relative, while female specialists are usually assisted by a daughter or granddaughter who would never be presented as an apprentice. Yet, when asked, the women, like the men, say that they have learned their skills through a parent or other relatives. With regard to ritual leaders, more men than women practice as leaders in rituals performed on behalf of Muslim, Arab spirits (masheitani ya ruhani) and pagan spirits from Pemba (masheitani ya rubamba). Nevertheless, there are also well-known and respected female leaders who perform rituals on behalf of these spirits. However, in rituals where the ritual group consists of both women and men, there is a tendency to have a male leader, while in contexts where the ritual group consists only of women there are female leaders. This tendency is influenced by the ideal of sexsegregation and thus, the more generally shared idea that men should not adhere to female authority in front of other people (mbele ya watu). To my knowledge, only women practice as ritual leaders on behalf of Christian spirits from Madagascar (masheitani ya kibuki) and Christian spirits from Ethiopia (masheitani ya habeshia). In both these rituals men may participate, although to different extents. In ngoma ya kibuki professional male musicians who bring their own instruments are hired during certain parts of the ritual. Moreover, as I will discuss later, men form part of the audience. While some men assume a peripheral position, other men are more involved in the ritual event itself. In ngoma ya habeshia men participating in the ritual play the ritual drums and are also involved in the actual ritual performance. Yet they are not members of the ritual group as such. Concerning other kinds of spirits, there seem to be an almost equal number of female and male ritual leaders, although more women than men usually participate as members of the ritual groups and as audience during rituals.

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Where Humans and Spirits Meet

In order to become a ritual leader people need to have a spirit with strength. In this context, this means either a knowledgeable spirit or one of high rank. Knowledge is, then, linked both to the spirit and to the person, who are, in this respect, interrelated. While the ritual leader has the knowledge necessary, for instance, to fetch the herbs, food, liquid and paraphernalia needed, as well as to plan and arrange the ritual, the spirit performs the actual curing. Due to the fact that people’s character and abilities vary, they will become ritual leaders and medical specialists of different manners. This implies that although two persons may have the same spirit, but at different times, they will have more or less authority and perform more or less entertaining rituals. In the case of both female and male specialists their spirits of great knowledge are usually male. Still, both women and men embody learned male spirits, and both women and men achieve knowledge through being inhabited by spirits of both the same and the opposite sex. Thus, among learned spirits known to women and men in Zanzibar Town, most appear to be male spirits – although there are some exceptions. For instance, one female Muslim spirit from Arabia called Maimun is known for her learning. This spirit may inhabit both women and men. Yet even when they receive education from male spirits, women may fail to be perceived by other women and men as knowledgeable – or at least, as learned as men. The reason for this is usually found in the woman who receives the education – not in the relations between spirits and humans. In the human world women are not considered to possess the capacity to become as able and intelligent as men, even in situations where women are understood to have access to the same kind of sources of knowledge. Concerning questions of knowledge, there seems to be a tendency to stress men’s human capacity, while for women it is to a greater extent their spirit’s knowledge or rank that counts. Regarding notions of knowledge, spirits are understood to possess education that makes them dominant not only in relation to specialists in matters of illness and health, and ritual leaders, but also in relation to Muslim clerics and other sages. In this society there is an acceptance of a non-human agency and a hierarchy of knowledge formation different from what we find within dominant Western discourses, where learning is seen solely as humanly constructed. This world is both a human and spirit world and although spirits adhere strictly to certain distinctions celebrated by human beings, they also challenge others such as those referring to gender, knowledge and thus, authority.

Notes 1. The Swahili coast, although divided into several ecologically and culturally differentiated regions, nonetheless reflects a connected whole in which land and ocean are intimately linked (Middleton 1992; Horton and Middleton 2000). As Prins (1967) has argued, Swahili civilization is essentially a maritime one. A crucial factor in the Swahili mercantile economy and society has been the network of economic, political, and cultural relations

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2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

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between the Swahili and their trading partners. Ruins along the coast are testimony to a long heritage of trade and urban settlement. The ruins have been excavated since the 1950s. Knowledge about the origins of Swahili society is fragmentary. However, the early written accounts of travellers coupled with local myths and legends, as well as archaeological evidence, form a picture of the coast prior to the arrival of the Portuguese around AD 1500. For instance, traders from Arabia began visiting the East African coast as early as the tenth century (Horton and Middleton 2000). The estimates are taken from the 2002 Official Statistics – which is the most recent (United Republic of Tanzania, 2002). According to this census the population of Zanzibar (Unguja and Pemba together) is said to be close to 1 million out of Tanzania’s 34,443,603 inhabitants. Awadh, et al. (1998) argues that there has been an extensive population increase, especially on Unguja and in urban areas during the latter decade, and that the population of Zanzibar as a whole should be estimated to about 820,000. The drastic increase in population is mainly due to migration from the mainland to Unguja. According to the 1988 Official Statistics the population of Unguja was estimated to only 375,000 people. Following the abolition of slavery, which the British enforced in 1907, many of the former slaves moved into Zanzibar Town and settled in Ng’ambo (Lofchie 1970). Later they were joined by immigrants from the mainland. By 1930–40 immigrants from the mainland came to play a more important part in Ng’ambo (Cooper1977). Most of the available land in the area called Ng’ambo was owned by people of Arab or Indian descent (Myers 1997). Recently, well-off families have built new three- and even four-storey houses in Ng’ambo. Schools have two shifts a day. Amongst Zanzibari women aged 12 to 29, 31.1 per cent are illiterate (in 1978, 45.7 per cent were illiterate). The percentages of illiteracy vary from 8.8 per cent in Unguja to 47.5 per cent in Pemba (Awadh et al. 1998). Before the rise of Zanzibar, the first truly powerful Swahili polity, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Swahili had been in the orbit of Indian Ocean trade. Zanzibar became powerful in the wake of the establishment of the Omani sultanate and European capitalism in the region, yet soon became a fringe economy, providing raw materials for the industries of Europe and India. The Swahili coast supplied materials to metropolitan industry and then distributed the commodities produced by it. However, the middleman position of Swahili society enabled it to be fairly autonomous and to monopolize local trade (Middleton 1992; Sheriff 1987; Nicholls 1971). Oman has long-standing ties to the East African coast, from Mozambique to Somalia, and succeeded in excluding the Portuguese from the area in the late 1600s. The Zanzibar Sultanate was also a secular state. The Sultan effected a separation between religion and the state, making it primarily an economic and commercial empire (Pouwels 1987: 125). Zanzibar is still a secular state and about 97per cent of the population are Muslims. The majority of Muslims are Sunni and follow Shafi law. The remaining 3 per cent are Hindus (Banyani) and Christians, i.e., Catholics and Anglicans. According to Michael Lofchie (1970) the reasons for merger were complex and related to the fact that Zanzibar as a tiny and isolated country would not be able to sustain its economic and political viability and thus would benefit from Tanganyika’s greater economic resources. In addition to this element, Abdulrahman Babu (1991) argued that the main reasons for the formation of the Union were the fear of communism and the wish to stem the tide of the revolution in the region. In this period, Trade Unions were abolished and strikes prohibited. The Government reduced imports and gave the state firm, Bizanje, an import monopoly and a system of

40

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Where Humans and Spirits Meet

rationing was instituted in 1971. In addition the president, Abeid Karume, put, according to informants, restrictions on all public performance of religious rituals, destroyed several places of worship and sacrifice (mizimu), and declared a ban on the performance of ngoma ya sheitani. The political movement is driven mainly by young men in their late teens and twenties, with a few leading sheikhs within this movement being only in their thirties. In the face of the recent changes many young men find themselves jobless. In this situation where they cannot take on responsibility as providers, they have to postpone marriage and thus cannot assume a role as adult men (Parkin 1994). In Swahili the Comoro Island is called Ngazija, Muscat is Manga, and Hadhramout (South Yemen) is Sheher. Moreover, differences among Indians are related to religion such as Hindus or Wabanyani, and place of origin, such as Wagoa, who are Catholics from Goa. Among those Indians who are Muslims, some are divided in relation to the various Muslim sects, such as Wabohora, Wakokni and Wakhoja; the terms that express differences in makabila reflect which jat (caste) they belong to. Although individual Hindu spirits from India (masheitani ya kihindi) appear in Zanzibar and sometimes inhabit people, these spirits are not presented as a separate ‘tribe’ of spirits with its own rituals. In the Omani period the word for civilized, uungwana, was replaced by ustaraabu, i.e., being like an Arab (Allen 1974: 1; Pouwels 1987: 72; Fuglesang 1994: 48). It is worth noting that in the present political climate, with its focus on religious differences and on the differences between the mainland and mainlanders and the island and islanders, there are Zanzibaris who refer to a distinction between Wazanzibari, i.e., those who are seen as loyal to an independent Zanzibar, and Wazanzibara, i.e., those who are said to comply with a mainland view on the position of Zanzibar within the existing federation. Bara is the Swahili term denoting mainland. Yet it does happen that Muslim men marry Christian women or Hindu women. Such relationships usually imply a high cost for the women involved, because they have to convert to Islam – or at least they have to give a promise that they intend to convert. If they do this, they are in most cases abandoned by their own relatives, if not by their immediate family. A Muslim woman can only marry a non-Muslim if he converts to Islam before the marriage. As far as I know this happens only in cases where European or American men marry Zanzibari women. A more typical case is that of Muna, a Zanzibari Muslim woman whose first husband was a Hindu. The husband never converted to Islam. Muna, without converting to Hinduism, lived with his family until they divorced after a few years of marriage. Their daughter has remained with the father’s family and so is growing up as a Hindu. Muna later remarried, this time to a Muslim Zanzibari and became his second wife. The wedding is a powerful image. Weddings, especially a woman and a man’s first wedding, are celebrated on a large scale relative to the economic situation of the families involved. The importance of rituals performed in relation to spirits is often explained by stressing that it is like a wedding (arusi). Although people may compare these rituals to weddings, this does not mean that a spirit ritual is a wedding. They make the comparison because these rituals, like weddings, are important events. They say ‘to bring out the spirits is like a wedding because that which you have sought after has been found’ (pungu ni kama arusi kwa sababu kile kitu umetafuta kimepatikana). Both women and men agree upon the importance of religious education and of attending Qur’an school for both girls and boys. They attend the same classes, but as they reach

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18. 19.

20.

41

puberty girls are gradually taken out of the madrasa. This is similar to the secular school. Although the importance of learning how to read and write for both girls and boys is shared, the significance of schooling for girls is still much discussed. Some parents find it inappropriate that their daughters, after they have reached puberty, go to school together with boys. The language used when referring to critical changes in people’s sexual relationships is gendered. Men are referred to in an active form, while women are referred to in passive: a man marries (anaoa), a woman is married (anaolewa); a man divorces (anaacha or anampa talaqa), a woman is divorced (anaachwa or anampwa talaqa). Arusi ya siri (secret marriage) does take place in Zanzibar Town. Often, the union becomes public at the time of the birth of the couple’s first child. Women stress the importance of menstruation with respect to questions of whether to pray in the mosque or not. Some women argued that in order not to pollute the mosque, women should keep away not only during menstruation but also three days before and three days after. And, because it is almost impossible to know exactly when you will have your menstruation, it is better, they say, to pray at home. A shehe has the quality of baraka – that is, blessing from above. Baraka can be used in healing practices. The use of the Qur’an as a ‘divine sacred medical element’ is available, even if the patient is not a Muslim.

3 SPIRITS, POSSESSION AND PERSONHOOD

Ngoma ya sheitani is what in anthropological literature is called a spirit possession ritual.1 In Zanzibar the spirits called masheitani or majini and the phenomenon of spirit possession form, in practice, an integrated part of Islamic beliefs and practices, and ngoma ya sheitani are understood as curing rituals. The rituals are sometimes talked about as performing medicine (fanya dawa), and the ritual groups are from time to time referred to as the hospital (hospitali). The spirits involved represent both the cause and the cure of the illness and suffering. The rituals are performed in order to satisfy and please a spirit, so that the spirit in question will stop inflicting suffering on the person to whom the spirit has attached herself or himself. Spirits usually cause suffering in their hosts when they reveal themselves for the first time.2 Afterwards they cause suffering whenever they are dissatisfied with the behaviour of their viti (seats; sing. kiti), that is, the persons embodying the spirits, or when they find that their seat does not treat them with respect. Spirits may cause different forms of suffering, including economic and health-related problems, as well as ruin significant relationships. Through these rituals the spirits are not exorcised, but rather pleased and welcomed so that a relationship can be established between a person and a spirit. People use the terms tengeneza, that is, to put right or to settle affairs and punga, that is, to initiate a relationship with an inhabiting spirit, when referring to this practice. Relationship between a person and a spirit, if not ended by either the person or spirit in question, may last for many years.3 Performing ngoma ya sheitani requires wide social participation, and neither the rituals, as such, nor the spirits are surrounded by secrecy. On the contrary, during the rituals the presence of an audience with which the spirits can interact is important for the latter’s contentment. The presence of an audience is a sign that the ritual leader is competent and successful in relation to the spirits with regard to her or his capacity to communicate with the spirits and provide lavish and entertaining rituals. The rituals, which are associated with a mixture of joy and excitement, are accessible to all categories of people.

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The position of spirits People use the terms masheitani and majini interchangeably when referring to the spirits.4 My preference for the term masheitani is grounded in the fact that in the context of everyday-life people tend to favour this term. The term pepo, meaning wind or air, is also sometimes used when referring to the spirits. Specialists in matters of illness and health, and thus in the spirits, will often emphasize a difference between majini and masheitani, but their explanations vary. Some say, for instance, that only Arab, Muslim spirits are majini and that all the other kinds of spirits are masheitani; others argue that only majini are beings created by God, whereas masheitani is a term used when one talks about the evil actions of humans and spirits alike (vitendo vibaya vya binadamu na majini). Yet most of the time even the specialists will use the terms interchangeably and to refer to the same phenomenon – or rather the same kind of beings. The cosmology of Zanzibari women and men is conceptually centred on earth, heaven and hell. While heaven represents God or Allah and everything good, hell represents the Devil – that is, Ibilis – and everything bad. Angels are found in heaven, although hell is represented by the fallen angel Ibilis, and the gates of hell are guarded by the angel Malik. On earth live first and foremost human beings, animals and spirits, although spirits also have a spirit-world of their own. While spirits are said to interact with living human beings, the angels are thought to take care of humans after they have died and before they meet God. Zanzibaris categorize beings as follows: angels (malaika), spirits (majini or masheitani), human beings (binadamu) and animals (wanyama), while Islamic theology distinguishes between angels, jini, sheitani and human beings. Spirits form part of Islamic cosmology and are described in one chapter of the Qur’an (Sura LXXII Jinn). These spirit beings, known as jinn in the Qur’an, are recognized in orthodox Islamic doctrine. However, they are mentioned in such contradictory ways that Muslim scholars have never been able to agree on their natures and powers (Gray 1969). Still, to make a distinction between core and peripheral elements of Islam when discussing the spirits and the phenomenon of spirit possession in Zanzibar Town would be misleading. Seeing the spirit phenomenon as peripheral to Islam implies that certain discourses are accepted as more valid than others. Regarding statements about peripherality, Ioan Lewis notes that claims about spirit possession as a peripheral phenomenon in society are often derived from observations made by non-participants about possession phenomena, rather than by those who participate in possession rituals (Lewis 1971, 1986, 1991). To individual Zanzibari women and men, the spirits and the various practices related to spirits are more or less central and peripheral in their life depending on their situation and the presence or absence of happiness, contentment or illness. In other words, the importance of spirits has to do with individual concerns within a Muslim universe rather than with scripturalist Islamic discourses. Still, as spirits form part of a Zanzibari reality, the position of spirits within a broader Islamic

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cosmology is an issue that people continuously discuss. There are ongoing discussions about the abilities of spirits, the nature of relationships between God, spirits and humans, and how humans ought to relate to spirits. Let me illustrate with the following example of a discussion I had with Sabra and Zainab – two sisters in their early thirties. Sabra, the elder of the two, is married and running a successful business selling imported goods from Dubai while Zainab is divorced and for the time being provided for by a rather wealthy boyfriend. One afternoon when we were resting on the baraza outside their mother’s house, Sabra, reflecting on her relationship with her Muslim Arab spirit (sheitani ya ruhani) whose name is Sheik Said bin Mohammed bin Hassan from Muscat and Jiddah, suddenly said: ‘Although I have experienced that the spirit has climbed to my head (panda kichwani) and even though I have arranged a ritual for my spirit, I cannot always quite believe in the spirits’ ability to inhabit people and to interfere in the lives of humans.’ We discussed this for a while, and Zainab joined the discussion. She said: ‘Many people live here all their lives without getting a spirit. This is possible because they do not believe that they can get a spirit.’ I asked her whether only those who believe get spirits. Zainab answered: ‘No, also some people who do not believe that it is possible to get a spirit, get one. They, then, have to put things right with the spirit by performing the prescribed ritual, like, for example, Sabra. Others who actually do believe that it is possible to get a spirit never get one.’ This was not an unusual conversation. People would often express uncertainties with respect to the ways and means of masheitani, as well as how to relate to the spirits. One evening, returning home from ngoma ya ruhani (a ritual performed on behalf of Arab, Muslim spirits), Rahma, Yasmin and I were discussing how to relate to the spirits. Rahma and Yasmin both have a sheitani ya ruhani but as they are still unmarried none of them have yet prepared a ritual on behalf of their spirit. Still, they regularly attend rituals and they also, in times of worries, seek out specialists who call upon and consult their spirits. During our discussion, Rahma said that one should not pray to spirits as if they were God. ‘Humans’, Rahma said, ‘should only ask spirits for help in matters they themselves are unable to handle. This is so, because God has given the spirits more abilities and strength than human beings’. Rahma holds that many women and men worship (abudu) spirits as if they were gods. ‘That is wrong’, she says, ‘because spirits, like human beings, are created by God. We must pray directly to God. It is a sin (dhambi) to worship spirits, and to pray to them for help; one should rather pray directly to God. However, one might ask spirits for help’. Then Yasmin said: Some claim that people worship spirits instead of God, yet people always, when they do call upon spirits, stress that God is the creator of and therefore above, both spirits and human beings. When approaching spirits people would always say as follows: ‘After God Almighty you spirits, I beg you to help me like you used to, help me so that I can pray to God and all that I wish may come true’.

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The various discussions about spirits and rituals performed on their behalf are not about establishing a distinction between Islam and the presence of spirits, but rather a way of ensuring meaningful understandings of the existence of spirits in relation to God. Such discussions illustrate how what might otherwise be perceived, at least by outsiders, as a confrontation of doctrines, is avoided (Lambek 1981, 1993). People’s knowledge about the spirits is founded on the idea that spirits actually form a part of worldly existence. Yet their knowledge does not constitute a thorough and consistent system. Discussions reveal that, beyond a basic set of common understandings, there is a great deal of variation in what people know about this realm, and there are also inconsistencies in the content of this learning. Local ideology is sufficiently unspecified to support a range of interpretations, allowing women and men scope to negotiate their understandings of the phenomenon of masheitani.

Spirits are beings with a worldly existence In Zanzibar Town, women and men often refer to the fact that spirits appear in the Qur’an and even have their own chapter. This does not necessarily mean that they know exactly what is written about the jinn in the Qur’an. From what people have shared with me it seems that the spirits – like human beings, animals, and angels – are understood to be created (umbwa) and sent to earth (teremshwa duniani) by God. Both spirits and human beings are seen as subject to the will of God. While humans adhere to the Prophet Mohammed, spirits adhere to Prophet Suleman bin Daudi (Solomon in the Old Testament). People may diminish the strength of the spirits through the following evocation: ‘Do not break the rules of Suleman bin Daudi, do not start a war with Suleman bin Daudi, Allah Illahu Salaam.’5 By declaiming this formula referring to Prophet Suleman, people say that they remind the spirits about the authority of their Prophet and the fact that the spirits have to submit themselves to God. This implies that through their understanding of the cosmos, humans have the possibility to control spirits – at least to a certain extent. Zanzibaris hold that spirits, like humans, have bodies of their own – although the spirit body is invisible in the human world. While humans are earthly beings, the spirits are beings of the air or wind (pepo). The spirits are said not to have bones; they have no substance. Zeinab, a woman who herself has spirits and who often expresses an interest in learning more about these beings, explained to me, ‘Spirits are so soft so that we would be afraid if we had been given the ability to see them’, indicating that the idea of the spirits’ lack of a human body is frightening. Human beings do not possess the ability to see spirits in their natural form.6 Spirits are said to have no material form: they are invisible and formless, although they are able to take human shapes – but when they do, they will have hoofs instead of human feet or have eyes like fish, that is, vertical pupils. They can also make themselves visible in the human world by taking on the shape of a cat.

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Spirits are governed by the natural laws of space and time, but they travel extremely quickly and can fly through the air. Still, a given spirit can only be in one place, and in one human body, at a time. Both human beings and spirits have roho (soul, vital principle) that denotes life force and breath. Spirits, like human beings, are born, grow old and die. Spirits, however, live much longer than humans, and may live up to seven hundred years. Zuhura, a young, unmarried woman whom I knew, explained to me that ‘a spirit who is 150 years old will behave like a human being aged 25’. This understanding implies that although spirits live much longer than humans, they mature more slowly. Spirits are also said to have sensory experiences. They can hear and see, and they have emotions (maono), passion (mahaba) and desire (tamaa). The spirits, like human beings, are gendered – they are either female or male; they marry and give birth. In contrast to human beings, there are no homosexuals among spirits. Within Zanzibari understandings, the angels, the spirits and human beings are all animated, responsive beings, and – with the exception of angels – sexual beings. There are several essential differences between humans and spirits. These include the following: spirits are created from fire – not from earth like human beings. I was told that when spirits die they melt away like candles. They are associated with air or wind, they have no material form, live until they are seven hundred years old and are capable of inhabiting human bodies. Another significant difference between human beings and the spirits is that the spirits are more learned and thus possess, as already discussed, more strength than human beings, although not more than angels. A well-known narrative explains the creation of the spirits as follows: When God had created the world, the spirits were the first to live there. They lived on earth before human beings but were created after the angels. Then God ‘set the rules’ (toa amri) that the spirits should go away and leave the earth to human beings. This decision was made because the spirits had been given the ability to fly through the air and to understand every language, and because they were created as more educated than human beings. Humans have not been given the same abilities as spirits to do everything and to live everywhere, so they must live on earth. Most of the spirits did not agree to leave the earth, and then God sent the angels to earth to fight the spirits. A war broke out between the spirits and the angels. The spirits were beaten by the angels, and fled into the ocean, to the caves on the beaches and to dry land. Some of the spirits had agreed to leave the earth. These spirits were forgiven and were told that they could live on the earth together with the human beings. After the war the spirits asked God how they would be able to live in this world when God has given human beings riziki – that is, everything necessary in order to live on earth. They asked: ‘What are we going to eat’? God answered: ‘Take hold of the human beings. They will provide you with what you need. You shall drink the blood of human beings.’

This narrative underlines the interconnectedness between humans and spirits, and how spirits both need and use humans for their own comfort. People will

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often discuss this ambiguous character of spirits. Amina, who herself embodies a spirit who at times troubles her, told me: ‘Sometimes, the spirits are good and they will help you, while other times they do evil. They want you to quarrel with your family, relatives and friends.’ When people call upon spirits, they will often say things like: ‘We have come here with our problems. I beg you, come with happiness – that will be good. If you come with evil, you had better return.’7 It was explained to me time and again that although human beings and spirits have different ways of existence within this world, spirits and human beings are much alike: some are good, some are bad. By emphasizing the similarities between human beings and spirits, people indicate that the different world of the spirits is just another orderly world inhabited by friends or spirits who assist you, and enemies or spirits who harm you. Amina, referred to above, emphasized the importance of being on good terms with the spirit. She explained that her mother lost all of her wealth because she acted arrogantly towards the spirits. ‘My mother, Amina says, ‘had asked the spirits to help her so that she would succeed in business. Afterwards, when my mother found herself in a good situation she decided that she should only thank God for her success. The spirits got angry. One misfortune after the other happened and my mother eventually lost the property she had managed to acquire with help from the spirits. And, at that point it was,’ Amina contends, ‘too late to ask the spirits to forgive her for her arrogance.’ Zanzibaris claim that spirits, just like human beings, vary in their moral character. Some are intelligent, some are stupid and others are lunatics or crazy. Some are very religious, others are not; some are Muslims, some are Christians, and some are even pagans (kaffir). Some are like kings, some are just ordinary, and some are like slaves. Spirits and human beings are also said to have the same kinds of habits. Bwana Hussein, a ritual leader and mganga, explained to me that every animated being (kiumbe) has been given (by God) abilities, intelligence and worthiness (fani). Spirits have been given more capabilities and intelligence than human beings, and human beings are used by spirits for their well-being. People’s knowledge of the spirit realm, both that of ordinary people and specialists, reflects the piecemeal and miscellaneous nature of the contexts in which they acquire it. There is little formal instruction, and what one learns is picked up informally in everyday contexts from casual remarks and conversations, from accounts told by those possessing knowledge about spirit events, and from one’s own experiences with spirits. Knowledge comes from attending rituals, through discussing what is happening during the rituals when other people become inhabited by spirits as well as through observing how spirits behave. Only those who are ritual leaders, specialists in matters of health and illness and in religion, reveal an extensive knowledge about the origin, the life and character of the various spirits – although their explanations vary as well. They usually obtain their learning from other specialists and ritual leaders, through serving as their apprentices. Some, however, claim that they have obtained all their knowledge and skills directly from spirits. Zanzibaris argue that spirits can, when they relate to a person for a longer period, transfer their knowledge to humans;

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they also say that spirits can express and enact their knowledge in the human world when they inhabit a person’s body. This understanding implies that people accept non-human sources of knowledge production. Hence, there is no single understanding of the phenomenon of spirit possession. Some people even claim that there are women and men who only pretend (jifanya) that they embody spirits, and that they do this in order to get what they want, such as good food and drink, clothes and jewellery. They pretend that a spirit inhabits them and that it is this spirit – not themselves – who makes the demands. People tell stories about how certain women and men have come to be suspected of deception, and how their deception was revealed. In this situation, it is the character of human beings that is the issue; the existence of spirits and their abilities are not questioned.

Spirit possession and practices The phenomenon of masheitani is of great concern to people in general. Let me give some examples, starting with Sabra, whom I mentioned earlier. When Sabra reflected upon her own experience during a ritual she found it strange. She said that even if she had experienced a spirit, she did not always quite believe in it. She explained her doubt by referring to the fact that she is aware of herself when inhabited by her spirit. Sabra said: ‘During the ritual I know what I am doing, but the point is that I am unable to control myself and my actions.’ Libna, a twenty-six-year-old, unmarried woman, is aware of the fact that she has a sheitani ya kibuki (a Christian spirit from Madagascar). Yet she insists that she will never participate in rituals. The reason she gives is that she is afraid of being overpowered by her spirit. In contrast, Bi Khadra who is an older woman, approximately sixty years old, has a Muslim spirit from Arabia (sheitani ya ruhani) whom she appreciates. She is a widow with five grown-up children among whom one is a medical doctor and the others also hold university degrees. Bi Khadra is educated as a professional midwife and used to work at the main hospital. After retiring from her job at the hospital, Bi Khadra has mainly concentrated her work on Qur’anic medicine which she learned from her father who, she tells, was a learned Muslim. Bi Khadra is particularly known for her knowledge about women’s diseases. Bi Khadra says that her spirit looks after her. She always remembers to inform her spirit about important events in her life as well as in the life of her significant others (if she forgets this, the spirit will cause problems). Still, Bi Khadra does not think that spirits have the capacity to inhabit human bodies. In her opinion a spirit will only surround the person to whom she or he is attached although in doing this the spirits do take control over the human body. Bi Khadra admits that most people in Zanzibar believe that spirits are able to and actually do inhabit human bodies. Some people say that spirits enter your body through your feet and follow the blood vessels (mishipa) up through your body, until they reach the head and

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thereby take control over your body. Spirits may also only pass through the body. In such cases, the human body shivers and sometimes a short scream is heard. Others say that spirits do not actually enter your body. Spirits, they argue, sit on your back and point their fingers at you (kupa kidole), and by pointing their finger at you, they take full control over your body. In situations where a person becomes frozen in a certain position, yet trembles with intensity, people claim that the spirit is pointing her or his finger at the person. Bi Khadra maintains that women are not inhabited by the spirits during the rituals. If they were actually inhabited by the spirits, Bi Khadra argues, they would not afterwards know what they had been doing, and who was present at the ritual. Bi Khadra’s understanding is, to my mind, rather exceptional in the circles of people I have known. She claims that the women behave as they do and become entranced because of the incense, rosewater, monotonous reading, and singing that gradually grow more and more intense. Bi Khadra holds that it is the situation created by the women themselves that makes what she sees as entrancement possible.8 Mwalimu Omar, a man in his early fifties, is a former teacher and also a former leader in one of the mosques in Zanzibar Town. He and his wife have no children of their own, but they are fostering the son of one of his wife’s sisters. He sees himself and is perceived by others as a religiously devoted and learned man. Mwalimu Omar has been ill for several years and perceives his illness as an ordeal God has given him because he used to deny that spirits had the capacity to inhabit people. He says: Before, I did not believe that spirits could climb to people’s heads. I did, of course, believe in the spirits but nothing more. Now, I have been shown by God, I am now being tested. Although I have had the spirits for a long time, only recently the male spirit has demanded to climb to my head. Because I do not want the spirit to climb to my head, this has led to an on-going fight between me and my male spirit.

Not allowing the spirit to inhabit his body or climb to his head, Mwalimu Omar explains that he will not recover from his illness until he has fought the spirit through his knowledge of the Qur’an. ‘But,’ says Mwalimu Omar, ‘this is extremely difficult because all spirits know the Qur’an thoroughly.’ The diversity in people’s knowledge of spirits, and in their views on how to relate to spirits, exists, as mentioned above, without threatening the overall understanding of the phenomenon of masheitani, and the encompassing worldview within which the spirits and the rituals play an important part. People themselves tie diversity in practices and understandings to what is seen as dini and mila – concepts often referred to in discussions and evaluations of various practices and individual behaviours. Dini is usually translated as religion, but it refers only to orthodox Islamic belief and ritual as defined by Muslim scholars and teachers. Mila is translated as custom, referring to what has often been seen as local knowledge, and is associated by the more orthodox with non-Islamic or pre-

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Islamic faith (Middelton 1992: 162). Although, spirits in the sense of jini are part of dini, in the Islamic cosmology, practices related to spirits are usually categorized as part of mila and thus are customary elements of the Swahili worldview. Since almost the entire population is Muslim, mila cannot include that which is forbidden (haramu). Rather, most people are concerned both with teachings associated with scriptural Islam as well as with understandings, practices and rituals which are associated with mila such as initiation-rituals, the various ways of celebrating weddings, rituals performed in relation to spirits, herbal medicine, divination and astrology (see Larsen 2002). What is associated with mila represents something positive and is understood as neither different from Islam nor against Islam. It concerns Islam as a way of life rather than as a theological exercise. The moral status ascribed to spirits, and to those who partake in the various practices related to spirits, depends upon the position from which they are viewed. In spite of condemnation from some orthodox Muslims, spirit possession and other spirit practices are not necessarily opposed to Islam; in the minds of many people, they constitute a single integrated system of belief within it.9 Furthermore, as will be discussed below, the possession phenomenon does not contradict the integrity and moral capacity ascribed to personhood in Zanzibar Town and should thus be approached as a culturally anchored practice.

Personhood, notions of strength and self-control A crucial difference between humans and spirits is that spirits possess more strength than human beings. The term nguvu refers both to mental and physical strength. The term also endorses knowledge, the ability to mobilize self-control and to exert control over others, and the courage to speak from the heart. Humans, as spirits, may possess more or less strength, and gender makes a difference in relation to strength, at least in the human world. Men are said to have more strength than women, both physically and mentally. Strength is seen as a desirable attribute of personhood in this society and relates to a shared ethic of modest concealment and reservation. People stress the importance of not letting others know what they think about them, and of concealing a lack of bliss and contentment. There is a general concern about not causing other people or oneself to lose face (vunja usu) in front of other people. Spirits, however, possess the strength to spell out their thoughts. In contrast to humans, spirits are outspoken and make demands that exceed Zanzibari notions of modesty and concealment. Spirits can say or do things that would be perceived as shaming, disgraceful and embarrassing if said or done by a human being. This does not imply that the spirits negate the human world, but rather that the spirits transgress accepted distinctions between concealment and disclosure that are important to human beings, a point I will return to. People may feel empathy towards the actions and reactions of spirits, although they themselves could never disclose the same emotions, actions or desires in public. People’s empathy towards

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the actions and reactions of spirits indicates, as I will discuss later, the contradictions inherent in their ethics of concealment. Zanzibari women and men seem to have a clear sense of themselves and others as coherent and unitary beings, and they stress the importance of not offending, shaming or causing other people to lose face, as this is perceived as a violation of a person’s integrity. This awareness is linked to the value of self-control (jizuia). The human body simultaneously is perceived as permeable and as a possible seat for several independent selves – both a human self and a spirit self, or also several spirit selves. Still, to be inhabited by spirits is not, in itself, perceived as a loss of self-control or a violation of the boundedness of the human body, although a spirit can violate a person’s self-control by disclosing information that from the person’s point of view should have been concealed. When people talk about the uniqueness of a person they refer to nafsi and roho, that is, the individual essences of human beings.10 Tabia (habits) is the term used when someone is referring to a person’s character or personality. The habits or ways of a person are seen as an expression of her or his personality. In order to explain a certain personality, one would refer to a person’s star (nyota), which would then be examined according to certain astrological principles such as the nature and properties of numbers and letters and sand writing (piga ramli) (Larsen 2002). Character connotes a person’s implacable nature. There is a shared understanding that a person is compelled to behave in certain characteristic ways in keeping with her or his own inner nature. However, teaching is also necessary. A child has to learn how to behave, that is, proper behaviour (adabu), so that she or he can grow being accustomed to (zoea) existing rules and etiquette. Stubbornness (ukaidi) is a negative characteristic and is perceived as a quality that makes a person less capable of adjusting to expectations associated with the ideal moral code. To be stubborn implies that a person finds it problematic to conform or, rather, to grow accustomed to behaviour, conduct and appearance that in general is perceived as right and good. The characteristic of stubbornness also echoes an acknowledgement of a person’s integrity or mental and physical strength. Thus both a person’s unique, unbending nature and her or his willingness to conform are cherished, and their acceptance of diversity does not interfere with their idea of the importance of conformity (Swartz 1991). Among other things, this implies that although each person is understood to be different from everyone else, the ability to conform is valued. The emphasis on the uniqueness of each person on the one hand, and the importance of conformity on the other, creates a certain tension which, I suggest, can be handled through acts of concealment. Thoughts, feelings and conduct that violate the practice of conformity should not be disclosed. The value of concealment creates a kind of distrust, where people are continuously preoccupied with the idea that everybody is always hiding something and nobody will ever disclose what she or he actually thinks and feels. Women and men seem to hold the understanding that they can never really know what other people think of them or are up to. This uncertainty is also related to

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the presence of witchcraft (uchawi) and sorcery (uganga), and people’s awareness of the access they and others have to various kinds of dawa that can be used to influence human relationships and well-being. Thus, people try to detect the ‘meanings behind the meanings’ (maana ya ndani) in what other people do and say. Consequently, relationships become quite vulnerable and unpredictable as people always look for hidden meanings and intentions. Within a context where slightly deviant behaviour is usually noticed and discussed, the necessity to conform becomes obvious: people try to behave according to perceived norms in order not to be ascribed intentions to offend or harm, and, thus, to use or be suspected of using medicaments to harm. But it is, people, not spirits, who judge each other in terms of veiled intentions. In contrast to human beings, spirits see everything. Spirits are said to know everything and to disclose their thoughts, feelings and actions. They may also, as mentioned, disclose the secrets of human beings. Hence when humans and spirits meet, distinctions between what is private and public (Larsen 1990), concealed and disclosed, veiled and unveiled, secret and open, are made visible. In this sense, these meetings can also be seen as threatening – not to spirits, but to human beings. For women as well as for men the art of concealment and secrecy also makes it possible for them to follow their own wishes as well as to escape unfavourable evaluations and judgments of behaviour which diverge from ideal expectations. The threat to secrecy and concealment is disclosure. Yet I was told that the disclosure of actions and thoughts could also be a way of acquiring strength. Nuru is an unmarried woman in her early thirties who is said to be self-assertive. Being unmarried, Nuru still lives with her parents and she is responsible for the daily running of the house. Concerning the issue of strength she argues: Some women have no strength in relation to men because everything they do which their husbands or male relatives do not favour, they do secretly. They never say what they want directly but conceal everything. Then it is their own fault that they possess no strength.

Although there are general norms and rules defining how to behave and how not to behave, it is still the context that decides whether a woman’s or a man’s behaviour is considered to be right or wrong. Yet there is, as illustrated above, an understanding that humans should have the courage and the strength to speak from their hearts – but not too much, because then it may become a threat to a state of harmony and balance. Spirits, however, do speak from the heart – but too much. By doing this they cause quarrelling, antagonism and discord (fitina) among themselves. By disclosing their knowledge, thoughts and feelings, the spirits may also sometimes cause humiliation and shame to human beings. This is what makes humans both fear and desire spirits. It makes people fear the spirits, because the spirits may disclose their secrets. It makes people desire the spirits, because the spirits can confront other people on their behalf in ways they themselves cannot.

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What spirits do and say while inhabiting the bodies of human beings are not the responsibility of the person embodying the spirit. Because spirits have more strength than humans, it is always the spirits who control the human body and interfere in the lives of human beings. In general, humans do not have the ability to control the spirits, though through knowledge about the ways of spirits as well as by treating the spirits with respect, people can influence the spirits. To be inhabited by a spirit implies that the given woman or man’s body and voice are, for a period of time, controlled by the spirit in question. Yet despite the fact that spirits are understood to control the human body and to interfere in people’s lives, to embody spirits is not seen as a loss of self on the part of the person in question.11 Regarding perceptions of self in relation to understandings of the body, Zanzibari women and men see the body as a possible seat for independent personalities or selves. One implication of this is that the human self can be displaced for a period of time in order to make room for the spirits or, rather, a spirit self. In order to describe this perceived shift between human self and spirit self within the same body, I find Janice Boddy’s (1989) terms self and non-self helpful. By using the term non-self, Boddy captures the process through which women and men among the Hofryati in Northern Sudan, through embodying spirits, become what they are not. I am aware, however, that by referring to self and non-self I establish a differentiation of self to which Zanzibaris do not themselves refer to. An important difference between humans and spirits is that in the human world spirits are without their own bodies. In order to materialize in the human world, spirits inhabit the bodies of human beings of both the same and the opposite sex. The body, whether one focuses on physical or aesthetic differences, becomes central with regard to questions of gender and with respect to differences between human beings and spirits, as they share a body in the human world. The body also becomes a focus for the articulation of difference with respect to notions of kabila. All these ideas of differences are in particular revealed in the condensed contexts of the ritual ngoma ya sheitani, where human beings and gendered spirits belonging to various makabila meet. Through being inhabited by gendered spirits belonging to various makabila, the human body becomes transformed. This transformation of the human body is, I suggest, grounded in aesthetics, performance as well as emotional and sensual percepts. To be inhabited by a spirit can be described as a performative and physical form of othering. The body becomes not only a focus for difference and sameness but also a locus for the articulation of difference and sameness. The opposition between self and other becomes apparent through the art of mimesis. Human bodies become the seat of the other, and as human bodies perform, the other may appear. Before pursuing these themes, I will in the following illustrate my point by referring to Fatma Abdirahman’s story. Fatma’s story makes possible a reentry into the Zanzibari space where humans and spirits meet. This entry illustrates but also evokes questions concerning what it means to be ‘a good Muslim’, about gender and notions of authority, the meaning of kabila, as well as the spirits’ position within Zanzibari cosmology and society.

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Experiencing spirits When I first met Fatma she was leaving for London with her English boyfriend, whom she had met in Zanzibar. After four months she returned to Zanzibar, saying that she could not stand living in London because of the horrible climate. Moreover, her boyfriend had got an assignment to go to Albania and she said: ‘Who would like to live there?’ Fatma Abdirahman is a woman in her midforties. She has been divorced twice, and she has four children. Her oldest daughter, who is twenty-seven years old, is married with two small children whom Fatma takes care of most of the time. Fatma’s youngest daughter is six years old. Her father is an Arab to whom Fatma was never married. She explained that he could not marry her and live in Zanzibar because, when they met in Zanzibar Town, he already had a wife in Arabia (Arabuni). But she said: ‘He sends money as well as tickets from time to time so that we can meet, for instance, in Egypt’, and then she showed me photos of herself, her boyfriend and their daughter in Egypt. Fatma’s own background exemplifies aspects of the multicultural character of Zanzibar Town and the complexity of gender in the interface of ideals, possible transgressions of the very same, and experience. Fatma’s mother is of South African origin, while her father is of Comorian origin. Moreover, among Fatma’s children, two have a father of Comorian origin, one has a father who is of African origin and one has a father who is an Arab. Some claim that Fatma is loose (mhuni). Yet being an adult woman who has been married, but is now divorced, gives her more possibilities to move about freely. Fatma also drinks alcohol and frequents some of the bars in Zanzibar Town from time to time, which only a few Zanzibari women do. Moreover, Fatma, like many other Zanzibari women, smokes cigarettes, but only in private. As long as conduct characterized as unchaste is not explicitly disclosed, a woman’s respectability is maintained. Furthermore, Fatma also belongs to a milieu of rather well-off Zanzibaris who are well travelled both in Europe and in what is usually referred to as Arabia – Oman and The United Arab Emirates. Fatma has Christian spirits from Madagascar (sheitani ya kibuki). Her male spirit is one of high military rank. His name is Ndamarufali. Fatma has prepared for her spirits and has become a member of Bi Amani’s ritual group. Fatma tells me as follows: I was very ill before I found out that I had a sheitani ya kibuki. I became very thin. First, I did not believe in spirits, and I knew nothing about this phenomenon. At home nobody spoke about these things. In my family there are many mashehe, and they did not want to believe. Later, I got to know that almost everybody on my father’s side have masheitani ya kibuki, so it is no wonder that I have masheitani ya kibuki. It runs in the family.

When Fatma claims that masheitani ya kibuki run in her family, this implies that when one person who has masheitani ya kibuki dies the spirits attach themselves to another person in that family, such as one of the children or grandchildren.

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Fatma tells us that in her family there are many woman and men who are orthodox Muslims. She uses the term mashehe in order to stress their piousness, not that they actually hold positions as religious leaders. She claims that they have not wanted to believe in spirits because this might put them in a moral dilemma concerning participation in the rituals performed on the basis of the spirits. Fatma says that it is possible to have a spirit for a long time without being aware of it. She explains: ‘It might take time before the spirit decides to climb to a person’s head; when that will be, only the spirit knows. But suddenly the spirit decides to climb to your head, and that is it.’ Fatma herself did not realize that her illness was actually caused by spirits. She continues her story: The period before I came to know about my spirits, I thought that somebody among those I worked with had used enchantment on me with the intention to harm (roga). There were some Waswahili present who did not like me, because the boss favoured me.12 He supported and helped me. It was he who first got me to see a mganga. First I went to a specialist living at Mtwara, and thereafter I sought out a specialist living at Chani. Both of them told me that I had a spirit, and they tried all kinds of incense except the one favoured by masheitani ya kibuki. Both these specialists said that they were sure that I had a spirit, but that they had failed in finding this spirit. But it was not because the spirit would not reveal herself or himself, but because they used the wrong incense. Thus, my problems continued. Night and day I heard snakes.13 People thought I was mad. My parents thought I smoked marijuana while drinking alcohol, because I could sit alone in my room crying out loud. But I did not smoke marijuana. I thought that my illness might be caused by alcohol, so I quit for one year. Still, my problems continued. So it happened that one day I went to a friend in order to deliver a message. She was not home and her father told me that she was attending the ngoma ya kibuki which was performed in the neighbourhood. I went there in order to find her. When I arrived there was one woman who wanted to give me brandy to drink.14 She forced me to drink. Thereafter she gave me a coin. Without thinking more about this event, I put the coin into my brassiere. Then I gave my friend the message that was the reason why I had come in the first place, and went to work. When I came home in the evening, I found the coin and put it on top of my wardrobe and forgot all about it. Then, some time later another ngoma ya kibuki was arranged in the neighbourhood. I wanted to go; I really felt an urge to go there. At that time I had problems, and my friend told me that I should go to this ritual and ask the spirits for help. We went together, and because we came early we got to sit in the first row. But as people arrived I moved further back. I felt uneasy. The ritual started and I saw the woman who had given me the coin at the previous ritual. I talked with her and asked her to pray for me. I told her that if she did, I would give her five to ten bottles of brandy. At that time I had a boyfriend who could easily get me brandy. She told me that she would not have any bottles of brandy. I asked her in despair what she wanted and she answered: I want you. I told her that was OK if she only helped me, although I did not at that time understand what she meant by this. The following day, I went to the ritual again. The same woman was there, and this time she wanted me to come with her in order to receive their medicine. I told her that I did not want to. She threw a stone on my toe. It hurt badly, so I had to come with her in order to get dawa. After this, I do not

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remember anything more before I woke up in the courtyard, all wet with my dress torn, without being able to recollect what had happened. To my right sat the same woman who had brought me into the house in order to give me dawa. Now it was the woman herself, not her spirit. At this point, I understood what she meant when she said that she wanted me: it was her spirit who wanted me. When I mentioned this, her spirit came back, and she told me that all my problems were caused by the fact that I for a long time had been followed by this spirit.

When Fatma eventually was present at a ritual the spirits themselves recognized that she had a spirit of their kind and, by giving Fatma the coin, they made sure that her spirit should force her to be present at the next ritual. Fatma had not herself realized that she had a spirit, the spirits themselves made sure that her spirit eventually climbed to her head by exposing Fatma to the medicine of masheitani ya kibuki. As I have briefly discussed, kabila, which is locally translated as ‘tribe’ or place of origin, is important among people in Zanzibar Town with respect to who you are and what you are perceived to be like. However, kabila is also stressed among the spirits known to Zanzibari women and men.15 The specialists Fatma sought out when she was ill could see that she had a spirit, but could not identify the kabila or ‘tribe’ to which her spirit belonged. Therefore, they could neither understand the ways of this spirit nor were they able to establish a shared means of communication between themselves and Fatma’s spirit. Only when Fatma knew the kabila of her spirit could she decide whether to try to exorcise the spirit or to accommodate the spirit. Even after Fatma had come to realize that her suffering was caused by a sheitani ya kibuki, it took quite some time before she eventually decided to take action. Fatma says: Five years after this event, I could still not determine whether to prepare for my spirit or not. Once, I had even bought all the things needed: flour, sugar and rice. Because I could not make up my mind, I had to sell it or it would have been destroyed. Then, suddenly, I made the decision to perform a ritual on behalf of my Christian spirit from Madagascar and went straight to the ritual leader, Bi Amani, to tell her. At first, she did not believe me – and she went on speaking on the phone while I sat there waiting. But, there and then, my spirit climbed to my head. He told her to put down the receiver, because his seat (kiti) had come to make an appointment for a ritual. Bi Amani finished her phone call. At that time Bi Amani had started to make rituals that lasted only five days. My spirit told her that he wanted a ritual lasting for seven days – and seven days it was. I wanted the ritual as soon as possible, and when the spirit had left, I asked Bi Amani for a list of all the things needed in order to perform the ritual. Many of the things I already had such as the clothes. But I had to buy food and to purchase brandy for approximately 140 American dollars – twenty-seven bottles. I have never regretted the fact that I eventually decided to prepare for my spirit. Now, I have a good relationship with my spirit. He helps me when I ask him.

Fatma claims that her spirit helps her in situations of need. She says that because of her spirit’s strength she can acquire and do things that would otherwise

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be difficult for her; she always has good and generous boyfriends, and she gets to travel. Fatma also tells me that the sheitani ya kibuki of Bi Amani, the ritual leader, is the king among masheitani ya kibuki and that Bi Amani’s spirit has helped her a lot. She continues by claiming: How you see her now is not how she used to be. Now she owns several houses, cars, air conditioning, she travels to Muscat. She is not rich, but she is comfortable. Before she had nothing, she even lived in a rented house. You can see that masheitani ya kibuki have helped her. She has got the best out of her relationship with masheitani ya kibuki.

Fatma goes on to say: ‘My daughters have been brought up by my spirit. My oldest daughter has a spirit herself. Her spirit climbs to her head whenever she is present at rituals but she has not yet prepared for her spirit’. Fatma herself, as well as other people, discriminates between Fatma and her spirit. Yet some of the things Fatma does are partly understood with reference to her spirit. That Fatma drinks alcohol is sometimes explained, both by herself and others who know her, as an urge she has because of her Christian spirit from Madagascar. Her spirit makes her drink alcohol. The spirit wants alcohol and can get it only through her. This does not imply that all people having a Christian spirit from Madagascar drink outside the ritual context, only that some do. There are also women and men who do not have Christian spirits from Madagascar who drink alcohol – and even disclose their drinking. But this is seen as a disgrace on their part. Fatma, like most Zanzibari women and men, does not live her life fully in accordance with Zanzibari ideals. Yet her way of life does not conflict too much with that which is acceptable. Although her modesty may be doubted by some people, her behaviour is not, as Zanzibaris would say, too immodest. Fatma’s story about her present life as a Zanzibari woman illustrates how spirits are integrated into the lives of humans, how Fatma’s way of being a woman in this society is neither fully in accordance with dominant gender ideals nor necessarily in conflict with them, as well as illustrating the relevance of notion of kabila in the lives of both humans and spirits. In the following chapter I will, precisely, discuss how spirits, like humans, are divided into makabila, each of which has its own characteristics and practices – and which all appear more distinct and less flexible than what is commonly appreciated in the Zanzibari society.

Notes 1. Several studies have been conducted on ngoma ya sheitani along the East African coast: Koritschoner 1936; Caplan 1975; Swantz 1977; Strobel 1979; Lambek 1981, 1993, 1996; Giles 1987, 1995; Middelton 1992; Nisula 1999. For further readings on spirit possession in Muslim societies Morsey 1978; Nelson 1971; Saunders 1977; Ferchiou 1991; Crapanzano 1977, 1980; Barclay 1964; Constantinides 1977, 1982; Trimingham 1964; Boddy 1989; Messing 1958; Young 1975; Lewis 1966, 1969, 1971, 1991, Cloudsley 1983: Kenyon 1991, 1995. Beliefs in spirits are found throughout the Muslim

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2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

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Where Humans and Spirits Meet

world, despite frequent protests from both scholars and learned Muslims that they are not the beliefs of scripturalist Islam, but of the preexisting local religions that Islam has incorporated within itself. In general, the context of Sunni Islam recognizes the possibility of possession by jinn (Crapanzano 1973, 1977, 1980; Lewis 1986; Lewis et al. 1991). Zanzibaris say that when a spirit reveals herself or himself to her or his seat for the first time, the person is ‘torn open’ (pasua). In this sense, ngoma ya sheitani are rituals of adorcism (Luc de Heusch 1985). The term masheitani does not refer to Satan. That which in a Christian context would be named Satan, is within Islam and in the Zanzibari, Muslim life-world referred to as Ibilis. ‘Usihalifu amri ya Suleman bin Daudi. Usifanye vita Suleman bin Daudi, Allah Illahu Salaam.’ When the Prophets are mentioned, Zanzibaris always also mention the name of God, in order to stress their submission to the authority of God. It is said that God decided that while spirits may see humans, humans do not see spirits in their natural form. However, there exists a special kind of remedy based on certain verses from the Qur’an, combined with coconut oil, burnt firewood and water. The special verses from the Qur’an are written with the firewood on a piece of paper that has been wrapped around rice; water and coconut oil are poured on the paper; and the mixture is smeared on the eyelids of the one wishing to see the spirits. All the windows and doors in the house must be closed so that only a small peephole remains, through which one can observe the spirits. It is important not to become greedy, start making a bigger hole and so make noise. If the spirits become aware of the fact that they are being seen by humans in their natural form, they will make all the people present in the house blind or deaf, or even kill them. ‘Sisi tumekuja hapa na shida yetu. Nakuomba uje kwa kheri, ni kheri. Kuja kwa shauri, rudia mwenyewe’. Bi Khadra knows English well. When explaining her view, she uses the English term trance. For a similar situation in other societies on the coast of East Africa and within the Indian Ocean region, see Caplan 1975; Giles 1987; Lambek 1993. The term roho has several meanings. It refers to the physical neck as well as to breath. All living beings (viumbe sing. kiumbe) created by God – that is, human beings, animals, angels and spirits – possess roho. In this sense roho denotes a vital principle; it may also be translated as life (kuwa hai). While some would tell me that roho cannot be seen, and is to be found everywhere and nowhere in particular within the body, others would argue that roho is situated within the breast (kifua) or, also, in the liver (ini). Zanzibaris argue that ‘when we die roho leaves our body. Without roho we have no life.’ While the body of a living person is called mwili, the body of a dead person is called maiti or mfu, that is, a corpse, or also a body without roho. In this sense, it seems that it is life or the vital principle (roho) that is capable of making a mind potentially active. When human beings die the body perishes, while the roho lives on in heaven or hell for eternity. The term roho is also used to denote a ghost, in the sense of the roho of dead people that can reappear in the human world in order to give messages to people. The concept of roho bears similarities with the Christian notion of soul in the sense that roho is understood to exist independently of the body and becomes, as such, a link to God. As the concept of soul, roho may also be used to describe a person’s character. Spirits take, for periods of time, possession over bodies. When materializing through human bodies, the spirits may also take control over the situation in which the inhabited person finds herself or himself. However, the acting spirit is perceived as a self separated from the inhabited person’s self. In this sense, the process does not seem to involve a loss of self.

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12. By using the term Waswahili when referring to her colleagues, Fatma distances herself from them. Used in this sense, the term Waswahili means people of African origin whose manners are considered less civilized. 13. Dreaming about snakes, as well as caves, is seen as a sign that the person has a sheitani ya kibuki. 14. Recollecting how she found out that she had masheitani ya kibuki, Fatma refers to the female spirit as ‘woman’. By doing this she indicates how she at that time confused the spirit with a woman, and could not differentiate between a spirit and a human being. 15. According to Dr. Soroya Tremayne, The Followers of the Wind, written in Farsi, by Khurlam Hussain Saidi (Institute for Social Studies, Theeran, 1971) says that people of African origin living on the islands in southern Iran, are possessed by spirits from Zanzibar (pers.comm.).

4 MAKABILA, PEOPLE AND SPIRITS

Zanzibaris hold that for every kabila of people in the world, there is a kabila of spirits. As there are different makabila of people living in Zanzibar, so there are also different makabila of spirits; however, some are more common than others. Among the more common kinds of spirits are masheitani ya ruhani – Muslim spirits from ‘Arabia’.1 Other common spirits include masheitani ya kibuki, who are Christian spirits from Madagascar, and masheitani ya habeshia, Christian spirits from Ethiopia. Then there are the masheitani ya rubamba, who are pagan spirits from the island of Pemba.2 Many other kinds of spirits are also known to Zanzibaris, for instance, Muslim spirits from Somalia referred to as masheitani ya kisomali, who usually participate in the ruhani rituals. Moreover, there are masheitani ya kimaasai or Maasai spirits who are said to be non-believers (wakaffir). Masheitani ya chang’ombe are spirits from mainland areas said to be pastoralists like the Masaai; they are also claimed to be non-believers. In addition to the previously mentioned spirits, people will refer to masheitani ya kinubi, who are from Nubia, masheitani ya kihadimu, who are spirits from the south-eastern part of Zanzibar and of Shirazi (Persian) origin, and masheitani ya kizungu, who are European spirits. Yet I have never encountered rituals performed on behalf of European spirits, and most likely they are not performed – at least not regularly – in Zanzibar Town nowadays. Masheitani ya kizungu used to appear primarily in a place called Makunduchi in the South Eastern part of Unguja. With the recent increase in European women and men visiting and living for longer periods in Zanzibar Town, it will be interesting to see whether Zanzibar will again be a more attractive place for masheitani ya kizungu. A closer look at the various makabila of spirits offers me a way to explore to what extent they and the rituals performed on their behalf are, on the one hand, a representation of Zanzibari conceptualizations of difference and, on the other hand, a presentation of the same. On the one hand, the spirits present themselves as different from each other through their focus on the aesthetic. Different spirits like different colours, scents, tastes and sounds. On the other hand, differences between spirits represent differences conceptualized in the human world. The fact

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that spirits materialize in the human world by inhabiting human bodies also brings up questions of how people conceptualize difference in relation to kabila when difference is, through the spirits, literally embodied. In my view, a Zanzibari discourse on difference with respect to kabila is tied to conceptualizations of ‘the other’, including what can be seen as ‘near others’. Inherent in the process of conceptualizing the other, then, is self-interpretation. Within this context the spirits become representations of various others. Might being inhabited by the other give rise not only to particular perceptions of the meaning of difference but also to particular ways of managing self-identity? It is important to keep in mind that considerations of difference entail considerations about conformity and, thus, identity. Theoretically, difference and identity are not so much about categorical groupings as about processes of differentiation and identification (Moore 1994a). The importance of focusing on processes of differentiation becomes evident when we accept that people continuously manipulate the very distinctions that they themselves create. Nevertheless, within the terms set by Zanzibaris, difference and identity are often essentialized and conceptualized as distinct categories. Zanzibaris, they say, belong to different makabila.3 A clear resemblance between the human and the spirit world relates to the fact that what is seen as the various ‘tribes’ of spirits reflect the various groups that have impinged on a Zanzibari experience throughout history. These groups also include (especially for people living in the Town) the peoples living in remote areas of Zanzibar. There are, as previously mentioned, no spirits known to people in Zanzibar Town who are perceived as being from Zanzibar Town. As such the spirits are, to a certain extent, foreign; and so to be inhabited by spirits implies that people’s bodies are inhabited by spirits of foreign origin. In this sense, the phenomenon of masheitani makes possible an experience of difference on two levels: on one level, it concerns the state of being inhabited by another kind of being; and on another level, it concerns the possibility of being inhabited by a being belonging to a kabila different from one’s own. Thus, their bodies are associated with that which is, ideally speaking, not associated with Zanzibar Town and yet incorporated in this world. During the process of becoming inhabited by foreign spirits, the human body becomes the locus of the presentation of difference: both when individuals themselves are inhabited by spirits, and when they observe other people shifting between being their own human selves and a spirit self. Analytically, one of the implications is that the phenomenon of masheitani presents a possibility to reflect upon difference and deal with otherness with reference both to the individual and to society. The rituals ngoma ya sheitani, performed on behalf of the various ‘tribes’ of spirits, are contexts where difference is presented and represented. Subsequently, the rituals can also be seen as a representation of Zanzibari images of various others. During the rituals performed on behalf of the various makabila of spirits, difference and conformity are in focus: emphasis is put not only on how spirits and humans as beings in this world are different from each other, but also on their

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sameness. Central aspects of the rituals also concern differences referring to kabila, and people continuously discuss the preferences of one kind of spirits in contrast to other kinds of spirits. Aware of these differences, people conform to the demands of the spirits, and express a concern for dressing and behaving according to the unchangeable demands of the various spirits. The rituals are always arranged in accordance with the demands associated with the various kinds of spirits. It is the rules of etiquette and the aesthetic standards of the spirits that dominate.

Articulation of differences and the problem of identity In Zanzibar Town differences associated with kabila are, as mentioned, expressed in relation to religion (dini): Muslim, Christian, Hindu or pagan, as well as various religious practices within Islam. Other differences concern that which is conceptualized as tradition (mila) and habits (tabia). These differences are materialized in preferences for particular foods, fragrances, dress, music, names, verbal expressions and pronunciation, as well as in ideas about body practices in the broad sense of the term and notions of being civilized (ustaraabu). They are culturally marked through a focus on aesthetics and performance. Yet, although people recognize and emphasize differences referring to kabila, in everyday life they also manipulate these very same differences. This implies that in daily life, people belonging to one kabila may, and often do, wear clothes associated with others than their own or use verbal expressions such as Arabic greetings, even if their kabila is Comoro or Indian. In this society it is also quite common that people associate themselves with at least two different makabila. This is the case in situations where one’s parents belong to different makabila or when one’s marriage partner is of a different kabila. Thus, in daily life it seems that people may to a certain extent choose between what are seen as different traditions and habits. Within this context, women and men alike seem to have an awareness of the importance of expressing and grasping signs of differences at the level of style. While women in general decorate themselves with the flower jasmine, women who want to emphasize their Arab origin – or those who want to be considered as Arabs – prefer kikuba, which is a small bouquet of various flowers, herbs and leaves. Usually people express an awareness of manipulations of style when it is seen as too obvious. For instance, if a woman known to be of African origin dresses and adorns herself as if a ‘pure’ Arab woman (Mwarabu safi), this is talked about in negative terms: ‘she pretends that she is someone other than she is.’ Food is another marker of difference and a field where people manoeuvre in order to communicate and transgress ideas of difference. While, for instance, bajia is perceived as an Indian food, most Zanzibaris find this dish delicious. But only Indian women prepare bajia themselves, and many women of Indian origin have their own small business where they sell bajia, which Zanzibaris on the whole come to buy. Thus, while bajia is perceived as a typical Indian dish, most Zanzibaris eat and enjoy their bajia.

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Given that people belonging to all the different makabila stress their differences, it is important to keep in mind that Zanzibari women and men also emphasize certain kinds of attitudes as typically Zanzibari, such as the importance of the concealment of the body, of personal adornment, of showing people respect, of openness towards foreigners, of the use of the cloth called khanga, and the pleasures of food.4 In this multicultural society style becomes a code by which people communicate who they are. As women and men keep up their competence concerning what is proper for whom, and express their concern when someone crosses the boundaries, they also express their knowledge about the society in which they live. While people manipulate style as a marker of identity, spirits are known to tolerate no manipulation with respect to style and aesthetics. As I will show, during the rituals spirits belonging to the various ‘tribes’ strictly adhere to specific rules of aesthetics: what to eat, how to smell, what kind of music to prefer, how to dance, how to dress and adorn themselves. What this shows is that there is more room for ambiguity in the human world than in the spirit world, and this may imply that spirits somehow represent human ideals with reference to the meaning of difference. To people, the place of origin of the various spirits unambiguously denotes the likes and dislikes of the various spirits. Spirits emphasize the importance of conformity within the kabila, and people are concerned about the likes and dislikes of the various so-called ‘tribes’ of spirits. This indicates that the idea of kabila in relation to the spirits is perceived as less manipulable than in the human world. And despite the fact that spirits have no body in the human world, the body becomes a focus of concern: what is eaten, how people dress and how the body is attended to, is of major concern. When attending rituals, Zanzibari women and men are, as already mentioned, very careful to wear the sort of dress and use the colours and fragrances favoured by the spirits for whom the ritual is performed. It is also important to greet the spirit in the correct manner. Spirits of all kinds are perceived as easily offended, and in order to prevent this people try to please the spirits by following the tastes and styles of the spirits in question. This is not seen as a way by which people invite the spirits to inhabit them. Rather it is seen as a way of pleasing spirits; to show them respect by conforming to their habits and values, and thereby maybe to become able to influence the spirits. Despite the fact that they belong to different makabila, all spirits want their rituals to be arranged and performed within the same framework. Yet within this framework, differences are clearly marked through aesthetic choices. Moreover, spirits belonging to different makabila are known to establish different kinds of relationships with human beings; while some may establish sexual relationships with human beings, others may establish relationships through which they transfer knowledge to the person in question. This, in turn, reflects a Zanzibari perception that differences between people as well as between spirits are due to differences in tradition, and this is expressed through taste, style and relationships.

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As mentioned before, while people may manipulate differences concerning kabila, these differences are perceived as fixed among the spirits. In this sense it is people who live in a universe of possibilities, not the spirits. Spirits are categorical, where humans are not. Through humans inhabited by spirits who strictly adhere to the ways of their kabila, people may observe and experience both the meanings of difference and the necessity of conformity. Yet this very conformity in turn underscores the existence of difference. In this sense, there seems to be a tension between ideas of difference and sameness as expressed through conformity, as well as between what is perceived as predictable and what is not. The phenomenon of masheitani is associated with unpredictability because people cannot know when or whether they may become inhabited by a spirit. Moreover, people cannot choose which kind of spirits they will get. However, once people know the ‘tribe’ of the spirit, the spirit’s behaviour is rather predictable. The spirits are perceived and specified as different from each other both in terms of cultural stereotypes and in terms of gender, and one person may have several spirits belonging to different makabila and of different sexes. Let me illustrate: Zuwena is a married woman in her late twenties with three young children. She has one male sheitani ya ruhani who is an Arab, Muslim spirit, and one male sheitani ya kibuki who is a Christian spirit from Madagascar (Bukini). But since most masheitani ya kibuki come in couples, she is also from time to time inhabited by the wife of this spirit. Zuwena has for several reasons not yet prepared a ritual for any of her spirits. Bi Khatija, whose situation I will return to below, is in her late fifties and has five spirits: one sheitani ya habeshia, one male sheitani ya ruhani, one male sheitani ya rubamba (pagan from Pemba), and one female sheitani ya kibuki as well as this spirit’s husband. She has arranged rituals for all of her spirits in order to be relieved from the suffering they have inflicted on her. Bi Amina is a woman in her late fifties who has been married twice. She is the mother of six children and has several grandchildren. Bi Amina has over the years been involved in business and is the owner of several houses that she rents out. Bi Amina has four different spirits: one male sheitani ya ruhani, one male sheitani ya kibuki with his wife, and one female sheitani ya chan’gombe (a pagan, nomad spirit from the mainland). Bwana Ali Said, in his late forties, is a married man with children who used to work as a mechanic until he became acknowledged as a learned Muslim and ritual leader. He embodies two spirits: one male sheitani ya ruhani and one female sheitani ya habeshia. Abdullah, in his thirties, is a specialist in herbal medicine (dawa ya miti shamba) and embodies five spirits: two different male masheitani ya rubamba, one female sheitani ya kizungu (Christian spirit from Europe), and one male and one female sheitani ya ruhani. The case below follows how Bi Khatija, mentioned above, discovered that, in addition to sheitani ya ruhani, -ya rubamba, and -ya habeshia, she also had a sheitani ya kibuki. Her experience conveys the extent to which people expect the spirits to adhere to the ideal images associated with their kabila.

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Identification of a spirit Bi Khatija had been ill for several days. She was suffering a severe headache and had, as she explained, ‘pains in her blood-vessels, nerves and veins’ (mishipa). She had her blood examined for malaria at the hospital, but the results showed that this was not the cause of her problem. Bi Khatija herself and people in her immediate environment then suspected that a spirit was the cause of her pain. Everybody did, however, find it strange that none of her spirits had ‘come to her head’ to tell the reason for their dissatisfaction. As already mentioned, Bi Khatija had arranged for her spirits, and therefore the spirits should, if they were dissatisfied with something, have ‘come to her head’ to make their demands. After being prepared for, spirits only cause suffering in the person they inhabit if this person does not fulfil the wishes of the spirit in question. Together with her sister and her grown-up granddaughter, Bi Khatija went to a ritual leader called Mzee Iddi. Mzee Iddi immediately stated that Bi Khatija’s suffering was due to a spirit, and that he therefore would try to identify which kabila the spirit belonged to and who she or he was, in order to know which sort of medicine to use. Bi Khatija sat on the floor with her feet stretched out; she was covered by a shawl (khanga) and held her hands on her knees. Because Mzee Iddi wanted to call for her ruhani he covered her head and shoulders with a white cloth, sprinkled her with rosewater, and exposed her to smoke from the incense udi (aromatic aloe wood) as he sang ruhani songs. Bi Khatija’s spirit came to her head, greeting those present in the Muslim way – A-salaam-a-leikum – A-leikumsalaam. Mzee Iddi said the special ruhani greeting – Shaulila – and started to communicate with the spirit, partly in Arabic and partly in Swahili. The spirit said that Bi Khatija’s suffering had nothing to do with her, and then she left. Bi Khatija’s head was then covered with a black cloth and she was exposed to smoke from the incense uvumba (an odoriferous gum). Those present were told to beat two sticks against each other as Mzee Iddi sang rubamba songs. Bi Khatija’s sheitani ya rubamba came to her head, introduced herself and greeted those persons present with A-salaam a-leikum, despite the fact that masheitani ya rubamba are pagans, and was answered in the correct way. Mzee Iddi greeted the spirit in the rubamba way with Tarire, and asked about the suffering of Bi Khatija, which the spirit claimed he did not know anything about. Bi Khatija was then covered with a red cloth and was again exposed to smoke from the incense called udi. Mzee Iddi began to beat a drum decorated with a Christian cross as he started to sing a habeshia song. The spirit came to Bi Khatija’s head and, even though masheitani ya habeshia are Christians, was greeted with the Muslim Asalaam-a-leikum, and then Mzee Iddi said the habeshia greeting: ‘Koi- Hatra lae, hatra cum, Marish mama’. Because Bi Khatija’s sheitani ya habeshia was not one of high rank, she could not speak in the human world. Among masheitani ya habeshia only the kings and queens can speak in the human world. This spirit could only nod her head in order to express herself. Through the signs given, it

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became clear that this spirit was not the one who was causing suffering in Bi Khatija. This meant that Bi Khatija had got yet another spirit. Mzee Iddi then tried out various sorts of incense, and after a while, when he exposed Bi Khatija to the smoke from a mixture of the incenses udi (aromatic aloe wood) and sandarusi (gum gopal), a spirit responded through Bi Khatija’s body. Mzee Iddi then knew that this spirit was a sheitani ya kibuki, because only they like this mixture of incenses. Knowing this, Mzee Iddi took off the white shawl covering Bi Khatija’s head, because masheitani ya kibuki do not like the tradition of covering the head. When the spirit ‘had filled up’ (amemjaa) Bi Khatija, he greeted those present first with A-salaam a-leikum, despite the fact that masheitani ya kibuki are Christians, and then with the kibuki greeting Maeva. Then the spirit started to communicate with Mzee Iddi, partly in the language of kibuki and partly in Swahili. The spirit said that he wanted to be arranged for, which meant that he wanted the prescribed ritual lasting for five days and requiring twenty bottles of imported brandy, that should be given to and consumed by the other masheitani ya kibuki during this ritual. The spirit could not in this context introduce himself with his full name as this only happens on the last day of the ritual. Ngoma ya sheitani is the general term referring to rituals performed on behalf of spirits. When people want to make explicit what kind of ritual is to be performed they do this by mentioning the place of origin of the spirit in question. To arrange and perform ngoma ya sheitani, people must first know the kabila or ‘tribe’ of the spirit in question. When people know this, they will then know what sort of ingredients and remedies to use including a steam bath based on a certain mixture of herbs and special objects, food and drinks claimed by the different spirits. They will also know which colours the spirits prefer, what kind of music or rhythm they like, which dance or bodily movements they use, what scents they prefer and which language the spirit speaks.5 In the following section, I shall illustrate the likes and dislikes of some of the different ‘tribes’ of spirits: masheitani ya ruhani, masheitani ya kibuki, masheitani ya rubamba, and masheitani ya habeshia. This choice is due to the fact that during fieldwork in 1991–92, spirits from these places of origin were more often present than spirits from the other places.

The demands of spirits belonging to different makabila Masheitani ya ruhani Masheitani ya ruhani are Muslims from Arabia. They are said to speak Arabic and only broken Swahili. Masheitani ya ruhani have typically Muslim names, such as Jinni Sheik Suleman bin Mohammad bin Said, who comes from Muscat and Jiddah. Masheitani ya ruhani are said to prefer rose water, white clothes, red or white turbans and golden rings with green, red or turquoise stones. Green and

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turquoise are colours associated with mosques and paradise, while red symbolizes authority and greatness. Those of masheitani ya ruhani who are Bedouins want to eat in a Bedouin tent and claim that they want to ride on a horse during the ritual. In such cases, the people present prepare something that looks like a tent, and a goat replaces the horse – there are no horses on Zanzibar. Moreover, goats are associated with central Islamic rituals such as sacrifices during Idd celebrations. This act is not perceived as a form of ridicule; rather, the fact that the spirits ride the goat as if it were a horse is one element that establishes the ritual as drama. At ngoma ya ruhani women and men associated with different makabila are also present, occupying different parts of the room. They all put on the special fragrance which masheitani ya ruhani prefer, and they are exposed to smoke from the incense udi. None wears black because masheitani ya ruhani are understood to prefer pure things, like light colours and most of all, white. In addition to this, all women and men have covered their heads in order not to irritate masheitani ya ruhani. The ritual leader is usually called either mwalimu or, in some situations, fundi – a term indicating that a person is skillful and knowledgeable. When the ritual begins, the masheitani ya ruhani are greeted with ‘Shaulila’, a sign of respect. The term Shaulila is not a Swahili word, and by using it people are reminded of the non-Zanzibari origin. At the beginning of the ritual, verses from the Qur’an are recited, and slowly the reciting turns into the singing of various songs in Swahili in order to praise Allah and the Prophet (kasida). Ruhani songs are sung as well such as the following: Shaulila, shaulila, shaulila You, child of ruhani I am coming from home, Jiddah I have been told to arrange flowers Shaulila, shaulila, shaulila.

Shaulila, shaulila, shaulila mtoto wa ruhani we, ee natoka kwetu Jiddah maruha naambiwa nidondoe maua shaulila, shaulila, shaulila.

In the song they mention Jiddah, which is seen as a religious centre. The sheitani ya ruhani is told to arrange flowers, something which in Zanzibar Town is important in all religious ceremonies and which is a symbol of purity, especially the jasmine flowers. The singing gradually turns into dikhir (dhikiri); the mentioning of the names of Allah is accompanied by the repeated ‘Allah hai’ – God the living one – as they perform special bodily movements. Dikhir is a Muslim religious practice, linked to Sufism, which is also very much appreciated by masheitani ya ruhani. The various ‘tribes’ of spirits are known to have their own special remedies (dawa). The remedy special to masheitani ya ruhani consists of different sorts of herbs and leaves – all said to be delicate, good-smelling and associated with purity.6 When the remedy is prepared a rupee coin has to be put into the pot, followed by the various ingredients in a special order. The dish of food (chano), served at ngoma ya ruhani consists of honey, halua (Turkish delight), small sweet

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bananas, boiled eggs, dates, raisins, sugar-cane cut in small pieces and jasmineflowers, alcohol-free perfume (hal-ud), rose-water, grape-juice (sharbat), and coffee. Sometimes masheitani ya ruhani also want goat-meat, and at times they wish to drink blood from a goat or a rooster. The dish on which their food is served is covered with a white cloth. The preferences of masheitani ya ruhani are in accordance with that which is perceived as recommendable according to suna. Yet there is one act that is disruptive, and not condoned within Islam, and that is the drinking of blood. Zanzibaris associate drinking blood with that which is impure and uncivilized yet spirits are, at their request, served blood from a sacrificed chicken or goat. Masheitani ya ruhani who are Muslims and Arabs are represented as almost similar to Zanzibaris, but not quite, because they also sometimes drink blood, which is seen as prohibited (haramu) by most Zanzibaris. People are aware that masheitani ya ruhani often, although not always, inhabit persons of the opposite sex; that is, a male sheitani ya ruhani inhabits a woman, or vice versa. Zanzibaris argue that, just like human beings, masheitani ya ruhani are attracted towards persons of the opposite sex, and for that reason they usually inhabit those persons. In such cases, the male sheitani ya ruhani and the woman whose body the spirit inhabits might have a sexual relationship – they may even marry. Apart from this, masheitani ya ruhani, as all other kinds of spirits, only have sexual relationships with spirits from their own kabila.

Masheitani ya kibuki Masheitani ya kibuki are Christians from Bukini, that is, Madagascar, and sometimes it is said that they are, more specifically, of Sakalava origin. This is also mentioned in some of their songs. Some among these spirits are, also, known to have converted to Islam.7 These spirits from Madagascar are closely associated with people of Comorian descent (Wangazija). The spirits themselves also often refer to the Comoro Islands when they introduce themselves and their places of origin – for instance, Maote (Mayotte) or Duwani. The names of masheitani ya kibuki in general sound foreign to people in Zanzibar Town, for instance Damandizo Damandizuzuriwa, who comes from Maote, and Ndamusfali Ndamanes, from Duwani. All masheitani ya kibuki are said to come from a place called Duwani Mzara, but from different quarters. These spirits speak the language kibuki and broken Swahili. Only women are members of the ritual groups referring to these spirits, and the ritual leader is always a woman. Both women and men, however, may become inhabited by masheitani ya kibuki and among men, homosexuals in particular participate actively during the rituals. Other men will tend to watch the ritual from a distance. This does not mean that men are never inhabited by sheitani ya kibuki, but only that men prefer to arrange for their sheitani ya kibuki in the home of the ritual leader, with no other people present. The ritual leader in ngoma ya kibuki is called fundi. When their ritual

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starts, the spirits are greeted with the word ‘Maeva’, and people present are exposed to incense which is a mixture of udi and sandarusi. In addition they are given a kind of dawa that they call talmalandi (limestone, although it should ideally be earth from Madagascar which is called ndamzaa) mixed with water, applied on the forehead, in front of the ears, on the neck and throat. Then the ritual leader says a prayer to Danahare Mdumwazi (God, the Great One). When the music starts, masheitani ya kibuki dance in the ‘kibuki way’. Those masheitani ya kibuki who have not been arranged for by the persons they have inhabited can only dance on their knees; they cannot stand up as do masheitani ya ruhani. Masheitani ya kibuki prefer music from a rattle (kayamba) and from the accordion. The sound of these instruments resembles the famous Swahili Taraab music. The kibuki-songs are in the kibuki-language, which is foreign to Zanzibaris, although people will know the meaning of the songs.8 Come and see, let us celebrate together Come and see, let us celebrate together Come eat your brandy and your other gifts.

Miuzuni faize, ee faize miuzuni faize oo faize Barissa magarogaro oyanile.

The dawa of masheitani ya kibuki consists of different sorts of leaves and herbs which have to be mixed in a special way.9 Preceding the various herbs and leaves, seven coins are put into the pot. Although different from the remedy of masheitani ya ruhani, the medication special to masheitani ya kibuki also consists only of delicate, good-smelling herbs and leaves associated with purity and attractiveness. Spirits belonging to this kabila are known to be furious if they see anything black, and none among the audience should wear ribbons or pins in their hair, nor should anyone in the audience cover their head. Masheitani ya kibuki adore the sight of straight, blond hair. Moreover, they prefer the colours red or pink, green and white, and they enjoy the fragrance from kikuba and perfume which in kibuki language is called foufou. Masheitani ya kibuki dislike not only shoes but also glasses. As their chano (meal) masheitani ya kibuki want honey, imported brandy, grapejuice (sharbat), tobacco and tambuu (leaf of the betel plant, betel-nut and clove), but most important is the imported brandy (barissa). The spirits enjoy the brandy themselves, but they also give it out to others and force people in the audience to drink, while asking for ‘silver coins’ or, more recently, for notes, which they call barata. Their remedy, in addition to honey and brandy, consists of a white plate (sahani neupe) on which there are silver coins; Rupia, Maria Theresa coins, ordinary Tanzanian shillings as well as silver bracelets and talmalandi. This plate is referred to as dawa, as well as the seat of the sheitani ya kibuki. The medicine is not Islamic in its content. Some of the ingredients, Zanzibaris say, are more Christian and European than Islamic. The persons who embody masheitani ya kibuki cannot have a sexual relationship with their spirit, as is the case with masheitani ya ruhani. Still, during rituals the spirits flirt with and express a wish to initiate sexual relationships with the people present. Masheitani ya kibuki are understood to marry and have sexual relations

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only with spirits from their own kabila. When a person is inhabited by a spirit, she or he will usually get both a male spirit and his wife, so that the spirit Damandizo is married to Danazeze, or Ndamanes is married to Ndasatima. When the husband spirit is in the head of one person, his wife will be in the head of another person. The husband and wife may also in turn climb to the head of the same person. In such situations – when, for instance, Damandizo leaves the human body he has inhabited and his wife Danazeze enters the same body – one can easily observe how the whole character of the embodied person changes from that of male to female.

Masheitani ya rubamba Masheitani ya rubamba are pagans from Pemba, and are categorized as masheitani ya kiswahili – spirits of Swahili origin.10 They have names such as Muzi wa Sanda Wajinni wa Shariff wa Mkatamalini, which in the ears of townspeople sound like Swahili or also, African names or, rather, names of those whose origin is associated with the mainland, although they still carry some Islamic elements. Their names do not refer to where they come from but rather to what they do or on which day or in which month they were born. Mkatamalini is the spirit who inhabits a person with such force that she or he falls down. Masheitani ya rubamba speak kipemba (the Pemba dialect of Swahili). Spirits belonging to this kabila are known to prefer black clothes like kaniki (a black cloth usually worn by female slaves), and they find it unimportant whether people cover their heads or not. These spirits move to the rhythm from two sticks beaten against each other (mkwasa), and they dance whilst standing. Their bodily movements are said to be similar to that of dwarves. In order to greet, show respect to and comfort masheitani ya rubamba, people say ‘Tarire’, which is a term identified by Zanzibari townspeople as being from Bantu language. Both women and men associated with different makabila are present at the rituals. The house in which the ritual takes place is sprinkled with a special decoction of herbs, which is said to smell bad, and all people present are exposed to smoke from the incense uvumba (odoriferous gum). As the ritual begins, the ritual leader and all people present sing to praise Allah and the Prophet, even though masheitani ya rubamba are pagans. Let us pray, pray to God and, then, to the Prophet. Let us pray, pray to God. The first, is God and, thereafter, the Prophet.

Tuombe, ombe mungu, nakiacha na mtume. Tuombe, ombe mungu. Mkwanza yeye mungu, wekaniacha na mtume.

Although masheitani ya rubamba are said to be pagans, neither the people present nor the spirits regard the song remembering God and the Prophet as offensive. They continue with singing special rubamba songs such as:

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Healing is not for free. Don’t think you can eat your food only. Healing is not for free.

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Si wa bure uganga we. Usione kula ng’ao. Si wa bure uganga wee.

The ritual leader is called mganga, a Swahili term of a Bantu language origin. In the song they refer to uganga, a term more associated with what is considered local medicine and sorcery than with Islamic medicine and when referring to God, they prefer the term mungu rather than Allah. Instead of the term chano for food, they use ng’ao, also a term which people in Zanzibar Town associate with life in rural areas and thus, for them, a less civilized life style. The dawa special to masheitani ya rubamba also consists of different kinds of leaves and herbs.11 In contrast to the remedies of the other kinds of spirits described here, the remedy of masheitani ya rubamba is said to consist only of illsmelling herbs and leaves (majani inye harufu mbaya). As such this remedy is associated with that which is dirty and impure (chafu). The food of masheitani ya rubamba is in many ways similar to that of masheitani ya ruhani, but the way of serving it is different. Townspeople claim that the way masheitani ya rubamba want their food served shows a lack of manners (kishenzi). The dish is covered with a black cloth. The dish itself consists of dried, not fried, octopus, sugar-cane which is neither peeled nor cut into small pieces, a kind of big bananas called ndizi ya mkono, a mixture of the meat from the coconut and sugar, raw not boiled eggs, a kind of bread called manda, cassava, popcorn and, eventually, as for the masheitani ya ruhani, halua, coffee and honey. Masheitani ya rubamba do not have sexual relations with the persons they inhabit as do masheitani ya ruhani; neither do they inform human beings about their marriages nor to whom they are married. Yet it is known that masheitani ya rubamba marry among themselves and have children, just as other spirits and human beings.

Masheitani ya habeshia Masheitani ya habeshia are Christians from Habash (Ethiopia) who are said to speak kihabash. The habeshia spirits are divided into two opposing types: refined royalty and unrefined slaves. Only the kings and queens among masheitani ya habeshia speak in the human world and introduce themselves by full names.12 The commoners among masheitani ya habeshia do not have individual names. Rather, they have categories of names that are included in songs, and those spirits whose names are mentioned respond to the song.13 The songs are as follows: Zainab, Zainab, Zainab, ba ya Zaina, Zainab, ya Siti,

and;

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Wadira, Waregabe, Seif Shangar Fuie.

This means that masheitani ya habeshia do not establish personal relationships with people present at the rituals; they neither speak with the people present nor do they introduce themselves by their personal names. Although both women and men can be inhabited by masheitani ya habeshia and participate in the rituals, more women than men attend the rituals. Again, those attending the rituals are associated with different makabila. Rituals concerning masheitani ya habeshia have to be performed only in the house of the ritual leader. The ritual leader in ngoma ya habeshia is, as in connection with masheitani ya kibuki, called fundi. While in other rituals the one who is preparing for her or his sheitani is called mwele or mwari interchangeably, in connection with masheitani ya habeshia she or he is called Zaar, something that stresses the foreign character and exoticism of masheitani ya habeshia. They prefer music from three drums which are marked with a cross. At the ritual, all whom are present have to cover their heads. When the ritual begins, everyone present and the drums are decorated with the special dawa of masheitani ya habeshia, and all present are exposed to smoke from the incense udi and are served coffee and ginger-tea to drink – even the drums, which are said to be alive. Then people present say ‘Wadoe ya dodoe, warare ya warae,’ in order to greet and show their respect. Then to comfort masheitani ya habeshia the ritual leader and members of the ritual group say in the language of kihabash, ‘Koi – Hatra lae, hatra kum, Marish mama’. The language kihabash is said to be understood only by masheitani ya habeshia. These spirits prefer the colour red and get annoyed, even aggressive, when or if they see the colour black or even other dark colours. The colour red in Zanzibar is the Sultan’s colour, and red is associated with authority and greatness. The person on behalf of whose spirit the ritual is performed sits on a red mattress together with the ritual leader. None of the spirits stands on their feet except the spirit of the ritual leader. The other masheitani ya habeshia sit down and perform their particular bodily movements. Women and men contend that they do not understand the habeshia language and thus, cannot translate the songs into Swahili. Nor can they explain the meaning of these songs. Still, in the ritual context they recite the songs by heart. As Bi Halima, a woman in her late forties, told me: ‘There are no people who are such good mimics as Zanzibaris’. One of their songs which, as explained above, I cannot translate, goes like this: 14 Ya coro cape ya mama coro cape ya mama ya hiera. Ya coro cape, ya mama coro cape, ya mama ya hiera. Haya, haya, haya, haya.

The dawa special to masheitani ya kihabeshia consists of ingredients which are associated with feminine attractiveness and adornment, and which are considered

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pure (safi).15 Masheitani ya habeshia also require a dish of food (chano). They demand halua, which they themselves mix with popcorn on mats laid out on the floor. Afterwards they eat the mixture of halua and popcorn, but they also invite humans to eat with them. The food preferred by masheitani ya habeshia is understood as pure by Zanzibaris, in the sense that it is also served during religious ceremonies. This includes foods such as halua, popcorn, coffee and ginger tea. Spirits belonging to this kabila do not have sexual relations with the persons they inhabit, nor do they present themselves to human beings as couples. As in other so-called ‘tribes’ of spirits, they only relate to spirits of their own kind.

Markers of identity and images of differences Above, I have illustrated differences associated with spirits of various kinds. The way the spirits are presented as different from each other suggests that the term kabila denotes an understanding that people and spirits of different origins have different habits, traditions and ways of living which can not, or should not, be changed. Style, then, is an important marker of identity both among people and spirits. Still, in contrast to Zanzibari women and men, the spirits do not manipulate markers of identity: a sheitani ya ruhani will, for instance, never accept the incense udi na sandarusi, which is the incense preferred by masheitani ya kibuki, and the spirits do not relate across makabila. And, again in contrast to people, the spirits strictly enact a principle of predictability – a principle that people, ideally speaking, also stress among themselves.16 In this sense, by always conforming to rules, the spirits do what people should do, but actually do not. Thus, the human world represents the universe of possibilities or, maybe, the universe of unpredictability. This is not only because of the unpredictability inflicted through the presence of spirits, but also because of people’s ability to transgress the very boundaries they themselves create. People themselves are unpredictable. In contrast to spirits, people do not conform. The complexity surrounding the likes and dislikes of different ‘tribes’ of spirits is, I suggest, a presentation of differences in the spirit world. More importantly, it is also a representation of images of difference and of the importance of conformity, or maybe predictability in the human world. The differences between the various kinds of spirits are not related to the ritual framework as such, or to the understanding of the spirits’ essence. Spirits share the same basic properties. In this context what is important is the fact that, underpinning the idea of difference in taste, likes and dislikes, is an understanding of sameness across makabila. The aesthetic markers of distinctions are communicated within a framework of similarities. The ritual framework is, for all the different kinds of spirits, the same. The reasons why they want rituals performed on their behalf are the same. Spirits also demand the same sort of goods: food, smoke from incense, certain remedies and gifts. Across the various makabila, spirits have a lot of things in common. Zanzibaris claim that all spirits want the rituals to start with a prayer to God – even those spirits who are

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perceived as pagans. As such, the marked differences between the various kinds of spirits reveal an underlying similarity. This, I argue, reflects people’s experiences in the human world: that differences associated with kabila relate primarily to aesthetics and performativity, which can be manipulated and changed, rather than to essence. It is not the essence of spirits that differs, but rather their desires. As mentioned, the notion of kabila does not, among people, create boundaries that are seen as impossible to cross, as long as others are not led to suspect an intention of aloofness. The sorts of relationships people can establish with the spirits of the different makabila depend on the extent of concordance between Zanzibari ideals and values and those of the various makabila of spirits. Although the capacities and abilities of spirits belonging to different ‘tribes’ to a large extent overlap, there are some particular characteristics associated with the various makabila which echo perceptions of differences associated with stereotypes of various makabila of people.

Masheitani ya ruhani Spirits belonging to this kabila reflect those images and ideals which people associate with Arabness and with being civilized. This is reflected both in their Muslim religiosity and in their morality. They are seen as closer to Zanzibari women and men than other kinds of spirits. Women and men can have sexual relations with masheitani ya ruhani. This is possible because masheitani ya ruhani, like most Zanzibaris, are Muslims. Zanzibaris and masheitani ya ruhani are understood to share their traditions and habits. Spirits from this kabila are perceived as close others; they are almost like Zanzibaris. The ritual leaders are called walimu, which among people is a prestigious position associated with Islamic knowledge and Arabness.

Masheitani ya rubamba Spirits belonging to this kabila are perceived as less civilized and rougher than other kinds of spirits. People say that they are dangerous. Masheitani ya rubamba are seen as powerful spirits whose learning about healing and sorcery is important and attractive – yet threatening. The ritual leaders are called waganga, a title that people associate with local medicine. A specialist in local medicine who is referred to as mganga will also know how to prepare remedies considered non-Islamic and has knowledge of sorcery (uganga). Masheitani ya rubamba are pagans, and Zanzibaris do not have sexual or intimate relations with spirits belonging to this kabila. The habits and traditions of masheitani ya rubamba are seen as non-Islamic. These spirits are associated with what is perceived of as Swahili or African origin. Spirits belonging to this kabila are seen as distant others: representing what Zanzibariness is not or, rather, should not be according to a town-based perspective.

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What is interesting in this case is that masheitani ya rubamba are spirits of Swahili origin and Zanzibaris are, by others, usually identified as Waswahili. Yet being a Mswahili, as mentioned, among Zanzibari women and men, is not seen as very prestigious, and through an elaborate language of aesthetics people stress other lines of origin. These spirits from Pemba also reflect how people in Zanzibar Town portray people on the island of Pemba. In general people from Pemba are said to be very clever in matters of sorcery. I was time and again warned that I should not go to Pemba for this reason. People will also often make jokes about their eating habits and their lack of ability to keep up with Zanzibari standards of cleanliness. They are often characterized as less refined than people on Unguja in general and people in Zanzibar Town in particular.

Masheitani ya kibuki Together with a minority of the Zanzibari population, these spirits are Christians. People claim that the reason why masheitani ya kibuki drink alcohol is that it is part of their tradition. This explanation, which refers to the idea that different makabila have different traditions, seems to be satisfactory. The ritual leader is called fundi – a term that refers, as already mentioned, to a person who is skillful and learned in everything concerning the spirits, but who does not necessarily hold any special knowledge about medicine, sorcery or religion. Women and men may have intimate relationships with this kind of spirits, although not sexual relations. As they say, ‘This is because they are Christians, and also because they do not marry human beings’. Yet people and spirits alike recognize the possibility of sexual attraction. Spirits belonging to this kabila represent that which is nonIslamic and non-African. Yet, as Christians originating from within the area of the Indian Ocean, they also represent a part of Zanzibari society – that is, Christian Zanzibaris. Regarding notions of lifestyle, being Christian also associates with traditions, habits and ways of life linked to Europeaness (ya kiulaya). However, the image is even more complex because masheitani ya kibuki also portray what is seen as urban and upper class. In terms of style, this implies that these spirits are also associated with what in Zanzibar is seen as Arabness. Although the origin of these spirits is said to be Madagascar, masheitani ya kibuki are also associated with the Comoro Islands.17 Interestingly, these spirits are often said to have arrived in Zanzibar from Madagascar through their contact with women and men migrating via the Comoro Island to Zanzibar, where the spirits have gradually initiated relationships with people from all the different makabila – although more often with people of Comorian origin than others. This might be because, as Zanzibaris say, there has always been close relation between Madagascar and the Comoros. As already mentioned, many people from the Comoro Islands came to Zanzibar in order to serve as soldiers for the Omani Sultanate as well as to serve as teachers to instruct on Qur’anic knowledge in local madrasa (Hadjivayanis 1999, Bang 2003). Some among masheitani ya kibuki have

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converted to Islam and, thus, share the religious identity of most Zanzibaris and Comorian. Thus they are to some extent, in turn, associated with Zanzibari ideals and values.

Masheitani ya habeshia Like masheitani ya kibuki, these spirits are themselves divided into kings and queens, followers and slaves. However masheitani ya kibuki, regardless of rank, can speak in the human world and have individual names, which is not the case with masheitani ya habeshia who are also Christians. This is seen as the real obstacle for their relationships with Zanzibari women and men. In this way, they remain, to a greater extent than the other kinds of spirits, unidentified foreigners to Zanzibari women and men – even to those who themselves embody them, excepting maybe those who have a royal spirit. No one knows the language of masheitani ya habeshia. Even more strange, the drums which are preferred by masheitani ya habeshia are considered to be ‘alive’. This statement may be seen to emphasize the unfamiliarity of masheitani ya habeshia. They remain unfamiliar and almost impossible to identify, and Zanzibaris have only a very distant relationship with these spirits, whose social identity they cannot know. Still, despite them being so exotic, they form part of a Zanzibari reality although they are Christians. Masheitani ya habeshia are associated with the traditional Arab upper class. Spirits belonging to this kabila are said to have been brought to Zanzibar by an Ethiopian concubine, probably one of those in the harem of the Zanzibar Omani sultan. These spirits represent both the previous Arab dynasty and the great majority of slaves. As such, these spirits also represent an historical account of this society. Interestingly enough, even today masheitani ya habeshia are associated with what people now talk about as the royal family in Zanzibar – that is, the descendants of the late president Karume, the first president after the 1964 Revolution. Associated with such an origin and such a milieu, these spirits represent that which remains to most people as foreign aspects within their own society.

Differentiation – similarities within a continuum of differences It seems, thus, that Zanzibaris conceive of spirits along a sort of continuum of differences from that which is most ‘Arab’ to that which is most ‘African’, and also from those who are close others to those who are distant others, from those whose social identity they can know to those which are difficult to identify. There are apparent connections between lived experience and the interpretations of expressions of difference. All the senses are important perceivers and markers of distinction, both within the wider sociocultural and the ritual framework. Moreover, Zanzibaris evaluate the character and practices of spirits as well as people as morally good or bad in terms of the more general Zanzibari, Islamic morality.

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With reference to the aesthetic idiom, underlying images of the character of spirits belonging to the various makabila are expressed, constructed and reconstructed while, as already stated, people in Zanzibar Town perceive makabila in terms of being more or less civilized. There is no common understanding of the ranking as was the case before the 1964 Revolution. At that time Arabs were defined as the most civilized and Africans were defined as less civilized. After the revolution this picture was turned upside down. As such, the recent past of Zanzibari women and men include both periods and contexts where Arabness was celebrated and represented the ideal, and a period and contexts where Arabness represented everything negative and Africanness was celebrated and made the relevant distinguishing mark. Nevertheless, there are ideas referring to degrees of prestige where Arabness and being Muslim represents that which is most prestigious and Africanness and, moreover, Bantuness and being pagan is associated with that which is less prestigious. Yet the categories are wide, and to a certain degree bear different meanings to different people, as well as in different contexts.

The world of spirits and human beings Through ngoma ya sheitani, perceived distinctions between spirits of different makabila and between human beings and spirits are presented as stereotypes. Moreover, through human bodies shifting between being Zanzibari and being of foreign origin, between being Arab, African, Ethiopian or Malagasy, between being Muslim, Christian or pagan, difference is presented both as part of life – as fundamental – and as a phenomenon created and recreated through aesthetics and performativity as form. The willingness of people to adhere to the strict categories of the spirits should be understood as an expression of their respect for spirits. It may, however, also be understood as a means to grasp the sense of difference and what it means to be the other, or maybe to handle self-identity in a society where place of origin is stressed and where most people associate themselves with several places of origin and continuously engage in a process of boundarycrossing. Through ngoma ya sheitani a particular context is created. Within the rituals, the difference associated with the other is observed and experienced; it is literally embodied and must be acknowledged and accepted. Let me return to the case of Bi Khatija, in light of this point. It appears that the spirits who inhabit Bi Khatija are associated with those makabila which are important in her life, or, rather, that these spirits are important to Bi Khatija because of her own background. To my knowledge, it is not coincidental that the kinds of spirits inhabiting people are associated with the makabila of humans who, in one way or the other, represent their significant others. Bi Khatija’s four spirits are all connected to different aspects of her life. Her sheitani ya ruhani represents that which is perceived as most in concordance with current images of being Zanzibari, a good Muslim and refined, while the sheitani ya rubamba represents that which is less in concordance with images of

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Zanzibariness. Bi Khatija herself never insists on her kabila; however, other people claim that she is Mswahili, and she often admits that her great grandmother was a slave. Interestingly, she also has a sheitani ya habeshia who reflects the relationship between an Arab dynasty and a slave population. Finally, her sheitani ya kibuki is associated with the Comoros in Zanzibar Town, to whom Bi Khatija has a variety of close ties. Many of her neighbours and close friends are of Comorian origin. Moreover, Bi Khatija’s only daughter married a man of Comorian origin and so her granddaughter, who is living with her, is partly Comorian and has, like Bi Khatija, a sheitani ya kibuki. The case of Bi Khatija illustrates how people, through the spirits, may experience that which is seen both as the other and forms part of their immediate lived reality. As such, the phenomenon of masheitani concerns the complexity of identity when understood with reference to conceptualizations of the other. Being inhabited by the other (or the others) gives rise to particular perceptions of the other, but also of oneself. The other is, for certain periods, within one’s body. When inhabited by her spirits Bi Khatija becomes, for a period of time, what she is not. Yet, on another level, all the spirits represent significant others in and within her life. Furthermore, the spirits also interfere in and influence the lives and relationships of human beings. Spirits are known to assist human beings in their various life projects, but they are also known to cause problems, illness and misfortune that must be healed. This will be the theme of the next chapter.

Notes 1. There are different kinds of masheitani ya ruhani: those from the ocean (-ya bahari) and those from the harbour (-ya bandarini), from caves on the beach (maji mbali), from the coastal belt (mwambao) and from the dry land (nchi kavu). Subiani, who are few in number, are also masheitani ya ruhani, but unlike the others they prefer to cause pain in humans. In contrast to other masheitani ya ruhani, subiani do not inhabit people – they surround them. There are also some spirits among subiani who are non-believers. Through songs one will find out what kind of sheitani ya ruhani one has. Those from the ocean respond to certain songs, those from harbours respond to their own special songs, and so on. This process of identification is called ‘to investigate’ (pima). 2. Masheitani ya kibuki and masheitani ya habeshia seem to be particular to Zanzibar. Linda Giles, who has studied the phenomenon of masheitani along the Swahili coast in general, has encountered habeshia and kibuki rituals only in Zanzibar (Giles 1987), while masheitani ya rubamba are found throughout the Swahili coast (Giles 1992). 3. They may refer to themselves in general as the Swahili – ‘We the Swahili population’ (sisi waswahili) – yet people will never describe themselves as Swahili only. 4. Usually, women of Asian origin do not, as other Zanzibari women, wear this cloth outside the home, although they do use it indoors. They hold that wearing this cloth outdoors is a sign of being an African and that one has not become modern (endelea). This is an understanding that they tend not to share with women from any other kabila in Zanzibar.

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5. Spirits understand all the different languages, but are said to speak in their own language. 6. It consists of herbs and leaves such as: mdalasini (cinnamon tree/bark), rehani/rihani (sweet basil), mchaichai (lemon grass), mkadi (screw pine), hiliki (cardamom), yasimini (jasmine), mawardi (roses), patchori (patchouli) and udi (aromatic aloe wood). 7. Masheitani ya kibuki are from Madagascar and of Sakalava origin. As mentioned, some of the songs performed during the ritual refer to the Sakalava such as the following one in the kibuki language: ‘Barissa mgaragara oyanile Akoriya limalewa oyanilembuki msakalava oyanileooo sasa mbela. Walolo, walolo, walolo ooo walolo, walolo, walolo ooowendao maji mawendekibani kibaratimwala kabari.’ (As mentioned earlier, the kibuki songs were not translated into Swahili). Furthermore, although the spirits are said to be Christians, some of them, I was told, have converted to Islam. Regarding this information, it is also worth considering that although Madagascar is usually associated with Christianity, Islam is rather present in particular on the north-western part and thus, the Sakalava region. Many people from the Sakalava have, according to Leslie Sharp (1993) converted to Islam and it is also in this area where many Muslims have settled. The close linkage between Madagascar and Zanzibar is also illustrated by Marie-Pierre Ballarin in her book Les reliques royals à Madagascar (Ballarin 2000). Ballarin discusses how the north-west coast of Madagascar where the Sakalava kingdoms flourished between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries was part of the Swahili trading zone. 8. I have written down the texts of the kibuki songs phonetically. I have been told the meaning of the songs in Swahili, and then I have translated them into English. 9. It consists of ingredients such as: mkono (a kind of banana palm tree), mpera (guava tree), kivumbasi (a kind of strong smelling basil), tipi-tipi (small red seed with black dots from the tree mtipitipi), mdimumsitu (wild lime tree), mchaichai (lemongrass) mkwaju (tamarind tree), mlangamia (parasite which grows on cloves) and rihani (sweet basil). 10. Rubamba spirits are sometimes categorised as masheitani ya kichawi although this categorization has several exceptions that I cannot treat here. Among spirits categorized as masheitani ya kiswahili are rubamba, umundi, kumbaya, punbwa, mchanja, mchakavi. 11. It consists of ingredients such as: mnuka mave (shrubby herb), kivumbasi (strong smelling kind of basil), mkundekunde (the shrub bearing a runner bean), maurikali (a kind of stinging fly), mchakaazi (a leafless, much branched succulent tree with small yellow flowers) and mafusho (fumes). 12. According to Linda Giles masheitani ya habeshia usually come in pairs distinguished by status, i.e., royalty/servant (Giles 1995:100). This is an interesting observation, which I, at present, do not have the data necessary to elaborate. 13. People participating in ngoma ya habeshia rituals did not translate this song into Swahili. When I asked them, they said that it was not possible to translate the habeshia songs. These songs had to be remembered and sung only in the kihabeshia language. It seems from what people say and from the wordings of the songs (see text), that the songs contain a listing of the names of various spirits and, perhaps, praising of them. 14. I have written down the songs sung in the habeshia language as people recite them. The habeshia language is not known outside the ritual context. 15. It consists of dalia (yellow mixture of powder used by women for adornment), marash (rosewater), rihani (sweet basil), zabibu (grape), udi (aromatic aloe wood) and hal-ud (non-alcoholic perfume). 16. The predictability associated with spirits in Zanzibar Town contrasts, for instance, with Ioan Lewis’s findings from Somalia concerning spirit possession and the character of

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possessing spirits. In his work, Lewis (1969) emphasizes rather that spirits are known to be capricious. 17. According to Marie-Pierre Ballarin (2000) the Sakalava king Andriontosoly of the Boina kingdom in the Majunga area of Madagascar converted to Islam and fled to the Comoros when he lost power in 1825 following the invasion of the Merina.

5 HUMAN CONCERNS, SPIRITS AND RECREATION OF RELATIONSHIPS

In the following I shall discuss the healing aspects of the rituals. I will emphasize the spirits’ interference in people’s lives; in their relationships and well-being, and how people deal with the spirits. I will briefly explain how Zanzibaris approach spirits in order to make communication possible and to ensure some influence on the spirits. I will provide an extensive case history of a ritual called ngoma ya ruhani. The presentation of the ritual and its framework will serve to further demonstrate the extent to which the rituals are healing rituals. Relationships – not the individual – are the focus of attention. Within a Zanzibari cosmology the spirits are perceived as beings who, by God’s gift, have been provided with more strength and capacity than human beings. Still, although God (Mwenyezi Mungu) is the ultimate power and source of knowledge, it seems that to most people God remains distant, while spirits are easier to reach and relate to; their ways are more human.1 Since spirits can influence human lives in the here and now, they are relevant to people’s well-being. Although considered vain, the spirits are perceived as reasonable beings that will listen to humans if the latter treat them with respect and thereby acknowledge their power. Still, human beings are not seen as completely powerless in their relationships with spirits. As already mentioned, they can remind the spirits about the authority of Suleman bin Daudi. People can influence the spirits so that their demands become more in line with what is acceptable to humans and with what humans can offer. They do this by means of persuasion; by convincing spirits that one particular course of action is better than another. In such situations it seems that the spirits are unaware that they are being manipulated. This might be due to the spirits’ vanity. People argue that when they call on spirits they have to flatter them and express their great respect for them, as spirits are vain and conceited. Only in this way is it possible for human beings to influence and manipulate the spirits. Spirits are usually called in the following way:

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I call you my friend, whether you are ruhani or jini or sheitani or subiani, whether you live in the pure ocean or on dry land. I beg you to come. I am neither a ritual leader nor a teacher of religion. Despite this, I beg you all to come so that we may talk with you. We will talk with you. If you are many, come one after the other.2

Yet women and men hold that the power of spirits is limitless. Spirits are perceived to possess more knowledge about the ways and means of humans, as well as about the character of relationships between humans, than people themselves. In contrast to human beings, spirits understand every language and, regardless of their own religious background, they are all learned in the Qur’an. Although spirits, like human beings, can only be in one place at a time, they can also be understood to exist beyond the limits of social time and space. Fences, walls, doors and bodies represent no hindrance for them. Spirits can see, hear and sense everything, even that which to humans is kept private, hidden and secret. Moreover, Zainab, to whom I referred earlier, argues that spirits can, if they find it necessary, kill the person whom they inhabit, if that person does not give them what they want. They do this by inflicting illness and suffering and by drinking her or his blood and thus exhausting the person. As such, the power ascribed to spirits can be understood as a capacity to exert control over the behaviour of others. I was told that if human beings had been given the same strength as spirits, the world would have been a dangerous place. By saying this people indicate that there is, according to their view, a scale of beings. Still, despite all the abilities and capacities of spirits, they seem to desire the corporality of human existence. In order to materialize in the human world they inhabit human bodies, and in order to increase their strength in relation to human beings, they nourish themselves from human blood. Their presence in the human world may diminish the strength and presence of humans. As mentioned, spirits have the ability to inflict illness and suffering in people’s lives. In such situations people claim that they have no strength, no blood and that they lose weight. Their choice of expressions to denote this state of being, all indicate a feeling of perishing. Yet people may also, if they have good relationships with their spirits, use them in order to achieve what they want in life, such as in the cases of Fatma Abdirahman and Bi Amani, described earlier. In such situations, people do acquire strength and presence from their spirits. And, again, it is the ambiguous nature of spirits that is revealed.

How the spirits reveal their presence in the human world Humans are not in a position to choose whether to be inhabited by a spirit. People do not know whether they will get a spirit at all. They do not and cannot know if or when they will become inhabited by a spirit, nor to which kabila the spirit will belong. This underlines, in my view, a sense of the unpredictability of life. This being said, there are different ways of ‘getting’ (pata) a spirit. Both

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beaches and huge trees are seen as places favoured by spirits and where humans are most likely to get a spirit, especially at certain times of the day. If, for instance, a person goes to the beach or rests under a huge tree the same day as a spirit happens to be there, she or he might quite haphazardly attach herself or himself to the person. But from then on, it may take several years until the spirit eventually ‘climbs to the person’s head’ (panda kichwani). A spirit may also choose a person out of sheer attraction. This might happen during a ritual where there are many spirits present at one time. In such cases the spirit might climb into the person’s head immediately, or, again, it might take many years before the spirit climbs to the person’s head. Another way of getting a spirit is, as already mentioned, by inheritance. When a person dies, their spirit might chose to attach herself or himself to the deceased person’s grandchild. These many ways of getting a spirit applies to all different kinds of spirits. Spirits can also be sent by other people, but in such cases the spirit is a sheitani ya kichawi (witch spirit) which in contrast to other kinds of spirits, must be exorcised (tolewa) as soon as possible. Sometimes spirits reveal themselves to their seats (viti sing. kiti), that is, the persons they have attached themselves to by ‘climbing to their heads’ at a ritual. Yet, it seems to be more common that spirits reveal themselves by inflicting some kind of suffering on their seat, like in the case of Fatma already discussed. The types of suffering that are recognized as caused by spirits are, for women, not being married, being infertile or having miscarriages. Spirits may also cause problems related to menstruation – either bleeding continuously for months or not bleeding at all for long periods of time. For men, the suffering inflicted by spirits is often related to problems caused by impotence. In addition, spirits may cause both women and men to suffer regularly from headaches, pains in the stomach, fatigue, sleeplessness, unusual aggressiveness, anxiety and depression. Spirits may also cause economic problems. This is so especially if a person does not give the spirits the gifts they have promised them in return for help. If a woman or a man has continuous problems, in the sense that their relations to other people break down, it is likely that a spirit is involved. Finally, if a person behaves in a way that is not according to the moral code, people will usually suspect this behaviour to be caused by a spirit: for instance, if a woman does not dress decently, quarrels with other people or does not want to socialize. Women and men will try a variety of remedies, including different sorts of allopathic medicines received from the hospital, in order to solve their problems or to be cured from their suffering. If none of these remedies work they will consider whether their problems are caused by spirits, or whether other people have used a sort of dawa in order to harm them.3 It is usually people in their immediate surroundings who will first start to mention that the problems could have external causes. In order to find out the cause of their problems, people will then seek out waganga or walimu who find out the reason for the problems through the Qur’an, through divination (piga ramli), or through her or his spirit, in which case the spirits of the specialist are consulted.

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Spirits are not the only reason why people experience suffering and illness. Sorcery (uganga), different sorts of dawa used by other people in order to harm may be found to be the reason, or perhaps the cause is an evil eye (kijicho), bad luck (nuksi) or covetousness (choyo). If this is the case, the specialist can perform counter-medicines and provide protection (kinga) against further attempts at destruction. If the problems are caused by nuksi or choyo, the person can be purified through blessed water and verses from the Qur’an. People also receive amulets (hirizi) as protection against spirits. These amulets can never give an absolute protection, because spirits, on the basis of their Qur’anic knowledge, are seen as capable of neutralizing the strength of the amulets. If the suffering, illness or problems of a woman or a man are found to be caused by a spirit, the spirit will be summoned in order to tell what she or he wants and why the spirit is troubling the person she or he has inhabited. At this point it will be revealed to which kabila the spirit belongs. If arrangements have not yet been made for the spirit, a ritual is required. In such situations, a ritual leader has to be decided upon. Sometimes the waganga themselves also operate as ritual leaders, but often people have to seek out a ritual leader in order to let her or him arrange the ritual and speak further with the spirit who has inhabited them. A mwalimu does not usually practice as a ritual leader for a particular ritual group, although she or he may perform rituals. During the ritual the spirits will, as mentioned, reveal their full names and thereby their individual identities. The spirits are seen as belonging to a variety of cultural settings and are perceived as individual characters. Although people know a lot about the likes and dislikes of a certain spirit by knowing which kabila she or he belongs to, the character of a particular spirit is unknown until the spirit has revealed her or his personal identity. When Zanzibari women and men arrange a ritual for a spirit, they expect the spirit to reveal the full name. This event takes place towards the end of all rituals performed. People say that the spirit ‘gives out’ the name (toa jina). The verb kutoa means to give, show or display – with reference to naming, this should be understood as disclosing identity, which, in turn, seems to be a prerequisite for establishing relationships. On the basis of the spirit’s personal name, family name and place of origin, a spirit’s full social identity is established within the human world. Only when this particular identity is known can, as I have also discussed in the previous chapter, social relationships be established between humans and spirits. Humans also pay attention to names; names are important in placing the individual in society.4

Communication between humans and spirits A person is never able to communicate with the spirit while inhabited by that spirit. There is always a need for mediators. When spirits inhabit human beings, their messages are listened to and interpreted not only by a ritual leader or mwalimu, but also by other people present at the ritual. Afterwards, when the spirit has left,

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various people will convey the spirit’s concerns to the person who was inhabited by the spirit. In such situations there is, therefore, no direct communication between the person inhabited by the spirit and the inhabiting spirit. Nevertheless, spirits can communicate with the people they have attached themselves to through dreams, where they communicate through symbols. Although most people seem to be well acquainted with the meaning of the symbols, they still hold that dreams have to be interpreted by learned people. Certain dreams indicate whether a person has a spirit, and which kabila this spirit belongs to. For example, if a person dreams about snakes, about graves and dead bodies, or that she or he is locked in a room, as in the case of Fatma Abdirahman, this person probably has a sheitani ya kibuki. If a person dreams about the ocean, about swimming or relaxing on the beach or also, about making love to a woman or man whose face could not be seen, this person would probably have a sheitani ya ruhani. People can also communicate with their spirits while asleep (usingizini). Zanzibaris differentiate between dreaming (ota) and talking with or socializing with spirits while sleeping (ongea na masheitani usingizini). Whenever I asked about the difference between dreaming and talking or socializing with a spirit while asleep, and how they know the difference, they claimed that when it happens, they just know, because to talk or socialize with spirits is something quite different from dreaming. However, Bwana Hussein, a specialist in matters of illness and health and himself embodying spirits, once explained to me the difference as follows: Every person dreams. To dream is to sleep. In this period a lot of different thoughts are in your mind, which you do not understand. But spirits come to you and make themselves visible to you while you are almost sleeping, which means that you have closed your eyes and are asleep although not completely, and you are not dreaming. Then, you can socialize with your spirit.

Thus, there is a difference between dreaming and socializing with spirits while asleep, and these different states of mind and body can be sensed: it is a matter of awareness. When a relationship is established between a human being and a spirit, humans can invoke a spirit and communicate directly with spirits through talking into the smoke from incense. Humans can call their spirit in order to ask them for help or to inform them about important events. Otherwise it is always the spirit who inhabits human beings at will and who is in the position to demand a ritual to be arranged on her or his behalf.

The ritual group and the ritual framework Organizing a ritual involves complex arrangements with both humans and spirits. In order to perform a ritual on behalf of a spirit, one has to find out what kind of

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gifts the spirit wants to receive from her or his seat. The ritual leader will often try to bargain with the spirits so that their demands are in accordance with the financial situation of the human host, negotiating over how many days the ritual should last and the ingredients to be provided. The financial situation of the person will also often decide which ritual leader and ritual group the person and her or his family approach in order to have the necessary ritual performed. The different ritual leaders are known for the degree of simplicity or lavishness characterizing the rituals they perform. People also tend to choose a ritual leader or group where they already know either the leader or some of the members. To be a successful ritual leader, a woman or a man has to perform rituals which people enjoy. There must be entertainment – good songs, good singers, music, drink, food and incense. When all of the necessary preparations have been made, the actual ritual can be performed. The rituals performed in relation to different ‘tribes’ of spirits are structured in the same way and have the same aim, which is to please the spirit in question so that she or he will no longer inflict suffering on her or his seat. The ritual lasts from one afternoon and evening up to three or even five days. How long a ritual lasts depends both on the claims of the spirit and, as mentioned, the financial situation of the person in question. If a person experiences problems because of her or his spirit but is too young to arrange a ritual for the spirit, a ritual leader can, by holding on to the ear of the girl or boy, reach the spirit and convince the spirit to wait until the girl or boy has become older. This is called kushika sikio or ‘to hold on to the ear’. If a woman or man has to postpone the performance of a ritual because of the holy month of Ramadan, a ritual leader will ‘hold on to the woman’s or man’s ear’ and explain to the spirit that the ritual has to wait. Moreover, if a ritual has to be postponed because of money shortage the person in question may perform a simple preparatory ritual called kupiga nyungu.5 During this brief ritual, the spirit is promised that a complete ritual will be held after a certain time. It is seen as crucial that this ritual is performed as promised; if not, the spirit will cause the given person severe suffering. Rituals are also arranged so that people may ask their spirits for help and to thank them for the help they have provided. These rituals are talked about as celebrations (sherehe) given in order to please the spirits, and last for only one day. Ngoma ya sheitani is, as previously mentioned, a healing ritual. People often talk about the ritual as dawa (medicine) and say that the person who is preparing for her or his spirit is ‘entering a period of medicinal treatment’ (ingia dawani). The main aim of the ritual is to restore happiness and contentedness to the life of the person who is arranging the ritual, as well as to the relationship between this person and her or his spirit. Rituals are aimed at rendering the spirits harmless by fulfilling their wishes. In this sense, people’s relationships to their spirits are as sensitive as their relationships to other people. A full ritual usually starts on Wednesday at 10.30 A.M. and continues until 12.30 P.M.; after a pause it continues from 4.30 P.M. to 6.30 P.M. The same occurs on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday the rituals are enacted at night (kesha), and on Sunday they are in the afternoon from 4.00 P.M. until 6.30 P.M. Within this

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period those who are part of the ritual group stay in the leader’s house together with the mwele, that is, the person who is performing a ritual on behalf of her or his spirit. During this period the mwele receives medicine. The ritual performed in order to prepare for the spirit also makes the person a member of the given ritual group. The members of the ritual group are those who have had their spirits prepared for by the ritual leader in question. The ritual leader allows only members of the chosen ritual group to prepare and give medicine to the person and spirit for whom the ritual is arranged, to expose the participants to incensesmoke, to lead the person whose spirit is arranged for into the room where the public part of the ritual is performed, and back into her or his special room again. Although this is not a rule, it happens that members of the same ritual group embody spirits who are considered to be relatives. However, in everyday life people often say that their ritual group is like a family in the wide sense of the term (jamaa).6 Members of the ritual group are openly criticized and talked about in unfavourable terms by other members if they regularly stay away from the rituals. The ritual leader always participates in the ritual, and is also responsible for organizing the ritual. Whenever rituals are performed, those present include the person who is preparing a ritual on behalf of her or his spirit, the ritual leader, and members of the ritual group, as well as women, with or without children, men, female and male youths, and, sometimes, professional musicians. Other persons present at these rituals are relatives, neighbours and friends, friends of neighbours, friends of the relatives of the one who is arranging for her or his spirit and friends and relatives of the ritual leader. Many of those present at the ritual have a spirit of the same kind as the one for whom the ritual is being arranged, but because they have not yet performed the ritual they cannot be part of a ritual leader’s association. Others do not or do not yet have a spirit, or they have a spirit from another kabila than the one on whose behalf the ritual is performed. Those women and men who do not get a spirit ‘in their head’ participate in the clapping and chanting while observing those who have a spirit ‘in their head’. The participants form the indispensable audience. They interact with the spirits, sing the spirits’ songs, play the instruments, and dance with the spirits. Outside of ritual contexts, people tend to forget the exact names of the various spirits as well as their songs and prayers. I was given the following explanation for this forgetfulness: The spirits do something so that we do not remember. The spirits do not want humans to say their names and sing their songs without good reasons. But, of course, sometimes the reason why we do not remember is also that we do not listen carefully. During ngoma ya kibuki we are even a bit drunk because the spirits give us brandy to drink. But at the rituals we do remember; we sing and we understand the language of the spirits.

Women bring their children to ngoma ya sheitani so that they can be blessed (fanya heri) by spirits and be given protective medicine. As the children become older, that is, from the age of six and up, they gradually start to participate in the

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singing, playing of instruments, clapping and dancing during the different rituals. The spirits cherish the participation of children and express signs of happiness when the children perform the correct dance movements. Spirits express happiness with laughter and by giving children gifts such as coins, flowers, sherbet, and different kinds of medicine. The audience, consisting of both active participants and more passive onlookers, give children a lot of positive feedback when they perform during different ngoma ya sheitani. When children reach the age of thirteen to fourteen years, they may even get a spirit in their head during rituals. Because at this age they are perceived as still being too young to prepare for their spirit, the ritual leader gets in contact with the spirit and asks her or him to be careful because the person whom she or he has inhabited is only a child. From early childhood, the children learn to pay respect to and have fear of spirits, and many seem to be both terrified and delighted by spirits. Except for the holy month of Ramadan the rituals of ngoma ya sheitani are performed throughout the year. When Ramadan is approaching all ritual leaders perform a celebration called kufunga mkoba (lit. to close the basket, i.e., not to activate the ritual paraphernalia), in order to remind the spirits about Ramadan and to ask them not to inhabit people during this month. When Ramadan has come to an end, a celebration called kufungua mkoba (lit. to open the basket) is arranged in order to welcome the spirits and to inform them that Ramadan has ended and thus, that rituals can again be performed in the human world. The number of people present during the rituals performed on behalf of spirits, including the audience, may vary between fifteen and fifty. Below I will describe a ritual I participated in which was performed on behalf of a Muslim spirit from Arabia (sheitani ya ruhani) emphasizing the healing aspect.

Ngoma ya sheitani: a celebration and a cure As usual for ngoma ya sheitani in general, the ritual lasted five days: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from about 10.30 A.M. to 12.30 P.M., and then again from 4.30 P.M. until 6.30 P.M.; Saturday from 11.00 P.M. to 05.30 A.M. (kesha); and Sunday from 4.00 P.M. to 6.30 P.M. (kutoka nje). The rituals lasting for five days are quite tiring, in particular, for humans participating! This particular ritual was performed on behalf of Bi Halima’s spirit. Bi Halima had felt sick and worried for quite some time; she had been sleepless, had pain in her stomach and problems with sleeping. Previously Bi Halima had lost a child, and now one of her daughters was about to be married. Bi Halima was worried that there would be problems in relation to the marriage arrangement, and whether her daughter would be treated well by her husband to be and his family. Bi Halima had tried various medicaments to get rid of her recent health problem but had not found a cure. Then she went to a ritual leader, who called Bi Halima’s spirit. The spirit told that he was the reason for Bi Halima’s health problems. He was angry because Bi Halima had not welcomed him and thus not informed him about her

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daughter’s marriage, ignoring not only his presence but also his interest in this matter. In order to stop inflicting problems and to ensure that he would protect the coming marriage, the spirit wanted a ritual to be performed on his behalf, so that it would be clear that Halima recognized and respected the spirit, and so that the spirit and Halima could establish a good relationship. Receiving this information, Bi Halima arranged for a ritual to take place. I will now describe the ritual performance carried out the evening of Saturday night. I went to the ritual with Zayna, Muna, Mwanabaraka and Aida. Zayna and Muna are sisters and Mwanabaraka is their cousin. They all live in Zayna and Muna’s mother’s house, where I also spent a lot of time. Aida is a neighbour and close friend of Muna; she is married with three children. Muna is engaged to be married, Mwanabaraka is seventeen years old and still in school, and Zayna is in her early thirties, unmarried and a teacher in a nursery. Zayna is considered by her sisters to take too much interest in religious matters. Each of these women has a sheitani ya ruhani. Because I was afraid of being late for the ritual, we arrived early. As we approached the ritual room, we took off our shoes. At this ritual – as at all other kinds of ngoma ya sheitani – people and spirits are barefoot. This is because all spirits dislike shoes. As we arrived, we sat down to wait on the mats laid out on the floor. After some time the room started to fill with people. As they arrived, women sat down in one part of the room and men in the other end of the room. At this particular ritual, as during most rituals performed on behalf of spirits, there were more women than men present, and some women brought their children. When all the members of Bwana Ali Hamad’s group had arrived, the ritual could begin. It took some time before the ritual leader managed to quieten us all down; while waiting, we had engaged in interesting discussions about fashion, where to buy what, who had done what recently, and about people who were not present. Then Bi Zaituni, one of the senior members of the ritual group, went around to give us all some aromatic oil to put on so that we should smell good and thereby make the masheitani ya ruhani happy. Then the women from the ritual group led Bi Halima, the woman on behalf of whose spirit the ritual was arranged, into the room. Bi Halima was dressed in two pieces of khanga. She was told to sit on a stool. In front of her they put a big pot with an herbal mixture – the remedy special to masheitani ya ruhani. Women from the ritual group held a mat in a circle surrounding Bi Halima, and another mat above her so that she was sitting in a sort of a hut. In order to get steam from the pot with herbal mixture, burning coal was put into the pot. Bi Halima was given a steam bath. She was also fumigated with incense and given rosewater to drink. While sitting inside the hut, Bi Halima was from time to time inhabited by her spirit. This became apparent by the way her body shivered. Still, the spirit did not climb to her head.7 The women holding the mat went around in a circle saying certain blessings and singing ruhani songs. While doing this some of the women became inhabited by their spirits. After a while Bi Halima was taken out of the hut and led into an adjacent room by the women, as well as by those spirits who had arrived during this

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session. Bi Halima, who had now changed clothes, was dressed in a long, white dress with a shawl covering her head, face and shoulders. The same women and spirits then took her into the room where the rest of us were waiting. Bi Halima was seated on the floor in the middle of the room, in front of the ritual leader. Bwana Ali and three other elderly men who all have a sheitani ya ruhani, and who are known to be well educated in religion, sat in the front with their faces turned towards Bi Halima and the audience. The other members of the ritual group and those spirits who had already arrived, and so inhabited their seats, sat down close to Bi Halima. The rest of us surrounded them in a semi-circle. By now the room was full of people. All members of the ritual group were dressed in white or in another light colour, such as pink, light green or yellow according to the demands of their spirit. In order not to annoy the spirits, all present wore clothes of light colours, and women as well as men covered their heads. Masheitani ya ruhani are known to accept only that or those who appear pure and decent. The ritual leader lit the incense jar and sent it around so that all of us could be censed. Then he took the censer and held it under the cloth that covered Bi Halima’s head and shoulders. He said some words in order to comfort and call for her spirit, before all people present started to recite some well-known blessings and prayers to Allah and the Prophet Mohammed. When begged to reveal himself, Bi Halima’s spirit was addressed as Shaibu, the Arabic term for a very old man. By using this term, they showed the spirit respect. Then all present started to sing in order to call for masheitani ya ruhani. Allah, Allah, God is one Allah, Allah, God is one The days of resurrection Allah, Allah, God is one Let us pray for peace, God let there be peace Allah, Allah, God is one

Ya’allah, ya’allahu, mola wahidu Ya’allah, ya’allahu, mola wahidu Siku ya kiyama Ya’allah, ya’allahu, mola wahidu Tuwaomba salama, ya’rabi salama Ya’allah ya’allahu, mola wahidu

While singing they moved their bodies in the dhikiri rhythm particular to masheitani ya ruhani. The ritual leader censed himself, and immediately his spirit rose to his head. The spirit of the ritual leader, Bwana Ali, is known to be a highly educated (mtalaamu) male spirit. As the spirit revealed himself, he introduced himself with his full name and place of origin, and said: ‘I am Shehe Said bin Muhammed Bin Abdulrahman from Muscat, Jiddah’. As Bwana Ali’s spirit Shehe Said started to move around in the room, he greeted and talked to people present. He held the censer in his hand, and as he put it close to people’s faces many became inhabited by their spirits. He also sprinkled rosewater on people in order to call on their spirits. The spirit, Shehe Said, gave the impression of being very joyful and happy. He danced with people, holding their hands or carrying them on his back so that also their spirits would reveal themselves out of joy and happiness. As the spirits rose to the heads of the women, the spirits used the voice of the women to scream loudly and started to dance around; when they rose to

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the heads of men, the spirits sat shivering but contained on the floor. Whenever spirits rose to the heads of young men, they screamed and moved about quite violently. People present had to intervene in order to restrict the movements of the spirits so that they did not unwillingly hurt other people present or the bodies they had inhabited. During this ritual, Zayna, Muna and Aida became inhabited by spirits. However Mwanabaraka, who is also known to have a sheitani ya ruhani, did not become inhabited by her spirit this time. When Zayna, Aida and Muna first became inhabited by their spirits, they initially were quiet and looked as if they were gazing at something far away. Then they looked depressed and almost as if they were about to cry. Suddenly, when the spirits rose to their heads, they screamed out, rose to their feet and started to dance with great force until their spirits decided to leave. Then they fell to the floor, where they lay as if unconscious until someone sprinkled rose-water on their heads and chests, and also gave them a drink in order to help them recover. Rosewater is said to help people to regain their strength in relation to Arab, Muslim spirits. Those people present who did not have a spirit, or whose spirit did not want to come forward, participated by singing, clapping their hands and moving their bodies in the dhikiri rhythm, although their movements were much more restricted than the movements of masheitani ya ruhani. Others helped those people who had faded out and fallen to the floor when their sheitani left their bodies. At this point Bi Halima’s spirit had not yet risen to her head, although her bodily movements revealed that the spirit had ‘filled her up’. She was sitting on the floor moving in one steady rhythm. Then suddenly Bi Halima’s spirit said that he wanted a stool to sit on and his turban. This was immediately brought to Bi Halima’s spirit. When the spirit sat on the stool he moved to and fro and then he introduced himself. The spirit had now climbed to Bi Halima’s head. He said: ‘I am Muhammed bin Said bin Hussein, from Quatar, Jiddah’. Hearing this name, another spirit rose to the head of her seat and introduced herself and then, one after the other the spirits materialized and introduced themselves through the bodies of other people present. The spirits who had already introduced themselves at this point in the ritual did so again, in response to hearing the name of one of their relatives. When spirits hear that relatives are present, they immediately want to be present and to let their relatives know that they are there, so they join in and introduce themselves. Those spirits who had not yet a ritual performed on their behalf by their seats could only scream out or cry in despair when they recognized their relatives by their names, but they themselves were not able to tell their names and make themselves known to their relatives, while participating in the human world. Bi Halima’s spirit was a Bedouin. As the ritual went on, her spirit expressed some discomfort, but then relaxed when told by people present that he would get his horse to ride on. A goat was brought into the room and Bi Halima’s spirit performed as if he was riding a horse. Thereafter, Bi Halima’s spirit received his meal. Because Bi Halima’s spirit was a Bedouin, he wanted to eat in a tent. Several

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women and men, as well as female and male spirits, held a large cloth over him (the spirit Muhammed bin Said bin Hassan from Quatar, Jiddah) to imitate a tent. The spirits and the people who were members of the ritual group were invited to eat with him. The meal consisted of bananas, dates, halua, raisins, small pieces of sugarcane, as well as sharbat, ginger-tea and coffee. After a short while, spirits as well as members of the ritual group who were not at this point inhabited by their spirits distributed food from the ritual meal to other people present. Through offering the spirits a meal, human beings show the spirits respect and friendliness. When the spirits, after enjoying some of the dishes, start to distribute food to the humans present, they demonstrate their good intentions vis-à-vis those humans whom they favour because the latter show the spirits respect and entertain them. By giving precious food only to those whom they like, the spirits make clear that they are aware that some humans look upon them with arrogance while others do not. After the meal it was time for Bi Halima’s spirit to receive the two golden rings he had demanded; one with a red stone and one with a green stone. Before the rings could be put on the finger, Bi Halima’s hand was purified with incense and aromatic oil. Bi Halima’s spirit, Muhammed bin Said bin Hussein, was pleased. He looked again and again at his rings while he went around showing them to everyone. All of us told him that the rings were zen, using what is said to be the Arabic word for beautiful to be sure that he understood. Then the ritual was over. One after another the spirits left, and many of those who had been inhabited by their spirits said that they felt exhausted and discussed the pain they felt in their bodies. Several of us stayed on for a while, talking while sipping coffee or ginger-tea until the muezzin called people to the dawn prayer of the day. On our way home, Zayna, Muna, Mwanabaraka, Aida and I talked about Bi Halima and the fact that she at last had decided to welcome and establish a relationship with her spirit, and whether this would improve her health and put an end to her suffering. Zayna said that ‘one never knows with a spirit. The ways of spirits are complicated.’ By initiating relationships with spirits, people recognize that they may get help to cure illness and suffering, to recreate bliss and contentment (raha) in life, to experience pleasure and prosperity. In this way spirits represent a hope for a better life. The person who performs a ritual on behalf of her or his spirit is one who for a period of time has been in a marginal state caused by illness or other kinds of misfortunes understood to be inflicted by a spirit. The ritual is therefore performed in order to welcome or recreate a good relationship with the spirit in question, so that the spirit sees no need to punish her or his human host. During ngoma ya sheitani people communicate and socialize with spirits. Spirits are included as a real part of the human world. From an analytical point of view, the inclusion of spirits is, then, already an incorporation of difference in the human world. Although people and spirits are brought together and interact during the rituals, there is always an awareness of the difference between people and spirits as beings. Still the phenomenon of masheitani implies that human bodies become inhabited by foreign spirits. The body

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constitutes a main difference between humans and spirits. Spirits have no body in the human world. They can only materialize by inhabiting a human body. To embody spirits is a physical and mental experience. It is empirically felt; it is empirically seen; and it appears empirically as a conflation between a person and a spirit. Still, Zanzibaris claim that humans and spirits are different beings. Hence, I will now turn to a discussion of the separation made between human beings and spirits and how the distinction between self and other is marked in ritual contexts where both humans and spirits are present and even share the same physical bodies. The delineation between human beings and spirits should be seen in relation to understandings of self and personhood. In order to discuss the distinction between self and other with regard to the spirit phenomenon I shall explore and recount people’s experiences of embodying spirits, states of dissociation and trance. Events from various rituals will be used in order to explore the theme.

Notes 1. The expression Mwenyezi Mungu is a compound of Swahili and Arabic elements respectively: mwenye, denoting possessor, and ezi (from izza), meaning power and might. Mungu is the Bantu term for God. The full phrase, Mwenyezi Mungu, is taken to express the omnipotence, sovereignty and regality of the Almighty. The word mungu on its own does not translate as Allah, for which Mwenyezi Mungu is appropriate (see Frankl 1990; Topan 1992; Yusuf 1992). In Zanzibar and among my informants Islam is perceived as the only positive path for human beings to follow. The legitimacy of this ultimate authority is, of course, based in faith. The power of God is conceived as an unquestionable good. God represents the ultimate symbol of order, so that with reference to God all that happens in this world becomes meaningful and ultimately good. God is omnipotent and omniscient. 2. ‘Nakuita rafiki yangu. Ikiwa wewe ni ruhani au jini au sheitani, au subiani. Ikiwa unaishi hafid bahari au inchi kavu. Kwa hivyo nakuombeni mje. Mimi si fundi wala si mwalimu ila nakuombeni mje tuzumgumza na nyinyi. Ikiwa wapo wengi, uje moja badaa ya moja.’ 3. As mentioned, dawa refers to all sorts of actions, words, spells, curses and amulets that can be obtained from medical specialists. Dawa can be used in order to interfere in the life of other people, or to change or even prevent change in the direction of one’s own life. Dawa can also be used as protection from the inference of other people and spirits in one’s life. 4. When presenting themselves during rituals spirits will always give their full name, that is, title, personal name, the name of their father and their grandfather and place of origin. In addition to personal names, Zanzibari women and men also identify themselves by the name of their father and their grandfather and in many situations, the family’s place of origin. It is seen as a lack of respect to refer to someone senior in age by using only their personal name. When referring to men who belong to a senior age group (rika), both women and men will use either a title such as Mwalimu, if the man is seen as a learned person, or the term Bwana or Mzee (mister) followed by the personal name. When referring to a woman belonging to a senior age group, they will use Ma (short for mama, i.e., mother or by extension, misses) or Bi (short for bibi, i.e., grandmother), usually followed by the woman’s personal name. If the woman is seen as learned in the Qur’an,

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she will be referred to as Mwalimu. An elder sister is always called Dada or Poi, and an elder brother is referred to as Kaka. These terms are also often used when referring to people in your own age group with whom you are not familiar. However, both women and men, when referring to somebody younger than themselves, will use the personal name, regardless of the person’s gender. 5. This is a medication lasting for three days, taking place in the house of the ritual leader. 6. The importance of kin is stressed by spirits as well as by humans. When spirits inhabiting different persons are relatives, this influences the relationship between the persons in question. They will then relate to each other as if they themselves were also relatives. To my knowledge this does not, however, apply to people who embody spirits who are wife and husband. But, if the spirits, for instance, are found to be daughter and father, the persons inhabited by these spirits give the impression of having an affectionate relationship that extends to their close relatives. 7. I could observe what happened to Bi Halima because I was sitting inside the ‘hut’ together with her and a woman from the ritual group who was there to assist Bi Halima.

6 BETWEEN SELF AND OTHER: BODY AND MIND

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine how distinctions between human beings and spirits are perceived and performed. The reality of spirits and their materialization through human bodies depends upon a conceptualization of personhood that includes a separation of body and mind. Crucial to this discussion is the empirical fact that although people and spirits may share a body, people still make clear distinctions between human beings and spirits, and between what can be seen as the human-self and the spirit-self. Women and men say that they can feel (hizi) when their spirit is about to inhabit them. Rukia gave the following account: It says boom when my sheitani ya kibuki arrives, not swing as when my sheitani ya ruhani arrives. But both spirits make me lose control over my actions as soon as they have come to my head.

Rukia is a woman in her midtwenties. She works as a saleswoman in a shop and she is engaged to be married. Rukia, like several women in her family, embodies spirits. Rukia grew up with the spirits of her mother as well as those of other relatives. The account she gives of how she feels when the spirits embody her resembles the accounts other people would provide. It seems that spirits contest the highly valued notion of self-control cherished by both women and men in this society. Through people’s accounts of how it feels to be inhabited by spirits, the spirits appeal to the emotional aspect of humans.

Ngoma ya ruhani Together with several women whom I had known for many years, I went to a ritual performed on behalf of Muslim spirits from Arabia (ngoma ya ruhani). That afternoon, Nariman, Zakia, Maulid and I had worked to persuade Safia to

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come with us. Nariman is a woman in her early thirties who is divorced without children. Zakia and Maulid are in their midtwenties and, while Zakia is engaged to be married soon, Maulid has a secret boyfriend. Safia is the same age as Nariman and married, with one child who is about one year old. Safia was sceptical about participating in this ritual and said that she was afraid that her sheitani ya ruhani would rise to her head. She also said that she was afraid of getting a new spirit. In the end, we did manage to persuade her to join us. Among the women, both Zakia and Safia are in steady jobs, while Nariman from time to time does business with various kinds of goods varying from clothes to cosmetics to spices. Maulid is studying to become a nurse. Economically speaking, the women and their families are managing, although they experience short periods where they do not have money to cover more than their immediate needs – a situation they share with many people in Zanzibar Town. The previous year Safia had often been ill and had problems in relation to her secret boyfriend. She said that she thought these problems were caused either by other people or by a spirit. Although Safia was familiar with the fact that she probably had a sheitani ya ruhani, she did not want to go to a ritual leader in order to find out whether her suffering was caused by this spirit and, if so, to welcome the spirit and establish a social relationship with the spirit. Safia simultaneously expressed anxiety, as well as doubt, as to whether humans actually can be inhabited by spirits. During this ritual, Zakia, Nariman and Safia all became inhabited by their spirits. Although Maulid also has a sheitani ya ruhani her spirit did not ‘climb to her head’. As usual when Zakia and Nariman became inhabited by their spirits, they initially became quiet and looked as if they were gazing at something far away. Then they looked depressed and almost as if they were about to cry. Suddenly, when a spirit rose to their heads, they screamed out, rose to their feet and started to dance with great force until their spirit decided to leave. As the spirit left their bodies, they fell down to the floor where they lay as if unconscious until someone sprinkled rosewater on their heads and chests. Safia’s sheitani ya ruhani embodied her only after the ritual leader’s spirit, a spirit named Shehe Ahmed, had called on Safia’s spirit by sprinkling rose-water on her, censed her with udi for a long period of time and danced with her while holding her hand. When Safia’s spirit eventually climbed to her head, he danced and danced until Safia, eventually, fell down to the floor and somebody sprinkled rosewater on her. But Safia’s spirit had not left. He sat up cross-legged with a face expressing both anger and happiness. As Safia had not yet arranged a ritual in order to welcome the spirit he could only speak in the human world when confronted with a ritual leader or a specialist such as a mwalimu or a mganga. When the ritual leader asked Safia’s spirit if he were a Muslim, he nodded Safia’s head vigorously in order to reassure him. Safia’s spirit said that he was happy because he finally could participate in a ritual but that he was angry with Safia because she wanted to prevent him from revealing himself. We knew the spirit was a male by his voice, facial expression and bodily movements. Now that Safia’s spirit had a chance to participate in the human world, the spirit said: ‘I will not leave; today

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I do not want to leave; I do not want to leave. I am happy – very happy to be here.’1 The spirit shook the head, laughed and pointed the finger. ‘Now,’ Safia’s spirit said, ‘she should learn,’ and continued, ‘I shall beat her, really beat her today.’2 The spirit started to beat Safia’s chest. To an outside observer it would appear as if Safia was beating herself. However, to an insider the event meant that the spirit inhabiting Safia’s body was punishing Safia by beating her body – the very same body the spirit inhabited. We all gave the sheitani ya ruhani the greetings ‘Shaulila, Shaulila’, in order to get him to relax. It helped for a short while, but then the beating started all over again. At this point the ritual leader said that someone should go and get Safia’s older relatives (wazee). Zakia, whose spirit had by now left her, went to fetch Safia’s older brother. Meanwhile, the ritual leader made a knot in Safia’s dress so the spirit should leave, and someone tied a straw around her arm, also in order to get the spirit to leave. But the spirit would not do so. After a while Zakia returned with Safia’s older brother so that he could listen to and help interpret the meaning of what the spirit said. With the help of Safia’s older brother it became clear that the spirit was the reason for all the suffering Safia had lived through the previous year and also that Safia had only herself to blame, being so arrogant towards her spirit. The spirit demanded that, in order to reestablish a good relationship with Safia, he wanted a ritual to be arranged on his behalf, including gifts such as a ritual meal and a golden ring with a red stone. It was indicated that such an effort was necessary if the relation between the spirit and Safia should be mended. After some time the spirit eventually left, and Safia fell exhausted to the floor. Usually, family members and friends of the person whose body is inhabited by a spirit are present, in order to hear and interpret the messages and claims voiced by the spirit, and to negotiate a possible way of reaching a liveable solution both for the spirit and for the person inhabited by the spirit, as well as for family members, friends and other persons involved. In the situation described above, Safia’s brother agreed to the spirit’s demands and gave a promise in the presence of spirits and humans that a ritual would be arranged, so that a relationship could be established between Safia and her spirit. In the case of Safia and her spirit, the spirit is seen neither as an expression of Safia’s unconscious nor as a representation of her suppressed emotions and feelings, but rather as a being separate from Safia who is interacting with her. The character of the relationship between Safia and her spirit is important for Safia’s well-being. In this sense her relationship with the spirit becomes an integrated part of self. Still, the spirit is perceived as an independent being to whom Safia as well as people in her vicinity have to relate. In order to understand the phenomenon of masheitani it is important to look at how women and men describe and thereby understand their experiences of embodying spirits and the experience of changing back and forth from being present in their bodies to having their bodies being ‘worn by’ a spirit. How does it feel to embody a spirit? How do they know that they do embody a spirit? Discourses on being inhabited by spirits are usually articulated with reference to pain inflicted on people by the spirit’s use of their body. People talk about pain

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and exhaustion with respect to being ‘worn by’ spirits, while harm is seldom mentioned. The expression to be ‘worn by the spirit’ is a literal translation of a local term, -vaa – a term that is also used, for instance, about wearing clothes. The use of this particular term indicates that the human body is seen like a set of clothes for the spirit. The spirits or the spirit-selves can enter and materialize through human bodies. It seems that it is the human body, not the human self, that is entered by spirits. People will say that a person is ‘filled up’ by a spirit – anamjaa sheitani. This expression refers to an idea of the body as an empty vessel that can be entered, at least for a period of time, by another self. It seems that it is the body and not the human self that is entered by the spirit. In this sense, the dissociation between human being and spirit is established. While there seems to be a general understanding of the body as permeable, people stress the importance of keeping a bounded self, understood in terms of self-control, dignity and respect. As I will illustrate below, this dissociation also means that the term trance could be misleading as a translation of spirit possession. When I asked people about their experiences I was surprised by the similarities in their explanations. There is a shared language through which experiences of embodying spirits are formulated and rendered acceptable.

States of body and states of mind Zanzibaris conceptually differentiate between having a spirit in their head (kuwa na sheitani kichwani) and jazba – a term they translate into English as trance. To ‘have a spirit in the head’ means that the spirit, not the human being, is the one who is visible and acting in the human world. From our perspective the notion of trance describes what we can observe when Zanzibaris claim that they ‘have a spirit in their head’. However, Zanzibari women and men do not use the term jazba (trance) to explain the experience of ‘having a spirit in their head’. Their understanding of trance seems more in line with an experience of being united with the spirit within a spirit world. Zakia, referred to above, explained jazba as follows: For example, when a person recites religious texts (soma dini) quite intensely she or he might get into jazba. When the reciting becomes very intense, the person’s Muslim, Arab spirit (sheitani ya ruhani) is drawn closer and eventually participates in the reciting. Then when the sheitani ya ruhani is also reciting, the person and the spirit are reciting together.

Other people present cannot hear the reciting of the spirit. In situations of jazba, the spirit is only indirectly participating in the human world, that is, within the individual person. Jazba is a state of mind and body, usually experienced by women and men who are learned in religion. Zakia continued, explaining that ‘when the human being and the spirit are reciting together, the spirit is very pleased and is celebrating’.3 She says:

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The person and the spirit are getting jazba together: the person is on the side and the spirit is standing. This means that the spirit is the one with most strength. When the person is getting the spirit in his head, the person is ‘filled up’ by the spirit. The spirit becomes heavy, and the person cannot sit anymore – she or he falls down because the spirit is stronger than her or his seat.

Zakia describes an experience in which neither I nor other people present can see the spirit standing nor hear the spirit reading. What we see is that the person in question becomes completely quiet, as if removed from her or his surroundings, before falling to the ground. Later on, I talked to other men and women about jazba. Bi Khatija, whom I have already introduced, stated that: ‘During jazba the sheitani ya ruhani is coming nearer. You are mixed together (unachanganika) with your spirit. The sheitani ya ruhani will recite until she or he has outdone the person.’ Bi Asha is an elderly widowed woman who lives in her own house together with her extended family. They maintain a relatively affluent lifestyle due to remittances send from family members living in Europe and in Oman. Bi Asha, who is involved in both ngoma ya ruhani and various forms of dhikiri sufi rituals, told me: ‘Jazba is like longing for something – it is like desire for something. Jazba is more satisfying than having a spirit in your head. Jazba one experiences before the spirit is “rising to your head”.’ Jazba is experienced in situations where people are reading or contemplating Islam and it is only masheitani ya ruhani who are involved in this experience – not the other kinds of spirits. Among the various ‘tribes’ of spirits, it is, as I have already argued, masheitani ya ruhani who are closely associated with Islam and Islamic practices. Jazba, then, also concerns the relationship between humans and spirits. When people claim that trance is more satisfying than ‘having a spirit in their head’, this might relate to the fact that jazba does not imply that the spirit uses their body to act in the world. Jazba is experienced in contexts of religious reciting when humans and spirits, so to speak, unite in God. In contrast, when spirits materialize in the human world, they are animated beings who are not humans, yet who relate to God in the same ways as humans do. On the basis of this understanding, one might question the general use and understanding of the term ‘trance’ in respect to so-called spirit possession. In contrast to having a spirit in your head, jazba means that the person falls over or faints, and then the spirit leaves. In this situation, the spirits use neither the body nor the voice of a person in order to materialize herself or himself in the world and to act as a human being. Jazba does not imply that the spirit is actively taking part in the human world – a significant aspect of spirit possession.

A bodily experience of spirits When spirits leave the body of their human host, women and men experience bodily or physical pain. Pain is by definition simultaneously a bodily experience

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and a mental-emotional experience and, thus, confounds a strict body-mind dualism (Jackson 1989). The morning following the ritual described, Nariman, Zakia and Safia were exhausted and felt pain everywhere. When I went to see Zakia, I found her still in bed and she told me that she was ill. The previous night Zakia’s spirit had climbed to her head several times. This morning Zakia said that she felt terrible; she felt pain even in her veins and bones and could hardly move. Safia, however, was feeling even worse. She could hardly speak because of the pain in her chest where her spirit had beaten her. The previous day a ngoma ya kibuki had also been performed. It was impossible for me to go to both rituals during the same day because I had been told that these two kinds of spirits adhere to incompatible moral values; while masheitani ya kibuki consume alcohol, masheitani ya ruhani claim that alcohol is sinful. I had chosen to attend the ngoma ya ruhani. Munira, a married women in her thirties and mother of three, had been at the ngoma ya kibuki, and after I had visited both Safia and Zakia, I went to see Munira. I found Munira still in bed, and she told me that she was ill. Munira looked miserable. The previous night Munira’s spirit had climbed to her head several times, and every time the spirit had danced with great force. This morning Munira, like Zakia, told me that she felt terrible, and could hardly move. She also suffered from wounds on her knees caused by her spirits dancing on her knees. Clearly, the spirits are experienced physically. My contention is that the bodily pain experienced in the wake of being inhabited by spirits, turns spirits into physical beings. Spirits are made real through a focus on the body. Only by inhabiting human bodies do spirits change from being an abstract phenomenon into a physical phenomenon. What I saw as a controlled shift in personality, or a dramatization of otherness, is in Zanzibari terms a materialization of another being, that is, a spirit. People relate to their own spirits as separate beings. Nariman holds that her spirit is like another person (kama mtu mwingine) to her. She explains that when her spirit approaches her, she feels like she is swinging from side to side. She says: ‘It is like another person is pushing me, and I cannot stop it. Then, when the spirit departs I always get a terrible headache.’ The physical being of spirits becomes apparent to others through the spirits’ use of the human body and the sound of the voice, through what is said and how things are said without concealment of thoughts and emotions, as well as lack of modesty. Amina explained as follows: When you have a spirit in your head you change: the expression on your face, how you move and how you talk – everything changes and you become of a different kind, you become another being (namna tofauti). When a spirit has climbed to your head you will sometimes know what you are doing, but you are not capable of controlling it. Other times it becomes absolutely dark; you see nothing, but you can hear what is going on. Sometimes you are all gone (hupo kabisa). When the spirit departs you cannot remember anything of what has happened, and very often the spirit leaves you with your body full of pain.

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The phenomenon of masheitani becomes physically graspable through being associated with physically explained pain. The spirit is not the pain. Rather, the pain is the effect of the presence of the spirit and, hence, it is one way for Nariman and Amina to know that they have been inhabited by a spirit. There are also those who do not feel pain in the wake of having been inhabited by spirits. Naila is a woman in her late thirties. She is divorced without children and living with her extended family. Naila has received several proposals for marriage, but is not yet quite sure that she would like to remarry. Among Naila’s family members, several are known to have spirits. When from time to time their spirits cause illness and misfortune, they will call a specialist in matters of illness and health or a ritual leader, who will summon the spirit in order to know the cause of the problems and their solutions. Usually the specialists or the ritual leaders will come to their home even when it is only to summon a spirit and not to prepare a full ritual. Naila’s family is wealthy and has, due to their recent wealth, become rather influential in Zanzibar Town. Whenever a mwalimu, mganga or fundi accepts an invitation to the family house they will receive generous gifts. Furthermore, by accepting this procedure a particular relationship develops and the specialists would also be in a position to approach the family for assistance in situations of needs without expressing any form of deference. Sometimes members of Naila’s family will also go and visit a specialist. Still, they would never participate in ngoma ya sheitani. Naila’s family holds that it is wrong according to Islam to participate in rituals on behalf of spirits. Naila explained her experience of being inhabited by her spirit as follows: I have a spirit, but it has never revealed herself or himself to me. So one day I went to mwalimu in order to get in contact with the spirit. The spirit came to my head. Yet, I could not really believe in it, because when the spirit was in my head and talked, I felt as if it were I who was talking – not the spirit. Some people say that when they have a spirit in their head, they do not feel anything. It is just like they are sleeping. Afterwards, when the spirit had left, I could not remember anything of what I had said and answered.

Naila took the fact that she could not remember anything afterwards as a sign that she had been inhabited by a spirit, although she had no physical signs of the spirit’s presence, such as feeling bodily pain. Forgetting is also a physical state. But not experiencing any physical pain made her doubt that she had really been inhabited by a spirit, despite her forgetfulness. It seems that the feeling of pain constitutes irrefutable evidence of having been inhabited by a spirit. The very need for proof indicates an underlying doubt with respect to the spirits. The doubt does not, however, relate to the phenomenon of masheitani as such but rather to whether individual human beings have actually been inhabited by spirits at all. While experiences of pain relate to being inhabited by spirits, the illness and suffering caused by spirits are seen as expressions of a relationship or the need to establish one between a spirit and the person in question. Pain caused by spirits turns them into beings physically present in the human world, as well as within

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human bodies. The language referring to experiences of being or having been inhabited by spirits is culturally shared. This is, as I have previously stressed, not an unknown or unstructured experience; spirits are part of reality. Thus, women and men give accounts of how they experience the process of being inhabited by spirits, and people also share their experiences with each other. Experiences of embodying spirits are both expressed through altered bodily and mental reactions, and described and discussed in terms of altered physical and emotional states of being. Women and men refer to bodily parts, sensations and feelings in order to describe and make understandable encounters with their own spirits. As one’s own spirits are rarely, if ever, seen, the stress is on feelings and sensations.

Losing oneself to the spirit Zainab, a divorced woman in her midthirties, whom I have referred to earlier, explained the experience of being inhabited by spirits during ritual contexts to me, as follows: It is as if everything that is happening around me is happening far away. Then I feel a kind of distress (dhiki), I feel confused, I feel bad (tafrahni) and I want to cry. I feel like I have no strength, as if I have no blood. Sometimes I feel very, very sad as if I observe that another human being is being killed. Then the spirit climbs to my head. After this, I am either not conscious (sina fahamu) anymore, or I remain conscious but I am not able to control my actions.

In describing her experiences Zainab explains that she feels removed from the ritual context: the music, voices and smell of incense seem far away. She also refers to sadness described with reference to bodily states such as having no strength and having no blood – that is, weakness. In order to explain the severity of her weakness, Zainab refers to mental states that are recognized as representations of feeling bad or even suffering, lack of bliss, distress and anxiety. In her explanation of how she feels in situations when her body is actually being inhabited by a spirit, Zainab claims that she becomes weak in relation to the spirit. When she says that she has no blood, she refers to the understanding that spirits eat the blood of human beings. It seems like the feeling of sadness is related to her losing control over her body. This point is also illustrated in various songs and, in particular, in a song used during various sorts of ngoma ya sheitani where the message is that if a spirit gets hold of your liver you will lose control over yourself and even die. The liver (ini) denotes, among other things, innermost feelings. The song goes as follows: The serpent has bitten me in my liver, (and) I have no healer. I have no healer to heal me, Prophet. The serpent has bitten me in my liver, (and) I have no healer.

Nyoka amenitafuna ini, sina mganga. Sina mganga kunitibu, nabia Nyoka amenitafuna ini sina mganga

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People have slightly different interpretations of this song. Zainab tells me that the serpent is the spirit. She explains: ‘If the spirit really gets into you, the spirit controls you and no healer will be able to get the spirit to leave you.’ Hamisi who is the apprentices of one of the ritual leaders for ngoma ya ruhani explains the meaning of this song as follows: The serpent is like a prosecutor (mdai). The prosecutor is capable of taking out the vital essence from living creatures. The prosecutor will kill in order to get what she or he wants. In such cases there is no healer but God. God will help you, but not in this world. God will help you in heaven.

According to both Zainab and Hamisi, the song mentioned above is associated with the possible harm spirits can cause in the lives of humans by assuming control over the human body and mind. Spirits are understood to be able to block the mental and physical strength of humans by inflicting illness and suffering and, maybe, even being able to kill. Still, I have never come across a situation where a person’s death was actually said to have been caused by a spirit. A feeling of sadness is one sign of being inhabited by a spirit – sadness so severe as to be compared to seeing someone ‘being killed’. In the case of Safia, who had been down and out for quite a while, to be inhabited by a spirit might be seen as motivated by her experience of total lack of happiness. Zanzibaris, however, neither understand the presence of spirits as a result of a person’s emotional state, nor do they see spirits as an expression of a person’s emotional state of being. Zanzibaris operate within a context where spirits are real, and humans and spirits are different beings – and where sadness on the part of the person in question is seen as a sign of a spirit entering that person’s body. Bwana Hussein is a specialist in matters of illness and health and a ritual leader. He performs rituals on different scales – including very modest rituals with few ingredients involved. Bwana Hussein’s concern is that also people with very limited means should be able to arrange satisfactory rituals on behalf of their spirits either in order to welcome the spirits or to perform the rituals that are necessary in order to mend relations between the human host and her or his spirit whenever a relationship is at stake and the person is suffering. Bwana Hussein has a sort of professional relationship to several of his spirits, who help him in his work as a medical specialist. Bwana Hussein also mentions death or dying when he describes how he feels when inhabited by spirits. He explained his experiences when calling on the spirits outside ritual contexts, as follows: When a spirit is climbing me (wakati sheitani ananipanda), I feel that I am changing – it is like a snake is coiling itself tight around me. I feel distress; I feel bad. I feel like my breath is leaving my body, I feel like I am about to die (nahizi kama roho itanitoka). I feel confused, like mixed together.

In his description of the process of being inhabited by a spirit, Bwana Hussein mentions a blurring of boundaries between himself and spirits in the process of

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transformation. He says that it is as if he and the spirit merge; he feels as if they are mixed together. In the explanations given by both Zainab and Bwana Hussein, there are elements that I interpret as a notion of losing oneself or losing touch with oneself. While Zainab explains that the relief from sadness occurs when the spirit appears and she herself is not present any more, Bwana Hussein says that the boundaries between himself and his spirit, at a certain point in the process whereby he is inhabited by the spirit, become blurred. Simultaneously, Bwana Hussein (when not embodying spirits) talks about and relates to his spirits as others. The only blurring seems to be the confusion in trying to understand what is going on: that the same body can be the seat of different beings. Both Zainab and Bwana Hussein describe the process of transition as a state of mental confusion. In this sense their feelings of disappearing (dying) might refer to a feeling of losing themselves to a spirit. It seems that the human self is lost for a period of time, when the spirit self appears. What I call a loss of self can perhaps be understood as a process by which a human being and a spirit move together. The moments of moving together, then, extend over the complete range of perception and interaction. There is a movement of concealment of the person and disclosure of the spirit, but at the same time this concealment can be seen as the opposite of self-control, as it is the spirit that takes over the control of the human body. What is interesting is that, to Zanzibari women and men, there is no merging of humans and spirits. To embody a spirit implies that a person loses control over her or his body, so in this sense the phenomenon of being inhabited by spirits represents a controlled context for losing self-control. In short, people relate to this phenomenon as if their body was taken over by another being, or rather, by another person with her or his own intentions (nia), will (dhati), longings (hamu), emotions (maono), desires (tamaa), thoughts (fikira) and reason (akili). This is tied to Zanzibari understandings of the body as a kind of container that can be emptied and filled at the will of spirits. An interesting question raised by this is whether and how a spirit’s behaviour reflects on the human host – the person inhabited by the spirit?

Altered states of body, altered states of mind During a ritual, Zainab had plaited her hair before she arrived. When her female spirit came to her head, she went towards a young woman with long straight hair. The spirit started to play with the young woman’s hair while making it clear to all present that she found this hair beautiful. She even tried to put the hair onto Zainab’s head. When she did not succeed she became angry and started to undo Zainab’s hair quite violently, while telling the audience through bodily movements and gestures how horrible she found Zainab’s hair, that is, the hair belonging to the woman the spirit had inhabited, and how much she liked the hair of the young girl. The spirit, as well as the audience, distinguished between Zainab and herself as different beings. The audience looked at the spirit laughingly and made jokes

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about her preferring the hair of someone else. ‘She is foolish,’ they said, ‘she should be pleased with Zainab’s hair. Zainab cannot change her hair.’ In this case, by expressing a dislike for Zainab’s hair by favouring the hair of the other woman, the spirit is also making a value judgment: that Zainab’s hair is not the sort of hair considered beautiful according the ideal standards. Afterwards, when Zainab and I were on our way home, Zainab said that she felt embarrassed and humiliated because of how her spirit had focused on her hair. ‘I do not like to be laughed at; it is shameful,’ she told me. Zainab explained that she had been aware of what her spirit did but was not able to control the spirit. When the spirit had left, she had also been told about her spirit’s behaviour by people present. In this situation, it seems that although it was the spirit’s conduct that evoked laughter, Zainab felt embarrassed as if she were the one who had misbehaved. Does this mean that the boundaries between Zainab and her spirit are, in one way or another, blurred? Is it that Zainab feels shame because she has, through the spirit, revealed in front of other people that she longs for the sort of hair she does not have – the kind of hair associated with Arab origin or rather Arabness? One possibility for Zainab’s feeling of shame is that the spirit made fun of her when she was not present to defend herself: it is like being gossiped about publicly or, also, like being insulted in front of other people and thereby ‘losing face’. After all, it was her spirit’s judgment of her hair that they were laughing at. It seems that the behaviour of Zainab’s spirit carried over into everyday life. Zainab was worried that her spirit’s behaviour would have an impact on how she was viewed by others. The relationship between a human being and a spirit may lead to revelations about the human host that cause embarrassment on the part of the human host. In this sense, the phenomenon of being inhabited by a spirit and thereby losing control over one’s body may appear threatening. Likewise, a relationship between a human being and a spirit may spill over on to the human host and cause embarrassment if the human host could, by relating to the spirit in a different way, have prevented the embarrassing or shameful situation. I will now give another example, involving a married woman in her late twenties named Bimkubwa. It was Sunday afternoon and the last day of ngoma ya kibuki. The spirit on whose behalf the ritual had been performed was to ‘come out’ (toka nje) and be celebrated. On this last day, Bimkubwa came to participate. Bimkubwa is the granddaughter of Bi Khatija mentioned earlier. She has been brought up by her grandmother and after she married Bimkubwa, her husband and their two sons have been living with Bi Khatija. Bi Khatija has also mainly been responsible for the upbringing of Bimkubwa’s sons while Bimkubwa and her husband have tried to build up a business based on importing clothes from England. Bimkubwa had for a period of time been bothered by her sheitani ya kibuki, although the spirit had, up till now, never climbed to her head. During this ritual session, Bimkubwa’s spirit climbed to her head three times. Every time the spirit inhabited Bimkubwa, the spirit danced on the knees with great force: the spirit was wailing as she or he appeared, swinging Bimkubwa’s arms, rolling her head and moving around on her

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knees. People present looked at the spirit and laughed, as they apparently found the unrestrained dancing fascinating. When the spirit left, Bimkubwa was exhausted, there were drops of perspiration on her face, she smelled of sweat and was wet from the specially prepared water someone had poured over her head in order to get the spirit to leave. Her clothes were torn and she was bleeding from wounds on her knees. She was not a pretty sight when she left. Two days after this ritual I visited Bimkubwa in her grandmother’s house. Bimkubwa said that she still felt pain in her body and that she had a stiff neck because of her spirit’s unrestrained dancing movements. Bi Khatija, her grandmother, told me that Bimkubwa had herself to blame as she should not have gone to the ritual alone but should have asked her sister-in-law or a friend to come with her. The importance of being with family or friends in case one becomes inhabited by a spirit is well known. Bi Khatija explained: ‘They would have restrained her spirit. When Bimkubwa’s spirit climbed to her head, other people only laughed and said: “Look, look”, especially because it was the first time she was climbed by a spirit, at a ritual.’ Thus, there is an idea that humans have the possibility to control the spirits’ use of human bodies other than their own. To be laughed at is perceived as shameful; in fact, to look shabby is in itself a shameful thing in this society. As modesty and shyness are valued, unrestrained and revealing movements and behaviour are, at least among humans, understood as lack of self-control. During the ritual, people were well aware of the fact that the one acting was the spirit and not Bimkubwa. Her spirit acted as masheitani ya kibuki are expected to, only totally unrestrained. The behaviour of the spirit was controlled in the sense that the spirit behaved within the framework of what are seen as typically kibuki movements. Yet due to the force of the actions, the spirit’s behaviour was perceived as unrestrained. There were no people present who tried to restrain Bimkubwa’s spirit. No one tried to influence the spirit, so that she or he would adhere more to human practices. Although the spirit’s behaviour was not seen as immodest, Bimkubwa was criticized for not having tried to prevent a situation where her spirit could behave without restrictions. This illustrates why people find it important always to attend rituals together with a relative or a close friend, someone who will protect them, take care of them and negotiate with the spirit in a situation where a spirit inhabits their body. People distinguished between Bimkubwa and her spirit. Thus, they did not laugh because of what might appear, to an outside observer, as Bimkubwa’s lack of ability to perform self-control. The people laughed, I suggest, because they found the unrestrained behaviour of the spirit both comic and threatening. Bimkubwa herself said that she felt ashamed because people had been amused and laughed when the spirit climbed to her head. It seems, then, that what the spirit does spills over on the person inhabited by the spirit. It is very much as with humans, where the conduct of one person may, to a certain extent, affect the reputation of the whole family. Bimkubwa somehow feels ashamed on behalf of her spirit, as she would have felt embarrassed on behalf of a sister who was gossiped about and laughed at. Bimkubwa’s shame was, therefore, also a result of

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the fact that she should have known better than to go to a ritual alone. People are aware of the fact that, when inhabited by spirits, humans lose control over their bodies. Concerning relationships between humans and spirits, the spirit’s behaviour in the human world may, as mentioned, reflect on the person inhabited by the spirit.4 But this is never to the same extent as between human beings, because spirits are understood as different beings from humans. The significance of taking precautions in order to restrain the behaviour of the spirits also relates to the fact that the strength of spirits may become dangerous to humans: a spirit can do harm to the human body. For example, the spirit may become too strong for the human body. Spirits are not supposed to harm the human body, although the spirits’ ability to harm is referred to in the song mentioned above. People acknowledge that relating to spirits is not without danger. Because, just as relationships between humans are both sweet and bitter (tamu na chungu), so are relationships between humans and spirits. Moreover pain is, as discussed, associated with being inhabited by spirits; the experience of pain forms part of the experience of being inhabited by spirits. And because spirits have more strength than human beings, the human body always looks a bit worn and messy when a spirit leaves. Yet the reason for Bimkubwa’s shame referred to the fact that when the spirit left, her body was in a totally miserable state; she looked shabby and worn out when she left the ritual – more shabby and worn out than is usual. Hence, because of the spirits’ strength they may – even unintentionally as in the case of Bimkubwa – harm the human body. The cases of both Zainab and Bimkubwa also concern the problem of otherness. Here I am not thinking about otherness in terms of notions of kabila or cultural stereotypes. Rather, what is interesting is the possible experience of otherness in relation to ideas of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. Both women and men argue for the importance of not causing shame to yourself or to others. In order to avoid this, both self-control and the ability to hide one’s thoughts and feelings are emphasized. Zainab’s spirit speaks from the heart, and makes Zainab feel shame. The spirit does not feel shame; spirits are known to have the strength to speak from the heart without being shamed. Had it been Zainab who spoke from her heart and ridiculed her own hair by focusing on another woman’s hair, in front of other people, Zainab would have shamed herself. She would have appeared as a person without any modesty, pride or respect. Bimkubwa’s spirit behaved, as Bimkubwa could not have done, without losing respect – with a total lack of self-control. Thus, when people and spirits meet, otherness is also experienced with reference to what is perceived as morally acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. There is a distinction between what is seen as acceptable behaviour for human beings and for spirits. If people behaved as spirits and spoke from their hearts and lacked in self-control, this would, according to Zanzibari women and men, cause antagonism (husuda) and eventually discord (fitina). Through being inhabited by spirits, people may actually embody emotional states which are perceived as contradictory, not only to being a respectable and modest person – a good person (mtu mzuri), but also

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to what is perceived as a civilized society. Still, these emotional states may be recognizable as they are part of people’s experiences both as memories and present events (Bloch 1996, Lambek 1996). Although human beings and spirits may share a body, humans and spirits remain separate beings. Yet spirits are dependent upon the human body in order to materialize in the human world. The human body is seen as permeable and the spirits have the ability to inhabit it. Hence, the phenomenon of masheitani is related to the physical body and, taking this into consideration, I will in the next chapter shift my lens to gender. Perceived gender differences, both in the human world and the spirit world, represent one way of grasping ambiguities inherent in Zanzibari understandings of difference ascribed on the basis of sexed bodies. In the next chapter, I will explore how gender as it is understood with reference to the spirits is tied to gender images in general. The spirits, I argue, both represent and present Zanzibari gender images.

Notes 1. Sitaki kutoka. Leo, sitaki kutoka, sitaki kutoka. Nimefurahi, nimefurahi sana, sana kwa sababu nimefika hapa. 2. Nitampiga, leo nitampiga kweli, kweli. 3. Women and men who are members of either Qadiriyya / Quadderi or Shadhiliyya Sufi orders, that is, the main Sunnite Sufi orders in Zanzibar Town would explain that they experience jazba during their dhikiri rituals. In these situations they would also be inhabited by their sheitani ya ruhani. Only masheitani ya ruhani – no other kinds of spirits – are involved in Sufi related rituals and experiences. Several women and men who are engaged in and members of one of the above mentioned Sufi orders also, in other contexts, embody spirits belonging to different makabila. When specific Sufi rituals are performed masheitani ya ruhani may appear during these rituals. Moreover, masheitani ya ruhani often want dhikiri to be performed during their rituals. However, Sufi rituals and spirit possession rituals are two different types of ritual events and the rituals are performed out of different reasons. 4. To show respect and to be respectable means not making other people vulnerable. Sensitivity towards questions of respect (heshima) and respectability (kuwa na heshima / haya) is usually held by Zanzibaris themselves to be typically Zanzibari.

7 GENDER: RELATIONS, MARKERS AND SEXUALITY

Understandings of the body concern ideas of biology and aesthetics. The aesthetic dimension, including its performative acts is, in this society, explicitly expressed in questions of kabila, while the ambiguity of biology and aesthetics is first and foremost disclosed in questions of gender and gender differences. My contention is that gender as it is understood with reference to the spirits is tied to Zanzibari gender images in general. But while gender in the human world is perceived as referring to biological sex, people define the gender of the spirits on the basis of aesthetics. When gendered spirits inhabit sexed bodies, ambiguities inherent in people’s perceptions of gender and gender difference are disclosed.1 In Zanzibar both the female and the male body are understood to possess the same sort of essences and emotional attributes; as such, attributes associated to humanity (utu) are not gendered. Still, gender differences are usually phrased with respect to ideas of emotion and reason and the locus for the difference is the body. A main difference between the female and the male body lies, however, in the sexual organs. On the basis of their sexual organs, children are defined as female (ya kike) or male (ya kiume), a discrimination that again makes a difference with respect to people’s notions about self-control, emotion and reason, illness inflicted through and on the body, and questions of sexuality. Despite an understanding of the essence of the person and the essential differences between female and male, the problem of gender also concerns form. The body is not gender neutral, and gender, although culturally constructed, is simultaneously experienced as distinctly physical and inscribed in the body. In this chapter I explore whether the spirits in various ways may be said to oppose human gender images and at the same time reproduce the very same images. In order to throw light upon possible manipulations of perceived ideals and values, I will also briefly discuss the ways of homosexual men. It seems that, despite women and men’s clear sense of gender categories, people’s experience reveals continuous transgressions of the very same categories with respect to the

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handling of gender relations, sexuality and gender markers, something that actually makes the ways of spirits more similar to those of humans than the cultural ideals presented suggest. By using the term transgression I refer to how people scramble gender markers and cross boundaries between what they define as feminine and masculine. Furthermore, I use the term transgression in order to denote conduct which is not in concordance with defined ideals yet is perceived as acceptable, as long as it is not disclosed in an explicit way. But, first, let me review my use of the concepts sex, gender and sexuality. Sex refers to the physical body as distinguished by either female or male genitalia, i.e., biological sex. When I use the term female body, I refer to the female-sexed body. I find the concept gender useful in order to grasp what I see as the construction, but also deconstruction, of sexual differences.2 Sexuality may overlap with sex and gender, and is associated with domains of desire and erotic pleasure that may go beyond the more dominant mode of reproductive heterosexuality (Robertson 1992). Following from this, sex, gender, and sexuality may be related, but may also refer to different domains of personhood. The articulation of sex, gender and sexuality is negotiable and negotiated constantly; an individual is not only ascribed a gender, but also achieves it. Gender is an identity constituted in time. It is, according to Judith Butler: ‘an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts’ (Butler 1988: 519). Still, although gender identity is a performative accomplishment, it is also compelled by social sanctions (ibid.). Women and men appropriate the qualities and capacities of gender and the norms governing its expressions (Robertson 1992), and gender can, as such, be seen as embodied. Conceptualization of sex and gender in terms of embodiment can be useful in bridging the biological and the cultural aspects of sex and gender. I will, however, restrict the use of the term embodied in relation to gender as such in my present discussion, as I have reserved this term to describe phenomena associated with the spirits. In what follows I will present gender relations as perceived and enacted in Zanzibar Town. My intention is not to argue that there are no variations in how women and men live their relations with people of the opposite gender. Rather, my intention is to give the reader a more general idea of the construction of gender relations and gender images. I may repeat some information concerning gender that I have already given elsewhere, but will present it here with a different focus. Below, I will first give an example of expected behaviour on the part of a woman and a man, and of how the spirits may also interfere and work against a man’s authority while at the same time reproducing Zanzibari gender images grounded in notions of complementarity. Thereafter, I will discuss gender and complementarity more generally and, in relation to the married couple.

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Gender and complementarity One morning when I arrived at Zainab’s house she told me with great excitement that a neighbour – a young man called Saidi – had gone home to his older sister Aweda in the evening in order to get money from her. When she refused to give him any, he started to abuse her. Aweda is known to have Christian spirits from Madagascar whom she has prepared for. Saidi abused Aweda and just as he was about to slap her in the face, Aweda became inhabited by her male spirit. Saidi ran out of the house, and as the male spirit had climbed to Aweda’s head he said: ‘I will not sleep until Saidi has been punished’ (amepata adabu yake). According to the rumours, Saidi had then passed a friend’s house and asked for money. Afterwards, he had walked towards a neighbourhood called Malindi where, I was told, it was as if Saidi’s feet were stuck to the ground. He stood in the middle of the road and could not move, and a car nearly hit him. When he eventually moved, he went towards a building and started to bang his head on the wall. People rushed to help him, and he was taken to the hospital where he was said to have been tied to the bed as if he were a lunatic (kama mwendazimu). Those who knew what had happened at Aweda’s house argued that Saidi’s strange behaviour was caused by Aweda’s spirit, who had decided to punish him. When I asked Zainab if she thought Saidi’s behaviour was due to drugs, she answered that he was not using heroin or cocaine (unga). Later that day I met another of Saidi’s sisters. She told me that Saidi was out of the hospital and that he had just regained consciousness. Ideally speaking, being her younger brother Saidi had no right to ask Aweda for money, let alone to abuse and slap her. However, as a brother and grown-up man, Saidi could expect some deference from Aweda, which in this situation he did not get. Aweda, although she was an older sister, could not abuse her brother even though he had misbehaved. Moreover, being a woman she could not start a fight with Saidi. Yet, in this situation, it could have been expected that she would lose her self-control and act on the basis of emotion, which would imply that she might hit Saidi back or start to scream. Aweda did not. She was able to control herself. However, Aweda’s spirit acted on her behalf by inhabiting her body. Although it could be assumed that even Aweda’s female spirit would have had the strength to punish Saidi, it was her male spirit who appeared in order to protect Aweda from Saidi. In terms of Zanzibari morality, women should be protected from men by other men. In this situation, it was a male spirit who defended Aweda. Although Saidi was punished for his behaviour towards his sister, there were no transgressions of gender images and moral ideals. In this situation, Aweda’s male spirit both opposed and reproduced ideas of authority between women and men, as well as the notion of complementarity. The notion of complementarity refers to relationships between women and men in general, although age, kabila and economic position may confuse the ideas of complementarity (and asymmetry) as these adhere to gender images. Complementarity is, however, most explicitly associated with the married couple and relations defined in terms of sexuality. Ideally speaking, men have, for

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instance, an exclusive right to their wives’ sexual services, as women have a right to their husband’s sexual services. One difference is that wives do not hold exclusive rights in their husband’s sexuality. Still, both women and men continuously suspect each other of being involved in sexual relationships outside marriage.3 Attraction and desire are issues of great concern. Desire (tamaa), lust (ashiki), passion (mahaba) and emotions (maono) constitute important aspects associated with being human. Relationships that do not involve sexual relations are unthinkable between women and men. This is also expressed through how people talk about sexual relationships. Let me illustrate: The term kuona, which means both to hear and to perceive, is also used to denote sexual relationships, such as see each other with the eyes. If a woman says that she has seen a man in town (nimemwona mjini), it means that she has had an occasional sexual affair. If she says that she has not seen him (sikumwona), it means that she has nothing to do with him as far as sexual matters go. Sexual attraction is precarious, and it is also associated with suffering in the sense of the agony of love, especially illicit love. These topics are explicitly expressed through the much appreciated Taraab music and songs, as well as through Indian film songs. Moral transgressions are often discussed as a result of lack of self-control and as conduct motivated by emotions. It is, therefore, interesting that despite the positive value of self-control, emotions, or rather to act on the basis of emotions, seems also to make moral transgressions such as illicit love affairs, jealousy and anger understandable. In other words, emotions are accepted as grounds for acting in the world. In accordance with a moral code emphasizing and regulating difference between women and men, sexual transgressions influence the lives of women and men in different ways. While there is a more or less shared, public acceptance of the unavoidable sexual transgressions on the part of men, there is a public understanding that women’s sexual transgressions ought to be avoided. Chastity remains the ideal image for women throughout their life – although this image is continuously subverted. Below, I will depict how women and men are evaluated in terms of a public moral code and how this code confirms ideal gender images. Notions of concealment and disclosure form part of the picture and make the evaluations of what is acceptable behaviour, and what is not, more complex.

Concealment and disclosure Bwana Abdallah came to his elder sister’s house one morning in excitement. He said that he had divorced his wife, Laila. He had written a statement of divorce, talak, that is, ‘Laila Hassan Mohammed is not my wife’, three times and given the letter to Laila’s mother (his mother-in-law). Bwana Abdallah explained that his wife had told him that she had been together with three other men during their marriage and that she had asked him to forgive her. Bwana Abdallah said that he had told her that he could forgive her, but that he would not be married to her any longer.

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On the one hand, according to ideals and values associated with masculinity and being male, Bwana Abdallah had failed in controlling his wife. On the other hand, with respect to ideas of modesty, shyness and respectability, Laila had failed. Yet at the same time, Laila had acted in a way expected of women – that is, uncontrolled, letting her emotions guide her actions. In this situation, Bwana Abdallah acted in accordance with the cultural and public expectations of what a man ought to do in such situations. He abandoned the wife who had shamed him and, thereby, kept his pride (fahari). By stressing the fact that he forgave his wife, Bwana Abdallah showed that he was able to control his emotions and act on the basis of reason. He is a man with self-control. Being a man, Bwana Abdallah’s dramatic decision was never explained as an act of emotions such as jealousy. Rather, his actions were understood as being based on reason, complying with the society’s rules of moral conduct. Still, Bwana Abdallah did reveal that his actions were also guided by what are considered authentic feelings and genuine passion: he forgave his wife, and as such he emphasized that his actions were also guided by emotions. In order to balance between being a person with honour (heshima) and a kind (mzuri), generous (mwema) and compassionate (huruma) person, in many situations it is necessary to make compromises. Bwana Abdallah upheld his pride as a man by making decisions with reference to both reason and emotion. If not, he might have been perceived as a man without compassion – which is a negative description both of men and women. Yet the fact that Bwana Abdallah emphasized his emotional generosity by saying that he forgave his wife in this situation made, of course, no actual difference for his wife. He still divorced her. Bwana Abdallah’s elder sisters, Ma Aisha and Bi Nuru, and three of his grownup nieces commented upon Bwana Abdallah’s decision in his absence. They all agreed that his decision was the only one possible. Simultaneously, all the women present said that it was stupid and unnecessary of Bwana Abdallah’s wife, Laila, to tell him that she had been seeing other men. ‘She is not intelligent (hana akili), no ability to plan (hana mpango)’, they said, ‘because, when he knew, he had to divorce her.’ What they were saying is that what Laila did, that is, being unfaithful, is tolerable. When criticized by women in her immediate vicinity, Laila was most of all criticized for not being able, or cunning enough, to keep her secrets. Whether Laila used her cunning to provoke her husband to divorce her was not an interpretation formulated by women discussing the event. What this example conveys is that it is not sexuality as such that is precarious for women in this society but, rather, how they handle their sexuality according to values of concealment and disclosure. It seems that what is important is not necessarily to refrain from transgressing moral values and ideals but, rather, to be able to conceal these transgressions. The handling of sexuality is important both for women and for men. Nevertheless, it seems that the disclosure of moral transgressions is more precarious for women. This relates to the fact that men are understood to hold authority over women and that men’s respectability is tied to (their) women’s handling of sexuality.

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Both women and men seek information about what sort of relationships their spouses are about to initiate or have initiated, not only because they are afraid of losing their wife or husband but also because of the shame people associate with being the only one within the community not knowing about the unfaithfulness of one’s spouse. In this society where concealment is stressed, people visit various waganga and walimu, that is, specialists in matters of illness and health, in order to keep themselves informed about the doings and whereabouts of their spouses and about other people’s intentions to seduce them. Through their own knowledge or by the help of their spirits, the specialists can help people to get answers to their suspicions and solutions to their problems, such as how to recapture their beloved’s attention. Despite strict segregation, flirtation, playing with words, and expressions implying invitations to sexual relations, form part of most encounters – but in implicit ways (njia ya ndani). In the human world, concealment is important in questions of sexuality, except when spirits are involved.

Acts of disclosure and moral ambiguity When spirits are involved, it seems that situations that should otherwise be concealed, and which could have created tension and jealousy on the part of both women and men, can be disclosed and found acceptable. For instance, I have discussed earlier that spirits are said to know physical love. They are not, as angels, beings without desire. I was told time and again by both women and men that spirits are like human beings in that they are attracted towards the opposite sex – and also to human beings. To be inhabited by a spirit of the opposite sex does not necessarily lead to a sexual relationship between the human being and the spirit. Zanzibari women and men only have sexual relationships with masheitani ya ruhani, who are Arab, Muslim spirits. Being of the same religion and, from a Zanzibari point of view, of the same cultural tradition, these spirits are considered closer to them in terms of morality – in the widest sense of the term – than other kinds of spirits. Amiri is a man in his midforties. He says that he has two wives: one human wife, whom he met first, and one spirit wife, whom he married in the country of the spirits. The two wives know about each other and have accepted each other. However, Amiri tells me that his spirit wife has denied him another human wife or mistress. If he does not comply with this, his spirit wife has told him that she will make him suffer. In this case the spirit wife explicitly limits Amiri’s behaviour, while his human wife could only have done this in secret, for instance through the use of dawa in the sense of sorcery-related medicaments. The difference is not so much related to the possibilities of restricting a husband’s conduct but rather that while a spirit wife can do this openly, a human wife cannot. Moreover, the fact that his spirit wife places claims on Amiri that he observes is something Amiri can confess even in the company of other men. Everybody knows that spirits, female or male, have more strength than human beings. Being controlled by a female

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spirit does not cause Amiri shame. If Amiri’s human wife had controlled him in the same way as his spirit wife, Amiri would have been perceived as a man without pride. Let me give another example on how relations between humans and spirits may transgress moral values in the human world and still be tolerated. Rukia is thirty-five years old and married with two daughters. She is the owner of a dala-dala – a pick-up car converted into a bus. She employs a driver. From the income she gets from this business, she secures the family’s livelihood. Rukia has also become a mwalimu and uses her knowledge of the hidden meaning of the Qur’an to heal. Rukia claims that she has received her knowledge from three different masheitani ya ruhani who educate her while she is asleep (usingzini). She also participates in the Sufi Qadiriyya rituals. Rukia has a sexual relationship with a spirit. She explained: My ruhani is like my husband; he is my lover. My husband knows about this, and he accepts it. I had the ruhani before I met my husband. I have no desire for my husband. He gives me no pleasure. I sleep with my husband – I give him his right. But every Thursday I sleep in a room of my own. I lay the bed with clean, white sheets and put jasmine flowers in the bed. I wear a white nightdress and perfume myself with the incense udi, and douse myself with perfume and hal-ud and my ruhani arrives while I am asleep (usingizini). In these situations my male spirit has changed in appearance; he has turned his own body into a human body but I cannot see his face.

Rukia explained that her spirit is like a husband to her. But, as Rukia is already married to a man, she is prevented from being married to her spirit. As a woman she cannot be married to more than one being at a time. Yet, although a woman is married, it is perceived as morally acceptable on her part to have a sexual relationship with a Muslim, Arab spirit, but not with another man. The ways of spirits are beyond human control. Ideally speaking, husbands should be their wives’ only lovers although, as the case of Bwana Abdallah and his wife Laila showed, it is not always so. Human beings should conceal their moral transgressions. Still, when spirits are involved, the same behaviour can be disclosed to other people without causing shame. This is so because everybody knows that human beings cannot control the behaviour of spirits. Neither women nor men can be held responsible for the conduct of spirits. When humans and spirits meet, humans at least may engage in various moral transgressions without being shamed. Morally acceptable relationships between humans and spirits may transgress Zanzibari moral ideals and values in various ways. While stressing concealment, human beings are known to break the rules; they transgress otherwise voiced ideals and values. Neither women nor men strictly conform to the moral code and as such their behaviour is unpredictable. In contrast to human beings, spirits disclose their actions, thoughts and feelings. At the same time, spirits are known to keep to the rules. They strictly conform to their moral code and their behaviour is, then, more predictable. Concerning questions of marriage and sexuality, human beings divorce, while divorce is

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unknown to spirits. And, while human beings may be homosexuals, there is neither homosexuality nor cross-dressing among the spirits. To my knowledge neither women nor men have homosexual relationships with spirits, nor have I ever come across spirits who are involved in homosexual practices. In questions relating to sexuality, the spirit world confirms the Zanzibari ideal moral code and so contradicts human practices. People, however, manoeuvre and manipulate between moral categories and values. This world, being both a human and a spirit world, seems to be a universe of possibilities. Sexual relationships among spirits and among human beings and spirits always adhere to notions of complementarity. In the human world this is not always the case. In what follows I will discuss what I see as transgressions of Zanzibari gender images with respect to body, aesthetics and gender. By including homosexual practices in the discussion, I shall explore contradictions and dynamics inherent in ideas of sex as natural categories, and the flexibility associated with sexuality and notions of gender.4 I adopt Unni Wikan’s (1977) earlier insights about the dynamics of gender identity in Oman. Her argument is that through a focus on the ‘third gender’ which in Oman is the transvestite (xanith) – an institutionalized gender role next to that of woman and man – one may grasp the dynamics inherent in the formation and conceptualization of gender identity. Although there is no institutionalized ‘third gender’ in Zanzibar, there are, acceptable ways of accommodating homosexuality.5 I begin by commenting on enactment, perception and the body.

Enactment and perceptions of the body The body plays an important role in the articulation and conceptualization of gender images, and thus aesthetics are significant. In Zanzibar Town aesthetics are understood to adhere to physiological and psychological qualities and differences both between the two sexes and also within the same sex. The distinctions between women and men as well as between women who have not yet been married and those who are married or divorced, are marked in several ways relating to bodily display, adornment and movements in social space (Larsen 1990). In this sense aesthetic style also refers to what sorts of experiences women and men are perceived to have over their lifetimes. After they have become married, women can, for instance, fashion their eyebrows, remove body hair, use henna on the backs of their hands and on their feet. Girls and young women who are yet to be married only colour their nails with henna, decorate the inner part of their hands and wear jasmine flowers in their hair. Married women may also tie a kikuba (a mixture of aromatic herbs and flowers) to a necklace or beads (ushanga) worn around their hips, and use perfumes and aromatic oils. To my knowledge men do not have ideas about different ways of adornment before and after being married.6 In general, fragrance, nowadays in the sense of aftershave, and cleanliness (usafi) are focused upon.

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There are important differences between how heterosexual men adorn themselves in contrast to homosexual men. If a man, for instance, perfumes himself with the incense udi, just as women do, he will be known to be not a real man but a homosexual (hanithi). Adornment and ornamentation are closely linked to notions of sex, gender and sexuality in the sense that they articulate who you are and what you are like. Thus, aesthetics are important as gender markers: behaviour, gestures, speech patterns, dress, adornment and ornamentation are used to confirm biology but may also be used creatively to contradict biology. The ways of homosexuals may throw light upon the extent to which gender is perceived as inscribed in the body. Using the term homosexual I follow what I understand as a Zanzibari use of the terms hanithi (male homosexual) and msagaji (female homosexual). In Zanzibar there are no gender images beyond that of female and male; there is no third gender role to accommodate homosexuals. With respect to existing gender images, homosexuals are usually involved in the scrambling of gender markers – clothes, gestures, speech patterns, movements in time and space, and so on – in a way that both undermines a male-female dichotomy and retains that dichotomy, by either juxtaposing or blending its elements. How and to what extent homosexuals can be said to undermine, juxtapose or blend the stability of complementary gender relations, however, remains an empirical question. In general, homosexual men and women are accused of having no modesty or shame. Yet accusations of lacking modesty or shame are seldom perceived as a reason for total exclusion. Just as heterosexual men and women, homosexuals are also assigned respectability according to whether they conform to the more general etiquette of public life. The term hanithi (pl. wahanithi) denotes men who are known to have sex with men, whether their sexual behaviour resembles what we would denote as bisexual, homosexual or transsexual. This term can also be used as an insult towards men who are seen as lacking in masculinity, such as men who fail as providers. The term msagaji (pl.wasagaji, lit. grinders) denotes female homosexuals. Women who are known to be homosexuals are always either married or divorced women. To my knowledge there are in Zanzibar Town no unmarried women who are talked about as wasagaji. This may, of course, be connected to the fact that unmarried women are not supposed to be sexually active. Wasagaji dress and adorn themselves as other women, and participate in activities defined as feminine. Homosexual women do not in the same way seek the company of men. Female homosexuals may live together, but as it is quite common to have all-female households in Zanzibar Town, their households do not stand out as extraordinary. Thus, the presence of wasagaji does not undermine images referring to a male – female dichotomy, as long as their choice of sexual partner remains at least concealed in public, if not completely unknown. In the same way that wasagaji do not disclose their sexual behaviour either through their appearance or their activities and behaviour, wahanithi who are married men with children do not disclose their homosexual behaviour. Rather, their appearance and public behaviour is like that of other men. There are,

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however, unmarried homosexual men who mix feminine and masculine gender markers in a moderate way. They wear male clothes and restrict their feminine ornamentation to putting wanja on their eyes, henna on their nails and using the incense udi. Their behaviour is slightly feminine, in terms of bodily movements, ways of talking, and a preference for female tasks such as cooking, cleaning and so on. They spend most of their time in the company of women, and, moreover, they are welcomed in many contexts where other men are excluded. Unmarried homosexual men still hold, in principle, all the liberties of men. Men in this situation usually hold quite marginal social and economic positions in this society. I will use the case of Iddi who is an unmarried homosexual to illustrate some of my points. Iddi has turned into a homosexual because of his female spirit. I chose this example neither because unmarried men necessarily become homosexuals because they have a female spirit, nor because all unmarried homosexual men have a female spirit. Rather, I have chosen this example because people’s opinions of how Iddi used to be and how he is now may illustrate which aspects people focus on in order to distinguish what is seen as male homosexual behaviour from behaviour that is associated with male heterosexuals. Iddi has both a female sheitani ya ruhani and a spirit couple who are from Madagascar. Iddi is known to have become a homosexual because of his female sheitani ya ruhani. Iddi’s spirit is said to be very jealous and makes sure that Iddi is neither attracted towards other women, nor attractive to women. His spirit treats him so badly that on occasions he is admitted to the mental hospital. To his female spirit it does not seem to matter whether Iddi appears as a successful man in the human world or not. People say that Iddi has totally changed. He used to be a seaman who made a lot of money, i.e., a real man in the sense that he had an unambiguously male occupation and was able to provide well for his mother and younger siblings. Now he is unable to work, has no money and is therefore not able to provide for anybody – not even himself. Iddi has tried to reestablish a good relationship with his spirit by performing a ritual on her behalf, but without any success. People who know Iddi are aware of the relationship between him and his female spirit, but still they describe him as a homosexual. When I ask what makes Iddi a hanithi, people refer to the fact that he has no job which again implies that he is not a provider, to how he moves and adorns himself, and to the fact that he is said to have become impotent and has no sexual relationships with women – at least not in the human world. Iddi is perceived as a miserable man who does not conform to notions of masculinity. In this case, the term hanithi is used in the sense of not being man enough. There are also, although this phenomenon is rare, both female and male homosexuals who choose to appear and behave as if they were of the opposite sex, and who spend most of their time with people of the opposite sex. One such person is Sabri. The first time I met Sabri I was sure that he was a woman. I mistook his male name Sabri for Sabra, which is the female form of the name. Sabri does not have any employment. He secures his maintenance through gifts

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or money that he receives from men with whom he has sexual relations and from female friends. It is not explicitly said that Sabri engages in prostitution, although it is, from time to time, hinted at. Sabri has a room in the house of one of his mother’s friends. When his father, whom he has no contact with, told him to move out of the family house, this friend of his mother invited him to stay in her house. Sabri does not pay any rent but he is expected to contribute to his share of the household expenses. Sabri is different from most other male homosexuals I have met in Zanzibar Town in the sense that he behaves, moves, and talks as if he were a woman. He partly dresses in women’s clothes, puts on make-up, colours his nails with henna and decorates his hands with both henna and wanja. Sabri also removes all the hair on his body. Sabri adorns himself as a married woman – although he overdoes it. Sabri neither wears skirts nor the veil. He does, however, often wear the male kanzu in the same way as women wear their dresses. He also wears female sandals and sometimes high heeled shoes. Sabri appears as if he were a woman; he is keeping to feminine markers, as it were. He transgresses the gender categorization by appearing like a woman through what he does. By manipulating accepted gender markers Sabri can choose to belong to a woman’s world rather than to a man’s world and, moreover, to be accepted by women in his vicinity. Both Sabri and Iddi, although in different ways and for different reasons, transgress boundaries between the two established gender categories through sexual practices, through not being providers as well as by means of aesthetics and enactment. Adopting Butler’s argument about gender identity being instituted through a stylized repetition of acts (Butler 1988, 2006: 185) I would say that they both conform to and contest expectations based upon sex in this society. While Iddi is pitied as a miserable man, Sabri, because of his more excessive transgressions in terms of aesthetics, is not. Still, it might be that Iddi and Sabri, through their transgressions of accepted gender categories, participate in a Zanzibari negotiation of gender: Iddi by representing that which is not male and Sabri by questioning the link between sex and gender. Although the presence of homosexuals like Iddi and Sabri visualizes the negotiability and flexibility of gender, women and men in general express an awareness of Iddi and Sabri as being actually men – that is, they refer to their sex, and as such do not mix their appearance with what they see as their essence. Iddi is a miserable man: a man who lacks masculinity. Gender identity is also compelled by social sanctions and performing one’s gender wrong evokes both implicit and explicit punishments (Butler 1988). Sabri, I was time and again told, pretends that he is a woman but is really a man. As such the body remains the focus of gender, and yet gender is not fixed in the bodies but open to negotiation and reconstruction. It seems that it is the body that defines a person’s sex. Consequently it is interesting to take into account the implications of appearance and body practices in questions of sex and gender. Aesthetics represent important elements in the bodily construction of gender differences. Still, aesthetics can be manipulated in order to transgress perceived gender differences.

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Strict categories in a flexible universe Sabri may act as if he were a woman, but he still remains a man. Iddi is a man who is perceived as lacking in masculinity. What can be seen as Sabri’s androgynous appearance is premised on a priori knowledge of the underlying male body – knowledge that nullifies or compromises the female appearance as being superficial. Sabri can be said both to appear as if he were a woman and yet to remain a man. Previously I have argued that people are what they present themselves to be. Still, this is true only within certain limits. It seems, for instance, that people’s knowledge about Sabri being male contradicts his presentation of himself as female. It is on the basis of his biological sex that Sabri remains a man. Yet because of the way he behaves, what he does or does not do, and how he dresses and adorns himself, he, in contrast to other homosexual men, is regarded as if a woman. Sabri is said to behave like a woman, but he never becomes a woman. Other women and men will always tell those who do not know him that he is actually a man. This is similar to what Gillian Feeley-Harnik reports from Madagascar, namely, that people hold the idea that male homosexuals may dress like women without really being women, only images of women (Feeley-Harnik 1989: 86). Sabri, being like a woman, confirms a Zanzibari female image. His femaleness is, I argue, a parodic one. Sabri represents an excessive femininity, and, thus, his presence may be tied to Zanzibari conceptualizations of what it means to be, for instance, too feminine, in the same way as Iddi represents that which is seen as lacking in masculinity or not male enough. Through his behaviour and appearance, Sabri partakes, although implicitly, in a negotiation of whether femininity and masculinity as inscribed in the body are a question of biology or a question of aesthetics and performative acts. This sort of negotiation is also perpetuated by the phenomenon of masheitani, where gender seems to be disembodied. Although spirits have no body that is visible to humans, people find it unproblematic to grasp the gender of a spirit. A spirit’s gender becomes apparent to people through their way of being in the world: through bodily gestures, the sound of the voice, the character of her or his demands, dress, adornment and, last but not least, the name of the spirit – all gendered attributes. A spirit’s gender is associated only with what I have called gender markers, or the aesthetic dimension. In contrast, despite aesthetic creativity and attempts to reshape the human body, the gender of a human being will be defined with reference to biology. Both within the human and the spirit world, the body plays an important role in the conceptualization of gender images, although in different ways. While the gender of human beings is perceived as inscribed in the body on the basis of biology, the gender of the spirits is inscribed in the body through aesthetics. When human beings and spirits meet, the human body shifts back and forth between being perceived as a spirit and a human being. What then, are the perceived consequences of sexed bodies being inhabited by gendered spirits?

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There is an idea that being inhabited by spirits of the same sex is risky. When a woman has a female spirit she may easily become too feminine, and when a man has a male spirit he may become too masculine. It seems that being too feminine or too masculine violates Zanzibari gender images and turns these images into parodic representations. Human bodies also shift back and forth between being female and male. People may relate to the same body in different ways. Spirits reshape the human body through aesthetics in ways humans cannot. With spirits materializing in the human world, aesthetics and performative acts become the markers not only of gender but also of sex. Yet the human body remains, as mentioned, the focus of attention.

Gender images and human practices Gender images diverge at crucial points from people’s lived experiences. Generally, people hold that women and men are psychological and sexual opposites. The differences between women and men are interdependent. Still, as the various examples I have referred to in this chapter illustrate, the practices of individual women and men are more complex than the images promise. The complexity of gender and gender relations is revealed in human practices, for instance, with respect to the behaviour and appearance of homosexuals. Furthermore, women can be providers and household heads without having their femininity questioned – a fact that may undermine the basis for male authority in this society. What is interesting is that men can neither perform housework nor fail in their expected role as providers without their masculinity being questioned. While the feminine gender image may encompass activities and responsibilities defined as male, the masculine gender image does not leave room for what is seen as feminine behaviour, except in the case of homosexuals. The complexity of human practices is disclosed in relationships between human beings and spirits. Aweda does not adhere to Saidi’s authority as a man and a brother, yet it is not Aweda who acts, but rather her male spirit who appears and protects her against her brother. As such, Aweda herself does not oppose Saidi’s authority. Saidi is not punished by Aweda – a woman and his sister – but by a male spirit. Despite the fact that both women and men hold that women should adhere to the authority of men, they constantly refer to men as easily manipulated and controlled by women. Yet for individual men it is a great shame if it becomes known that they are punished or controlled by their sisters or their wives. But Amiri openly discloses the fact that he is controlled by his spirit wife without losing face. Spirits, both female and male, are known to have more strength than human beings. This also seems to be the case in matters of sexuality. While Laila was divorced by her husband when she disclosed her unfaithfulness, Rukia can openly disclose her sexual relationship to a Muslim, Arab spirit without shaming either herself or her husband. Neither women nor men are expected to hold authority over spirits. The spirit phenomenon, I suggest, is linked to gender

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images in the sense that the spirits both represent and present Zanzibari gender images. The spirit phenomenon can be said to reflect an aspect of reality where social values and cultural orientations are opened up to other interpretations than those usually present in everyday-life. The spirit phenomenon also reflects women and men’s actual experiences in everyday-life and opens up a discourse concerning to what extent women and men may manipulate, negotiate and transgress the already defined gender categories. Despite strict gender categories and sex segregation in Zanzibar, there is still space for manipulation and manoeuvre, both with respect to gender relations as such and to the handling of sexuality. The presence of gendered spirits may in many situations simultaneously negate human ideas about gender differences and maintain the very same gender images. The phenomenon of masheitani also allows for an ongoing discourse on what, within an academic setting, would be called the relationship between sex and gender. Thus, there exists among Zanzibaris a discourse on the meaning of gender difference. In the next chapter I have chosen to focus on this discourse and thus on ngoma ya kibuki. This is the only ritual among the various ngoma ya sheitani in which only women form part of the ritual group, and where the audience is composed mainly of women and some homosexual men. It should, however, be noted that the ritual is not seen as an exclusive female domain. Men are not formally excluded from participating; ‘it is,’ women and men say, ‘just that men would rather not participate.’

Notes 1. The abstraction that is denoted as gender, as well as the abstraction called kabila (‘tribe’) do not exist outside their material and symbolic constructions. Both gender and kabila intersect with other forms of differences (see Moore 1994a). Anthropological literature reveals that there are, in various societies, a number of possible combinations of sex, gender and sexuality (see Evans-Prichard 1970; Ardener 1975; Caplan 1987; Wikan 1977; Shepherd 1987; Lancaster 1988; Robertson 1992; Prieur 1994). 2. Gender connotes sociocultural and historical conventions of emotional expression, deportment, costume and gestures attributed and ascribed to female and male sexed bodies as well as beliefs about capabilities and aptitudes. 3. This topic is also brought up during the female initiation ritual unyago (Larsen 1990). 4. The research on which this book is based did not involve extensive or numerous interviews with homosexual women and men. But homosexuals – both females and males – form part of the general network of informants. 5. It should be noted that in 2004 Zanzibar’s Parliament passed a bill that outlaws homosexuality and lesbianism. It imposes stiff penalties of imprisonment and was supported by both the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the Civic United Front (CUF). 6. Among men there are norms concerning what young men can or cannot do in front of older men such as smoking.

8 WOMEN, MEN AND GENDERED SPIRITS

A ngoma ya kibuki provide an opportunity to discuss Zanzibari dramatization and discourse on the ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in gender images. My interest lies in examining the degree to which gender and gender differences are, in this ritual context, negotiated, constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed. At the same time the ritual also illustrates the enactment of difference regarding kabila and distinctions between humans and spirits along the very same lines. A ngoma ya kibuki is different from other kinds of ngoma ya sheitani in several ways. First, a ngoma ya kibuki is the only ritual which focuses on the married couple. Second, it is, as already mentioned, the only ritual where women alone make up the ritual group and where only women are ritual leaders, while men hold a peripheral position. The audience is composed mainly of women and some homosexual men. The various rituals are not categorized as masculine or feminine. Yet although men in Zanzibar Town fully participate in the phenomenon of masheitani as such, they do not, as already discussed, take part in ngoma ya kibuki to the same extent. Men would usually claim that the masheitani ya kibuki are not true spirits, in the sense of being spirits created by God. They explain this by saying that masheitani ya kibuki originate from worms (funza) in the skeletons of dead people of the Sakalava kingdom of Madagascar who then become transformed into spirits.1 This is a narrative that women, including those involved in the rituals, confirm. Thus, there is no disagreement about the origin of the masheitani ya kibuki being different from that of the other spirits. The particular origin narrative of masheitani ya kibuki is, generally speaking, not understood as a contradiction – that is, between originating from skeletons and being created by God. Another issue which is often mentioned is the fact that masheitani ya kibuki are the only spirits who demand alcohol. From time to time I would be told, especially by men, that ngoma ya kibuki are rituals women perform in order to

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enjoy themselves and drink alcohol. To drink alcohol and, moreover, to drink alcohol in public is perceived as a moral transgression for women and men alike. An important distinction between humans and spirits in general is, precisely, tied to the practice of sexsegregation. In the ritual ngoma ya kibuki, the spirits’ ignorance of sex-segregation is easily noticed precisely because the spirits express sexual attraction towards each other as well as towards people present during the ritual.2 In the human world, the practice of sexsegregation prevents intimate relations between women and men from being disclosed publicly. Moreover, people are easily shamed if they express feelings of, for instance, jealousy in front of others, as such behaviour reveals their own misery and discontent. Spirits can openly express emotions like jealousy, desire and greed without being shamed. In contrast to other kinds of spirits, masheitani ya kibuki appear in the human world as married couples. While other ‘tribes’ of spirits do marry among themselves, they do not make their sexual relationships or partners known to people, although they do inform humans as to whom among their fellow spirits they are related by blood, so to speak. Marriage is important to both spirits and human beings, but in contrast to spirits, people practice divorce.3 Still in the lives of spirits, as in the lives of human beings, there are some who are less successful in marriage. There are male masheitani ya kibuki whose wives are not present in Zanzibar Town, such as the wife of the spirit Ndamadils, or others who have failed in marriage, such as the spirit Ndamaro who is a lunatic. There are also female spirits among masheitani ya kibuki who are not married; they are mostly known as commoners or slaves, and are neither kings nor queens nor those holding military positions. Kalmane, for instance, is a young, unmarried, female slave whose duty it is to announce rituals as well as to inform the community about illness. In what follows, I will describe various parts of a ngoma ya kibuki which to my mind disclose the central aspects of the gender dimension. I will focus in particular on the ritual gathering – that is, both the immediate audience and those who seem to be outside or apart from the central ritual event.

A ngoma ya kibuki ritual As I approached the house of the ritual leader Bi Amani in the early afternoon I heard vague sounds from the rattles, the singing of songs in the kibuki language and clapping; I could smell the kibuki incense, a mixture of udi and sandarusi. Bi Amani’s house is in the middle of a neighbourhood within Ng’ambo and quite close to the Stone Town. As usual during ngoma ya kibuki, a tarpaulin was arranged as a kind of tent with three walls, just outside the main entrance door of the house, in order to give protection against the sun and what is considered unnecessary voyeurism. On the ground straw mats were arranged in order to make a carpet, and two big wooden chairs were placed in the centre; one for the king and one for the queen of masheitani ya kibuki. At one end of the room – the end said to point towards the spirits’ place of origin, that is, Madagascar – there

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was a table decorated with the herbs these spirits use to prepare their special healing water. The main remedies of the spirits were placed on the table: a bucket filled with the spirits’ specially prepared water, the incense jars, the white plates with Maria Theresa coins, other coins, silver bracelets, the spirits’ specially prepared water mixed with lime-stone or talmalandi, some honey, bottles of imported brandy, some cups and glasses and tobacco and betelnut.4 The summoning of the spirits, their self-presentation, the celebrating and the dancing takes place in this tent-like construction; this is also where the audience is seated and where more peripheral voyeurs will, in the late evening and night, watch from a distance. The woman who is arranging this ritual on behalf of her spirit spends most of the time in a room arranged for her in the house, where she receives the necessary medication and knowledge about the particularities of her spirit, and also where her family members and friends can come to visit her. The members of the ritual group can go in and out of the house as they like, while friends have to be invited in. Participants who are not familiar with the ritual leader, or with members of the ritual group, would not enter the house by themselves. When I arrived at this particular ritual, the afternoon session of the last day of this ngoma ya kibuki was about to begin. Some houses away, at Ma Salama’s, I had taken off my shoes, my glasses and my black wristwatch. This was necessary because masheitani ya kibuki do not tolerate the colour black, nor shoes nor glasses – these spirits particularly dislike glasses. I had brought with me some things that I knew these spirits desired: coins, notes and vikuba. As I arrived, a bit short-sighted, I noticed that the ritual group was about to bring the mwele (the one who was to prepare for her spirits) from the room she occupied in the house of the ritual leader, through the sitting room and out to the ritual room arranged with tarpaulin roof and walls and mats, just outside the house. Those belonging to the ritual group came out of the house in a line. The first was carrying a censer and the next a sahani neupe: a white soup-plate with coins, silver bracelets and a mixture of a kibukidecoction and talmalandi. Then came the mwele veiled in white materials. After the mwele came the rest of the group carrying bottles of brandy, honey and sherbet. They were bringing more of what was already on the table. All the members of the ritual group were carrying ebony spears or sceptres decorated with Indian silverwork. Many of the members of the ritual group also wore silver jewellery special to these spirits.5 As they proceeded they sang, together with those who had already arrived in order to form the audience, the opening song which is a praise to the great ones among the kings of this kabila of spirits: ‘Mizuna Faize o, o Muonzunga sangwa faindan’ or; ‘We are coming, receive us as we are bringing mwele.’ The spirits of some of the members of the ritual group had already arrived. Several of the women had become inhabited by their spirits as soon as they sensed the incense or heard their special music and songs. The women who had been making the special kibuki medicament had been inhabited by their spirits on and off since that morning when they started to prepare the herbal infusion. Precise knowledge about the ingredients of this medicament is held by members of the ritual group only.

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When the procession was over, all present, people and spirits alike, sat down on the floor. The ritual leader said a prayer to masheitani ya kibuki. She said in the language of kibuki: ‘You know our problems; help us in the work we have to do. That we may help her or him to give out the name.’6 While the ritual leader was saying the prayer, all present held their hands in the way familiar to contexts where people ensure their trust and faith in God and repeated ‘Kwesto’, a term that I was told has the same meaning as amin in Swahili (amen, so be it). The ritual leader, Bi Amani, is said to know the kibuki language. Most people look at Bi Amani with a mixture of respect and fear, as she is known as an authoritarian woman as well as an authoritarian ritual leader. And sometimes she is said to behave almost as if she were a man (kama alikuwa mwanaume).7 When the prayer had come to an end, all people present were censed, one after the other, and limestone mixed with water (talmalandi) was smeared on our foreheads, on our necks, on our breast and temples. Then we were given the spirits’ special herbal infusion to drink from a white plate before we were censed again. This process is seen as a medication to protect humans from illness and suffering. Those of us who made up the audience sat in a half-circle opposite the table where all the various remedies were placed. Mwele, the one preparing for her spirits, sat on her stool in the middle of the circle, her head and face veiled with a white shawl. She was dressed in a long white dress which bore a similarity to the kanzu, which is usually worn by men. Diagonally across her chest she was wearing two necklaces of stones in different colours (mrindo) that are also used by both male and female ritual leaders in order to provide them with strength when confronted with spirits of various makabila. Her two spirits, one after the other, rose to her head from time to time and were dancing out of joy, while sitting on the stool, swinging the mwele’s arms and stamping her feet. When the male spirit arrived, the shawl was worn in a way special to male spirits of this kabila: wrapped around the lumbar region, up under the arms and then draped over the shoulders. When the female spirit arrived, the shawl was worn to cover the hair and lower part of the face. Then suddenly the ritual leader Bi Amani’s legs started to shiver, and two women who belonged to the ritual group came rushing to assist her. Her spirit was on his way. He was entering her through the feet. They started to rub her legs with brandy while Bi Amani was making sounds as if she were about to vomit. Bi Amani’s spirit is prepared for, and so she does not scream when he arrives. As the spirit arrived in her head, Bi Amani’s head was sprinkled with the special water, and then she appeared to be calm again. Her spirit is a king (mfalme) who is called Babu, although his real name is Ndamadizirivo. His wife is Mzinzarivo, also called Barera. As a king, Babu wanted his feet on a stool and the sceptre in his hand. As a sign of respect all of the spirits and persons present greeted Babu in the prescribed way: they knelt in front of him and, then, Babu put his hand on their heads. All who want to be present during the ritual should, as they arrive, greet the ritual leader Bi Amani by kneeling in front of her and Babu when he has arrived. Then they should move on to greet the great ones (wakubwa) among the masheitani ya kibuki. Many of those who prefer to

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participate as part of the distant audience do not come forward to greet the spirits. However, sometimes the spirit will go and fetch them in order to force them to perform the prescribed greetings. There are two other women in this ritual group who also have the king among the masheitani ya kibuki and, as mentioned above, the spirit can only inhabit one of them at a time. Despite the fact that several women have the king among the masheitani ya kibuki, only Bi Amani is the ritual leader. Thus, having the spirit of the highest rank does not necessarily turn a person into a ritual leader. Still, no one becomes a ritual leader unless she embodies the king among the masheitani ya kibuki. In the centre of the room, both masheitani ya kibuki and these members of the ritual group who at this point in the ritual did not have their spirits in their heads were dancing with bodily movements particular to spirits of this kabila. Male and female spirits move differently, are dressed differently, and have different facial expressions: male spirits have an air of authority, while female spirits have smiles on their faces and douse people in the audience with perfume. Male spirits hold spears in their hands, while females cover their heads and sometimes the lower part of their faces with a shawl. Those who are not inhabited by spirits neither cover their heads nor hold spears while dancing. Their movements are not in any particular way dramatized as genderspecific. People in the audience interact with the spirits, and often the interaction is initiated by the spirits. Children between the age of six and twelve years participate by playing the rattles and dancing with the spirits. These are often the children of women belonging to the ritual group. Usually, only children above the age of twelve will become inhabited by spirits. If the spirits are attracted to someone in the audience they will give them money, and they also tell persons in the audience to give them money. As mentioned, the spirits give away brandy to those whom they like. If they are in a good mood they might even give brandy to those in the audience who ask for brandy. Some bring small bottles so that they can pour the brandy offered them into these, in order to use the brandy as medicine whenever that should be required. When someone in the audience asks the spirits to give them brandy to drink, other people present will whisper that they attend the ritual only because they like being drunk. People in the audience who are offered brandy have to drink it. If they reject the drink offered to them, the spirit will empty the cup on the head of that person. Both the drinking of brandy and the act of emptying a cup on the head of a person are perceived as very disruptive acts, although these are anticipated and part of the programmed performance. Still, in this society where self-control and dignity are stressed, to have a cup of brandy poured over one’s head is an act of violation. The person’s dignity is threatened. The spirits demand that people in the audience dance with them, play the instrument called kayamba, as well as sing their songs. Songs are sung in the kibuki language, and the song referred below is one of these spirits’ most preferred songs. No one, not even the ritual leader, could give me an exact translation of this song into Swahili. Still, they all know that the general meaning of the song is

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as follows: ‘You, the kings, you know everything’ (Habari zote nyinyi, wafalme mnazijua). The song goes as follows in the kibuki language: Barissa mgaragara oyanile Akoriya limalewa oyanile mbuki msakalava oyanile ooo sasa mbela. Walolo, walolo, walolo ooo walolo, walolo, walolo ooo wendao maji mawende kibani kibarati mwala kabari

When the audience does not participate in the singing, this evokes irritation and anger among the spirits and they cry out loudly to the audience: ‘Fufua, fufua’ (bring to life again, revive). The spirits also take people to the king so they can receive his blessings; in addition, the king may call on certain people in the audience when he recognizes that they have a spirit. The king will then, through the use of incense, call on their spirits until they climb to their heads. Usually when a spirit blows the shell in order to call for spirits who have not yet arrived, some people in the audience will jump and make a sudden scream. This is said to be a sign that a spirit is passing through their bodies. Among the audience people are also continuously inhabited by the spirits. They have not yet arranged a ritual on behalf of their spirits, and therefore they are not part of the ritual group. Their spirits usually scream as they arrive and can neither stand up on their feet, nor introduce themselves with their full names. As people’s spirits climb to their heads they will start to move the upper part of their bodies in a circle and eventually get up on their knees and make their way to the centre of the room, where they will dance on their knees until the spirits decide to leave again. When the spirits leave, the persons whom they have inhabited are usually exhausted and in pain, with bleeding knees and partially destroyed clothes, as was the case of Bimkubwa described in an earlier chapter. They receive medication for their knees, given by smearing brandy and limestone on their wounds, which is quite painful. Sabri was present at the ritual. He is, as previously mentioned, a homosexual who is said to be just like a woman (kama mwanamke kabisa). Some would even say that Sabri has the habits of a woman. Sabri participated in the ritual as part of the immediate audience, singing with the other women and even shaking the rattle. During rituals he will always wear a kanzu. He will take a fold of material in under the band of his underwear, in exactly the same way as women do with their skirts, in order to move around uninhibited by the length of their dresses. Sabri claims that he is saving money in order to be able to prepare for his sheitani ya kibuki in a ritual and thereafter to become an active participant in the ritual group. In this way Sabri states that his presence at the ritual is similar to that of the women and not that of men. Still, it remains to be seen whether he may actually become a member in the ritual group, on equal terms with women.

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Two other men – Iddi and Ahmed, also known as homosexuals – had taken up positions at the entrance of the house. A little bit further away was Hussain, also a homosexual. Suddenly Iddi’s male sheitani ya kibuki rose to his head. Iddi has not prepared for his spirits and, being a sheitani ya kibuki, this spirit is not able to stand on his feet when he reveals himself. In this ritual, the spirit crawled, while dancing, towards the centre of the ritual space, in order to be able to dance on Iddi’s knees with the other spirits present. The gender of the spirit who had embodied Iddi became apparent by his bodily movements, the expression on his face and by how the spirit wore a shawl (khanga) that was given him by another participant. Everybody knew that Iddi was now inhabited by a male spirit: the spirit did not cover his head and face, did not flash his eyes, and danced while kneeling on only one knee instead of two. When he arrived, Iddi’s spirit danced more violently than any other spirit and almost dominated the room with his presence. This did not evoke laughter. Rather people and spirits alike expressed irritation and tried to persuade the spirit to calm down, or even to leave. ‘It is too much’, people said. During these rituals Hussain always brings gifts to the spirits. He wants to retain a good relationship with the spirits in order to make sure that the spirits like him and help him. Hussein owns a rather large house where he lives with his mother and younger siblings on the upper floor. He runs a business where he rents out rooms to guests (mainly from abroad) who wish to have secret, intimate encounters with Zanzibari women. He also arranges the meetings which, in general, are said to be based on mutual attraction and not prostitution (umalaya). In contrast to Iddi, Hussain did not become inhabited by his masheitani ya kibuki during this ritual. He made his way towards the king among the masheitani ya kibuki. He had brought two bottles of brandy; one he gave to the king and the other to the wife of the king. He then kneeled in front of the king and, since I was sitting close by, I heard that Hussain asked for the help and support of masheitani ya kibuki so that he could become economically successful. Sabri, Iddi and Ahmed were all inhabited by their spirits during the various sections of the ritual. Only Sabri sat with the other women through the whole ritual and played the rattle when he was not inhabited by any of his spirits. Other men observed the ritual from a distance, as they did not want to be too directly associated with it. Men told me that they would not like to be seen at ngoma ya kibuki because then other people might suspect that they are homosexual. Heterosexual men who are present at ngoma ya kibuki stress the entertainment aspect of the ritual. They talk about how spirits drink brandy, how the spirits force women present to drink alcohol, and how spirits often joke with and make fools of people present. It often happens that when a spirit starts to talk with one of the heterosexual men present, the man will disappear soon afterwards. It might be that he is afraid of being inhabited by a sheitani ya kibuki himself, or also that he is afraid that the spirit eventually will make him lose face through disclosing a sexual interest in him in a context where he, as a man, is not the one who controls the situation. In such a situation the spirit would make the man become

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embarrassed even if it is a female spirit; a man would in this context never manage to embarrass a spirit. In the ritual context the differences between women and men, female and male, are accentuated precisely because the spirits appear in couples, and the same human body continuously changes between being inhabited by female and by male spirits. When it becomes clear whether it is the female or male spirit who arrives, humans or spirits present will make sure that the human body is dressed correctly according to the gender of the spirit. Aesthetics and behaviour enhance biology and there are norms regulating how aesthetics should be used in order to create and recreate the corresponding gender images. The following incident may serve as an illustration. A male spirit who was dancing around suddenly started to tear off his clothes. His wife (a female spirit) was about to rise to the head of the woman who had until now been inhabited by her male spirit. The female spirit who was about to appear in this woman’s body tore off the male clothes and threw away the spear. Some of the women in the ritual group got hold of the female spirit’s clothes and started to dress her in female clothes: a pink skirt, a pink blouse, a pink shawl, gold jewellery. A kikuba was tied to one of the chains around her neck. These small bundles of flowers and herbs are associated with female sensuality, as women are known to decorate themselves and their rooms with small bundles of flowers in order to seduce and please their husbands or lovers. The woman, now inhabited by a female spirit, moved around in a totally different way, covering her face with the shawl, moving her hips as she danced, moving her right hand in a gracious way as she walked about on her toes. This female spirit is known to love high heels – hence the tiptoe. She is well known for her extreme feminine character, and women look at her with admiration. But at the same time women present talked about this female spirit’s behaviour as so extreme that it was ridiculous. As they say, ‘It becomes too much.’ By labelling the female spirit’s behaviour as too much, they referred to an underlying understanding that as femininity and masculinity are opposites, these should also be balanced in relation to each other. In this situation the female spirit is perceived as being too feminine. It is expected feminine behaviour to desire and to wear jewellery, but not to focus on it all the time. It is expected feminine behaviour to move the hips while walking, to prefer high heels and so on, but doing nothing else becomes a parody of that which is defined as proper feminine behaviour. Another woman’s female spirit was about to leave as her male spirit arrived and rose to the woman’s head. As this happened, it seemed important to change the outfit in a hurry and especially to get the earrings off. This became difficult, and some women from the audience rushed to help with the changing of clothes into a white shirt and a loincloth (shuka) and to give the male spirit his spear as soon as he arrived. The spirits become very upset when their dress contradicts their sexual identity. Only when their dresses are in accordance with the sexual identity of the spirit can the spirits again concentrate on the celebration. Those who form

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part of the ritual group will always bring two sets of clothes on the last day of the ritual (kutoka nje), one for a female spirit and one for a male spirit. When they have dressed either to welcome their female spirit in a long, pink dress with a shawl or a pink and black kisoto and jewellery, or to welcome their male spirit in a white dress with a white and pink loin-cloth on top and a colourful (loin-) cloth worn across the shoulders, they give the other set of clothes to somebody in the audience whom they know well. The behaviour of female and male spirits is differentiated according to what I would call gender stereotypes. Male spirits express authority by demanding that the people present, as well as the spirits, dance with them and sit on their laps. Male spirits usually move around with a strict and angry look on their faces. From time to time they threaten someone in the audience with their spears. They also show possessiveness by preventing fellow spirits from handing out brandy, or from dancing or even talking with someone they like. Rank is important for male spirits and is expressed through dress, such as different military apparel, and what sort of spear or sceptre they hold. The spears are for male spirits in general, while the sceptres are only for the kings, and there are smaller sticks for queens. Male spirits are also responsible for protecting the participants from groups of children and youths who, they claim, have come to destroy the celebration. Male spirits display tendencies that exceed that which is associated with maleness in general. Men are perceived to hold authority over women and children, and are expected to exert authority. Yet men are not expected to be as authoritarian and strict as the male spirits are. Female spirits behave differently from the male spirits. They openly show affection towards people and other spirits whom they favour. They sit on peoples’ laps and they give away small bundles of flowers, perfume and brandy. They kiss and rub someone’s cheek and smooth someone’s hair. Female spirits may suddenly run after a person and force people who are watching from a distance to come into the centre of the ritual space. Among the male spirits only Ndamaro, who is said to be a lunatic, behaves in such an impulsive way. Female spirits also express protectiveness by warning people in the audience about the strictness of some of the male spirits, in order to prevent problems and disputes between people in the audience and these male spirits – or rather, to protect humans from the capricious character of certain male spirits. They express an eagerness to adorn themselves, revealing their jealousy towards women present and their desire for jewellery, long, straight hair and flower decorations. The female spirits’ greed for adornment and beauty make them demand that women give them their jewellery and their small flower bundles to wear. The expression of emotions like jealousy, desire and greed reflect expected behaviour in women and female spirits alike. Still, female spirits express these emotions openly in ways not available to women, if they are to be perceived as respectable (mwenye heshima).

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Matters of affection, pride and self-control The focus on the married couple and ideas about married life is one of the more striking aspects of ngoma ya kibuki, which also provokes associations with the threat of adultery that forms part of the experience of both women and men in this society. The following examples from the ritual context described above, illustrate how spirits may reveal feelings, thoughts and conduct which people, on their side, normally do their best to conceal. They also indicate the reactions such revelations evoked among the people present. A male spirit approached me and said that he liked me and gave me brandy to drink. His name was Dezu. As we sat talking his wife, a female spirit called Safi, inhabited a women called Bi Nuru. As this happened Dezu told me, ‘Now my wife is coming. She is jealous.’ When the female spirit Safi appeared, she came directly to where Dezu and I were sitting and sat down on her husband’s knee. She told me that Dezu was her husband and that she felt jealous because he was talking with me. To sit on somebody’s knee is seen as an expression of affection. As usual when situations like this one occur, people in the audience were laughing. People often laugh at the spirit’s doings, and comic elements are part of the expected behaviour of spirits. But while it may be that the directness of the spirits is indeed perceived as comic, it is also seen as embarrassing and threatening – hence the laughter evoked is ambiguous. The ritual went on and after a while, another male spirit, called Ndamadils, approached me. He told me directly that he liked me very much and wanted to marry me. Ndamadils said that he had earlier told Ndamadizirivo that if a European came, he wanted to marry her. He showed me to Ndamadizirivo, the king among masheitani ya kibuki, who approved of his wish but said there could be no wedding until I had at least performed the preparatory ritual called kupiga nyungu. By saying this, Ndamadizirivo indicated that I also had a spirit. Then, as the male spirit Ndamadils accompanied me back to where I was sitting, Ndamadils suddenly flung his leg around the back of my thighs, holding me close. People in the audience started to laugh, and one woman jokingly told me that I had to be careful or else I would become pregnant. Later on another male spirit came over to where I sat to give me brandy. He decided that he also wanted to introduce me to Ndamadizirivo. As we approached Ndamadizirivo, Ndamadils came and told me to sit down again. He was angry and told the other male spirit that he should stay away from me. Their dispute seemed entertaining to those in the audience who could observe and overhear them. People made some funny remarks and laughed as if they found the behaviour of the two spirits foolish. Ndamadils managed to get the other male spirit to stay away. The spirit’s conduct also invokes ideas about possible transgressions concerning married life. This was expressed in the situation where the male spirit Dezu flirted with me. His wife, Safi (a female spirit), arrived immediately in order to prevent any relationship between her husband Dezu and me. Masheitani ya kibuki cannot, unlike masheitani ya ruhani, marry human beings. However,

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Safi’s reactions when her husband Dezu was talking to me reveals an understanding that masheitani ya kibuki, like Zanzibari women and men, are also attracted towards those they cannot marry. As already discussed, both humans and spirits possess emotions, desires and reason. But while self-control and the ability to remain composed in most situations are stressed among people, spirits are known to speak from their heart. As discussed in the previous chapter, Bwana Abdulla was, in the situation where he divorced his wife, able to behave with reason and self-control when his wife told him that she had had several affairs. Jealousy (wivu) is, among humans, associated with loss of self-control and lack of reason. To act on the basis of jealousy is seen as dangerous because it will lead a person to act in ways causing disgrace and shame, through disclosing her or his thoughts and feelings, or losing self-control. Jealousy can lead a person to use remedies in order to inflict misery in other people’s life and is also understood to cause, in certain situations, illness on the part of the woman or man who experiences this state of mind and body. It may cause a physical imbalance. Through experiences of jealousy people can, more or less unintentionally, inflict illness and suffering on other people through choyo, or totally unintentionally through the evil eye (kijicho). Those who talk about other people’s shame on the basis of jealousy are also said to create fitina, or even husuda, referring to covetousness, antagonism and enmity. Such feelings are said to negate a quest for an ordered and balanced society. In this respect spirits are different from humans; they act out their despair and jealousy publicly. The two male spirits were fighting over me in front of other spirits as well as in front of humans. As this was happening, the other spirits present seemed not to be bothered. Afterwards, neither Ndamadils nor the other male spirits showed any signs of embarrassment. People present seemed to be both amused and bothered by the dispute. Following from what I have argued above, among humans it is perceived as shameful to expose private matters publicly, that is, in front of other people. And if a woman or man puts herself or himself in a position where she or he scorns a woman or a man in his age-group (rika) or one older than herself or himself, this is considered shameful conduct, as it shows lack of respect and manners. By doing this, she or he will insult the woman or man she or he criticizes. Simultaneously, by such conduct she or he will be judged by others in a negative way, as a person who has no respect. Moreover, a man would not in a committed manner tell a woman directly that he wants to marry her. This is due to the fact that if she says no, it will be experienced as great shame on part of the man. Therefore, he will always approach the matter via other people and try to find out in secret what his possibilities are before his mother or sisters are sent on an informal visit, to ask the woman’s mother if she thinks a marriage feasible. Generally speaking, women express their shyness by behaving with gentleness and poised friendliness in front of others. The expression of jealousy and greed is seen as the denial of respectability. Both the articulated differences between female and male spirits, and how feminine and masculine behaviour among the spirits correspond to stereotyped ideas about the differences between feminine

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and masculine behaviour among women and men, should be noted. The spirits’ behaviour expresses ideas of femininity and masculinity articulated in terms of its excessiveness. Ngoma ya kibuki demonstrates the extremes of gender differences. In performative terms it represents an embodiment of possibilities that, are, however, both conditioned and circumscribed by a shared social structure and historical convention.

Presentation, representation, and excess All the various ‘tribes’ of spirits and the rituals performed on their behalf are, I have argued, both a representation of Zanzibari conceptualizations of difference with respect to kabila and a presentation of the same. This perspective is also true for gender. The gendered spirits’ behaviour during the ritual can be seen as a presentation of the meaning of gender differences in the spirit world, and the spirits’ behaviour can also be interpreted as a representation of gender images in the human world. To see the spirits’ behaviour in terms of representation implies that the spirits – female and male alike – are a dramatization of women’s and men’s perspectives on what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man in this society. Through being inhabited by female and male spirits, women’s and men’s bodies become inhabited by spirits of their same as well as their opposite sex and, thus, they become the other in terms of both kabila and gender. Only masheitani ya kibuki present themselves in the human world through a focus on gender images and gender relations. During the rituals of ngoma ya kibuki people observe a continuous change in women’s bodies into female and male, male and female. In the ritual instant when a woman’s body is inhabited by a male spirit, the body is associated with everything male. Embodiment gives rise to a situation of critical reflection upon a relationship between sex and gender. This situation may also be conducive to gaining another perspective on their lives. Through being inhabited by spirits, women and men may be able to step outside themselves and, thus, extend their understanding of themselves. This does not necessarily happen when they have a spirit in their head, but afterwards, in remembering, and discussing with family, friends and neighbours, their experiences with the spirits. Moreover, by observing others being inhabited by spirits, women and men have the possibility of contextualizing themselves in opposition to the spirits as well as recognizing themselves in the spirits. Through observing the spirits acting and interacting with humans and other spirits in the human world, people gain perspectives not only on their own lives but also on their position in society with respect to questions of both kabila and gender. Dimensions of comedy and parody play an important role in this process of reflection. This role is particularly significant given the fact that the ways of spirits are characterized by excess. Thus, laughter is associated with ngoma ya kibuki – even more so than with rituals performed on behalf of other kinds of spirits. Laughter constitutes an important aspect of ngoma ya kibuki with respect to

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processes of reflection, recognition and rejection. Besides the excessiveness of the spirits’ behaviour, the most striking difference concerning feminine and masculine behaviour among spirits and people relates to notions of concealment and disclosure. While women and men stress the importance of not revealing their thoughts, feelings and desires, spirits – both female and male – disclose to each other and to people present their thoughts, feelings, emotions and desires. Women and men, being different from spirits, remain preoccupied with the importance of concealment even when confronted with spirits because people are easily shamed. Yet, at the same time, in the ritual context humans have to adhere to the ways of the spirits. It seems that the spirits lay down the conditions and that people are eager to please the spirits. Earlier I described some of my own experiences during a ngoma ya kibuki: how the male spirit Dezu had told me that he liked me and provided me generously with brandy; how his spirit wife Safi came over because, as she said, she was jealous, and expressed her fear of unfaithfulness. The situation brought about laughter among those who observed it. I also described how the male spirit Ndamadils said that he wanted to marry me and afterwards refused to permit another male spirit to introduce me to the king of this ‘tribe’ of spirits. Their rivalry evoked laughter among those in the audience who sat close enough to observe what was going on. The women who sat with me advised me not to oppose Ndamadils’ wish to marry him and to go with him in order to be introduced to the king among the masheitani ya kibuki. They told me that he would be extremely hurt if I said no, and therefore it could be dangerous for me. Because he had expressed his affection for me in front of others, and even challenged another male spirit in public, he would be angry if I rejected him. ‘You don’t know what he will do’, they told me. ‘Masheitani ya kibuki are not like people; the spirits become angry if they do not get what they demand. Just go, afterwards he will forget.’ What they were referring to was that the male spirit Ndamadils would not, like a man, try to hide his anger or his feelings of humiliation, as Bwana Abdullah did when his wife revealed to him that she had been unfaithful. In this situation Bwana Abdullah divorced his wife, but he did not disclose any anger towards her. Rather, he stressed that he was willing to forgive her. In contrast to Bwana Abdullah, the male spirit was seen as likely to act on the basis of his anger in front of other spirits and human beings alike. In their advice to me, the women emphasized the importance of adhering to the ways of the spirits during rituals. People adjust their dress, behaviour and body movements in order to please the spirits, and they consume alcohol. I have mentioned that female and male spirits alike insist that the women present receive and drink the alcohol the spirits offer them. When others present observe this scene, they tend to laugh nervously, waiting for their turn. Often, in order not to be or to appear immodest to other people present, they try to spit out the alcohol when the spirits turn their backs to them, although they are afraid of what the spirits will do to them if they are discovered. They are afraid that the spirits will

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then force them to drink more alcohol or even, as already mentioned, pour alcohol over their heads. Once, when I refused to drink the alcohol offered me by one of the spirits, she emptied the cup of brandy over my head. By doing this, the spirit showed herself as determined as most spirits, but also made me look foolish. My sudden loss of a dignified appearance evoked laughter. Events like this confirm that people, in ritual contexts, have to follow the spirits’ wishes, because the spirits can easily embarrass humans if they do not comply. The ways of spirits spill over into the human world. In the context of everyday-life, women and homosexuals will use kibuki terms and expressions when referring to conduct that they realize is questionable in terms of an ideal moral code. Thus what can be seen as parodic representations may also help perpetuate contradictions between ideals and lived experience. This is so, because through the presence of spirits tacit conventions that actually structure the body become culturally perceivable.

Comedy, parody and the ways of humans and spirits During the ritual described above, the behaviour of masheitani ya kibuki time and again evokes laughter. But what is it that makes women in the audience laugh? In daily life people normally laugh out of sheer happiness and joy. Likewise, situations where others make fools of themselves often evoke laughter. People may also laugh in situations where they feel embarrassment. Like all kinds of rituals performed on behalf of spirits, ngoma ya kibuki are considered to be exciting and fun. In all of the rituals performed on behalf of spirits, play is an important aspect, and inherent in play is the potential for humour and parody – something which presupposes enactments that contrast what is considered the ordinary or accepted state of affairs (Lambek 1981: 180). The existence and understanding of parody and irony require, however, certain institutionalized aesthetic and social values (Hutcheon 1985) according to which people may get the joke and experience it in the social structure. My intention is not to argue that the ritual represents a parody to Zanzibaris, but rather that there are elements of parody as well as comedy within the ritual context. The interaction between humans and spirits may result in comic situations that evoke laughter among the people present. Humour is then expressed and evaluated in laughter (Lambek 1981: 180). Still, with regard to the social structure, play and comedy is both disordering and ordering. It materializes the absurd but also points to that which is defined as the proper order of things (Kapferer 1986). Laughter can express reactions to situations; it can be either an attack on the ideals of concealment, on the importance of hiding, obscuring and restricting transgressions of moral ideals and values, or an attack on falsity and illusion, the handmaidens of notions of concealment. Thus, laughter may reveal implicit understandings about slippage between concealment and disclosure and moral transgressions. In the situations described in this chapter, there may be several different reasons for people’s laughter. One possibility is that the behaviour of masheitani

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ya kibuki evokes a laughter of recognition. The elements of recognition become apparent because of the excessive behaviour of spirits. When, for instance, female spirits are obsessed with adornment, women recognize their own desire for beauty. And, precisely because the spirits’ behaviour is excessive, it goes beyond the point at which their behaviour is acceptable in the human world. Yet, despite the excessiveness of the spirits’ behaviour, it seems that it remains an imagined possibility. It is at this point that their behaviour becomes comic. Observing my sudden loss of dignity when a cup of brandy was poured on my head is a reminder of the precarious balance between dignity and foolishness. Women observing the spirits see the contrast to socially acceptable behaviour but also recognize their own behaviour within it. The laughter also may be related to the fact that human bodies inhabited by spirits may suddenly become the reversal of what they usually are: that is, a female body becomes male when inhabited by a male spirit. This contrast becomes even more apparent in ngoma ya kibuki than in other rituals, because one person will be inhabited by a spirit couple and therefore continuously shift back and forth between being female and male. This ritual context, in particular, reveals the extent to which gender is defined symbolically and marked through aesthetics and performance as persons shift their dress and behaviour to match the gender of the spirits embodying them. The behaviour of the spirits contrasts with the normally acceptable state of affairs. In other words, when institutionalized values and ideals are played with, people are able to see and to accept the ambiguities and tensions contained within these values and ideals. The parodic aspects of the spirit’s behaviour make possible both the recognition of and the distancing from the gender images presented throughout the rituals. Comedy finds its specific movement in the juxtaposition of opposites, in the linking of categories of experience and knowledge which in the everyday cultural world are seen as located in different domains, for instance, when spirits openly flirt and make sexual approaches in public – conduct which belongs to the private domain. Comedy achieves its dynamic in the actualization of contradictions such as the distinctions between the human world and the spirit world, between women and men and between the value of concealment and the threat of disclosure. The ritual invites those who attend to see such juxtapositions, oppositions, and contradictions for what they are: as absurd, impossible, and inappropriately linked in terms of common typifications and understandings of the everyday world. As Kapferer (1986: 200) argues in line with Lambek (1981: 180) and Hutcheon (1985: 26), inconsistency is the guiding principle of comedy, and enjoyment follows from peoples’ awareness of the inconsistency and the way enactments contrast their ways and commitments in everyday-life. Within the context of ngoma ya kibuki, gender images are caricatured to the extent of parody. The spirits simultaneously represent a duplication of and a contradiction with human beings. They are both the same as and different from human beings. What women recognize in the spirits are emotions such as greed (choyo) – for instance, when the spirits want that which other spirits or humans have – lust (tamaa mbaya), as when the male spirit Ndamadils flung his leg around me, and

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jealousy (wivu) as when the male spirit Dezu was flirting with me and his wife came in order to prevent Dezu from interacting with me. Events like this portray what women and men do and experience, but should not reveal. Through their interaction with spirits their own transgressions of rules, norms and etiquette may become less threatening or rather, more conventional and acceptable to themselves. In this world, spirits and humans comment upon each other. Comic situations appear where spirits behave in ways familiar to people present but go beyond limits perceived as acceptable for human beings. When the female spirit walks around on her toes for an hour, women laugh at what they see as aspects of vanity associated with women in this society. When male spirits have disputes in front of people, for instance about women, this is comic to people because it shows the foolishness of jealousy and of revealing one’s thoughts in public. When such events occur it might be that the spirit’s behaviour is not only perceived as comic to the audience, but also may remind people of the tragic elements of life: about the possibilities of being shamed, of unhappiness, of unhappy love and about the always changing loyalties between people. Later on, when the ritual is over, people often discuss what a certain spirit did towards his wife or her husband, towards other spirits or towards human beings. People also talk about what has happened when someone from the audience was inhabited by a male or female spirit. Because the behaviour of spirits and their way of expressing their gender identity depict gender images to an extreme, it appears that through these rituals gender relations not only become visible and discussable but also, in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) terms, move from doxa to orthodoxy. The ritual speaks to two different dimensions of the social order simultaneously: during ngoma ya kibuki the gender identities of both spirits and people are at the same time seriously acted out and ridiculed, as are also the ways of human beings and spirits in general. On the one hand, the spirits ridicule human beings by, for instance, pouring brandy over their heads when they do not want to drink it. On the other hand, human beings laugh at spirits when they disclose their thoughts and feelings. It seems that human beings and spirits alike observe each other from a critical distance. Despite all the similarities between human beings and spirits, through the process of contextualizing each other they eventually represent what the other is not. During the rituals, differences between humans and spirits are emphasized through laughter. This may reestablish ideas about what is right and wrong in the human world. I had attended the ritual described above together with Zubeda and Amina – two women with whom I usually spent a lot of time. Zubeda is divorced without children. She engages in various forms of small businesses and lives together with her parents, siblings, a cousin and her married sister’s son. Amina is engaged to be married and works in her married sister’s shop as a saleswoman. She still lives with her parents. When the ritual was completed, Zubeda, Amina and I were talking about the ritual, about the various spirits and about what had happened during this particular ritual. The differences between humans and spirits were again stressed. Zubeda said:

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Masheitani ya kibuki are very jealous, more so than human beings. They are not afraid like we are; they express what they feel directly. Do you remember how Safi arrived and told you that she was jealous when the male spirit Dezu gave you too much brandy? A woman would not have done it so directly. She would only have smiled at you, and then she would have gone to a specialist in matters of illness and health in order to find a dawa through which she could destroy you, or make sure that her husband would not look at you again. To her husband she would not say anything, only smile.

To compete for a woman in front of other people as the male spirit Ndamadils and the other male spirit did, or to openly flirt or approach someone sexually in public, as the male spirit Dezu did, are described as a lack of shyness or modesty among women and men. As illustrated, there are many similarities between the behaviour of spirits and humans, although in discourses on various sorts of sentiments, humans and spirits seem to counterbalance each other. Still, do the spirits challenge conceptualizations of sex and gender in the human world? If so, what sort of implications may this have for Zanzibari women and men?

Body, aesthetics, and gender images Being inhabited by gendered spirits implies that the human body shifts between being perceived as female and as male, according to the gender of the spirit inhabiting the body. It seems that as the body is the seat of spirits, aesthetics is the seat of gender. It is through aesthetics that gender is articulated. Yet for human beings the body is, in general, perceived as the seat of gender and sexual differences. As I have previously discussed, Zanzibaris perceive the body as permeable. This implies, among other things, that the body can be the seat of different beings and thus, in this context, the seat of different genders. In ngoma ya kibuki both the strictness and the arbitrariness of sexual differences are highlighted. The strictness of gender boundaries is represented through the importance spirits put on being dressed according to their ascribed gender. Adopting Judith Butler’s ideas, I will argue that the rituals are social contexts within which certain acts: ‘not only become possible but conceivable as acts at all’ (Butler 1988: 525). In the ritual context, it is the action of dressing that gives the dress its power and which transforms the wearer; hence, gender is constructed through aesthetics and performative acts. Women in the audience observe the spirits with a mixture of excitement and joy while commenting on the spirits’ behaviour when they, in despair, are trying to change their dress. Although the people present find the behaviour of the spirits comic, they stress the importance of helping the spirits to change their clothing and of making the spirits feel content. Spirits cannot, unlike Sabri who is a homosexual, wear clothes that are associated with the opposite sex; spirits cannot be associated with signs of both maleness and femaleness at the same time. In life as lived, human beings are unpredictable because they manipulate both sexual and aesthetic practices. There

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are unmarried women and men in Zanzibar Town, like Sabri, who dress and behave as the opposite sex and spend their time with friends of the opposite sex.8 But despite Sabri’s manipulation of gender images, the body remains the seat of gender for human beings. In contrast, for spirits, gender is disembodied; it is defined on the basis of aesthetics and performative acts. Yet, spirits are predictable. They are known to conform with respect to sexual and aesthetic practices. In this sense, the spirits may express the contradiction that although gender is perceived as pertaining to natural categories, biology may not restrict the formation of a gendered body. Seen in this context, the rituals of ngoma ya kibuki reflect a Zanzibari discourse on the relationship between sex and gender. Through human bodies being inhabited by gendered spirits, people may observe both the deconstruction and reconstruction of gender differences. Ideologically speaking, cross-dressing is possible neither for humans nor for spirits. During the rituals the spirits make a point of the importance of dressing according to their gender, an understanding to which people do not always adhere. Is this a reminder to humans of an ideal strictness of gender categories that is, however, not always practiced among human beings? As I have shown, the ritual context highlights the arbitrariness of gender boundaries through women’s continuous transformations from female to male and from male to female. The transformations from human to spirit and back again to human are articulated through what could be referred to as a language of aesthetics. Likewise, it seems that the shifting perceptions of the human body as female and male are linked to performative acts. Through various coded forms of aesthetics, discontinuities between the sexed body and gender markers are blurred. When human bodies are inhabited by gendered spirits, people’s perceptions of the bodies change. In the interplay between performer and performed, between human and spirit as between the performer and the audience, gender is defined with reference to aesthetics and performance rather than on the basis of sex. In the process where sexed bodies and gender markers are manipulated and confused, the female or the male body becomes what it is not. The overall effect at once exaggerates and masks the slippage between sex and gender. When a male spirit inhabits a female body the spirit is perceived as unquestionably male; he does not appear androgynous to the audience. Thus, inherent in the seemingly rigid system of gender categories, there are ambiguities that the spirits reflect. By either juxtaposing or blending its elements, the emphasis on the constructed and performative aspect of gender and on its distinctions from sex may undermine the stability of the sex – gender system premised on a female – male dichotomy. The performative aspects of gender are also discussed by Margaret T. Drewal in her study of various rituals performed by the Yoruba in Nigeria. Drewal discusses how performers change between being female and male in ritual situations, and suggests that this shows that the Yoruba are conscious that gender is a construction channelling human behaviour and not biologically determined. She argues that there are institutionalized opportunities within various Yoruba

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ritual contexts where rigidly structured gender roles can be transgressed, and that the Yoruba deconstruct the gender images they themselves create through these events (Drewal 1992). In Zanzibar Town gender is, on the one hand, defined on the basis of appearance and behaviour. In other words, they assume a natural link between name, behaviour, dress and gender, which spirits insist on. On the other hand, the sexed body is irrelevant to spirits. The fact that the spirits challenge the idea that the body is the seat of gender might not undermine the stability of the sex – gender system premised on a female – male dichotomy, but it does reflect the arbitrariness of this system. What gendered spirits disclose is that there are permeable boundaries – rather than barriers – between these imagined categories. This boundary crossing is not necessarily limited to ritual contexts. Arguing this, I am considering not so much the presence of homosexuals but rather that the spirits may also, as I have discussed, materialize themselves through human bodies in everyday-life contexts. In this world it is not, first and foremost, gendered spirits inhabiting human bodies who confuse the gender categories. Rather, the confusion is on the side of humans, through their manoeuvring and manipulation within and across the established gender categories. The most striking transgressions of gender categories are, however, conducted by some homosexuals. They not only violate ideas of gender images by choosing a sexual partner of the same sex, but they also disclose their practices through a scrambling of gender markers. It seems that sexual behaviour as such is not provocative as long as it is not disclosed in performative acts. Accordingly, aesthetics and transgressions in terms of aesthetics – which people in contrast to spirits participate in – are precarious. Let me illustrate with the following example. Sabri associates himself with everything female through dress, adornment, gestures and body movements. He performs, perhaps, a female gender identity. Yet he simultaneously transgresses the feminine gender role by keeping his male name Sabri, and by not restricting his movements in social space and time as women do. Seen from the outside Sabri transgresses both the female and the male gender image. With respect to ideas of body and aesthetics, he becomes neither feminine nor masculine. In contrast to Sabri, unmarried male homosexuals like Iddi, Ahmed and Hussain dress like men, although their behaviour is, from a Zanzibari perspective, feminine. All of them transgress Zanzibari gender images with respect to sexual behaviour and aesthetics. Yet all of them refocus the very same images, although in slightly different ways: Sabri by appearing as if he were a woman, and the others by scrambling the accepted gender markers, drawing attention to the distinction between the feminine and the masculine (see also Butler 2006: 200). Sabri is perhaps the one who really challenges the gender categories precisely because he, by means of aesthetics, turns himself into an ‘as if’ woman, and thereby hints at the fuzziness of the body with respect to gender, a fuzziness which the spirits reveal precisely because they have no body – and yet are gendered.

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On reflections and acts of transgression The spirits behave as people should behave yet do not. The spirits also behave as people do but should not. The rituals carry aspects associated with comedy but also with parody, in the sense that they allow a marking of difference at the very heart of similarity and, thus, indicate both continuity and change, authority and transgression (Hutcheon 1985: 26). The fact that people shift between recognizing both their own ideals and values and the negation of these in the spirits’ behaviour may, for a moment, turn the spirits into a parody of themselves. In the ritual context the parodic aspect is a consequence of participation in the ritual rather than a definition of the ritual as such. To Zanzibaris, spirits are real and the actors are not human beings but spirits whose ontological status distinguishes them from the women and men whose bodies they inhabit. Nevertheless, through ngoma ya kibuki people may recognize gender images in the human world. In the ritual context these images are perceived as comic, yet they also evoke aspects of that which is conceived as tragic. There are dimensions of continuity between the human and the spirit world, and people recognize themselves through the joys and fears expressed by spirits, as well as in the actions performed by them. People and spirits differ on crucial points in the sense that what spirits express and do is far beyond that which is acceptable, though nevertheless possible, in the human world. The parodic representation of females and males becomes comic to the audience and as such evokes laughter. The gender of spirits is disembodied and situated in aesthetics. This makes visible the performative and constructive character of gender in the human world. In this way, I argue, images of femaleness and maleness are symbolically challenged. At the same time, by ridiculing the spirits people reestablish an agreement about what is morally acceptable in the human world. In a ngoma ya kibuki, which is performed by women and mostly for women, gender images are both transgressed and reconstructed and thereby questioned with respect to the natural quality of these images, not only for human beings but even for spirits. Thus ngoma ya kibuki, involving first and foremost women but also some unmarried homosexual men, together with female and male spirits, are contexts where dimensions of gender, sex and sexuality are negotiated on the basis of how these contrast and conjoin with the spirit world. In this context men remain absent. Before I turn to my final considerations, I will give an illustration of how women and men discuss ngoma ya kibuki from a gendered perspective in an everyday-life setting. One day in the Ministry of Land’s waiting room, a man asked me what I was doing in Zanzibar Town. I told him about my interest in ngoma ya sheitani in general, and suddenly we and other people present were in the middle of a discussion. The man said, ‘Of course masheitani exists, and ngoma ya sheitani are important rituals, but a ngoma ya kibuki is only something women make up.’ Then one of the women present joined the discussion. She said, ‘Do you really think ngoma ya kibuki is for fun?’ In order to support her statement a third

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woman showed the scars on her knees as she said, ‘Look here, my knees are destroyed because of masheitani ya kibuki. Do you think that this has anything to do with pleasure?’ The other woman continued saying: ‘If we wanted to have a party and drink alcohol we could arrange a party with good friends in somebody’s home. Then we could enjoy ourselves. You must agree that we do not have to arrange ngoma ya kibuki in order to enjoy ourselves.’ The man said he agreed to that but still claimed that ngoma ya kibuki was not a real ngoma ya sheitani and asked, ‘Why, then, is it that only women want to perform ngoma ya kibuki?’ This is a rather typical dispute about the nature of ngoma ya kibuki between women and men. To the man in this case, it seems that what women do when on their own represents that which men do not do. Accordingly, from a male point of view what women do may be seen as unimportant or, as in the case of ngoma ya kibuki, not included in the cosmological order. As the man said: ‘Of course masheitani exist, and ngoma ya sheitani are important rituals, but ngoma ya kibuki is only something women make up.’ This attitude is taken as a sign of male ignorance by most women, and does not make them change either their understanding of or their engagement in ngoma ya kibuki. The dispute described above illustrates that the spirit phenomenon plays an important part in Zanzibari gender discourse. The example also indicates the extent to which women and men perceive each other in terms of ‘otherness’. The other, Johannes Fabian argues, is a conceptual category, not an empirical category. The other, he writes, can neither be seen as given nor as found or encountered (Fabian 1991: 208), it concerns ideas of difference and sameness as these are continuously created and recreated. With this I turn to my final considerations of spirit possession and contemplate the phenomenon of masheitani in the light of various theoretical perspectives of the other and of otherness.

Notes 1. There are several similarities between masheitani ya kibuki in Zanzibar Town and the royal trumba spirits in Madagascar described by Feeley-Harnik (1991) and Marie-Pierre Ballarin (2000). Both the trumba spirits and masheitani ya kibuki are, for instance, said to originate from the Sakalava kingdom in Madagascar. Many of the names of the trumba spirits are also the names of famous masheitani ya kibuki. 2. Generally speaking, both women and men participate in all of the various rituals; in this respect, a ngoma ya kibuki is an exception, because only women participate as part of the ritual groups. Considering this one could, of course, ask various questions: Why do only women participate? Are women more concerned with the gender relations than men are? These are questions I am not able to answer. My suggestion is, however, that given the moral significance of sexsegregation and clear-cut gender differences, it would be unimaginable to allow a public event where women and men present would enact relationships based on sexual attraction – even when those enacting would be spirits inhabiting differently sexed, human bodies. If this is the case, then it would be interesting

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to examine how two layers – the ideals and the practices – of a daily discourse on gender, gender differences and sexual relationships, collapses. Despite, or maybe because of, a high rate of divorce, marriage remains an ideal to both women and men. In Mombasa, a society that bears many similarities to Zanzibar Town, one marriage in three ends in divorce, and sixty per cent of divorces occur in the first five years of marriage (Swartz 1991: 256). Neither spirits nor humans drink the honey. Formerly they used to make a mixture out of brandy and honey which both humans and spirits drank. The practice had to stop, I was told, because it made both spirits and humans vomit. Both masheitani ya kibuki and the trumba in Madagascar prefer silver and even the same kind of silver work. In Zanzibar silver has no special status. When I have asked why the spirits prefer silver, people have said that ‘it is because they (masheitani ya kibuki) like silver.’ Feeley-Harnik (1991) holds that another way of talking about the Sakalava trumba spirits in Madagascar is as ‘Descendants of Silver’. Furthermore, Michael Lambek discusses the meaning of silver and gold in relation to the value of coins among the Sakalava in Madagascar. He notes that according to the Sakalava there exists ‘an intrinsic relationship between the royal clan and gold, silver, and money’ (2001: 740–1). ‘Quesi tunku, laifandi ya nao mwenye mishulhu miwaluwalu, mitungalika’. Bi Amani is a wealthy woman. She owns several houses, has an air-conditioner installed in the house where she lives, and has a car. Bi Amani travels regularly to the Emirates and to Oman. Her trips are both for pleasure and work, as she also arranges kibuki rituals for people of Zanzibari origin living in the Emirates and in Oman. Now in her sixties, she has been divorced for a long time. She has no children of her own but has, over the years, fostered several girls. In Zanzibar Town there are a few young women who dress and behave as men, and spend most of their time with other young men. However, none of these women are included in my network of informants.

9 CONCLUSIONS: SOCIAL IDENTITIES AND DRAMATIZATION OF THE OTHER

The rituals of ngoma ya sheitani constitute contexts where the other is dramatized, and echo what Janice Boddy (1988) has called a catalogue of otherness.1 The phenomenon of masheitani can be understood as one of the phenomena through which members of one culture know and represent other cultures to themselves and to the world at large, as Fritz Kramer (1993) has argued with respect to so-called possession phenomena in general. The process through which people become inhabited by spirits can, as I have already discussed, also be described in terms of mimesis (Kramer 1993). According to Taussig, mimesis, or the ability to mime, is the capacity to other, that is, ‘a process which registers both sameness and difference and ideas of being like and being other’ (1993: 129). Mimesis – the idea of imitation – challenges a certain understanding of knowledge and knowledge formation where culture is mainly seen as constructed through a theoretically based discourse (Taussig 1993). Mimesis is understood as the capacity to redirect our attention to the body and also to the body subject (Merleau-Ponty 1962). Through mimesis – which is explicitly tied to the body – people can dramatize and negotiate understandings of themselves or of their own society in relation to ideas of the other and other societies. Accordingly, through the phenomenon of masheitani difference is incorporated into the Zanzibari society. By being inhabited by gendered spirits belonging to different makabila with different traditions, habits and religions, women and men come to see not only the other, but also themselves. Inherent, then, in the phenomenon of masheitani is self-interpretation via the other. Mimesis denotes conformity with something else or an other – that one conforms to someone or something that one is not and also should not be. A generally recognized difference between the portrayer and the portrayed is an absolute prerequisite for mimetic behaviour – this point is critical to the

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phenomenon of masheitani in Zanzibar Town. Through the phenomenon of masheitani people participate in a continuous reflection upon and negotiation of reality: what it means to be human, not a spirit; what it means to be a Zanzibari and not a foreigner; what it means to be of Arab, Malagasy, Ethiopian, or mainland origin; what it means to be a Muslim and not a Christian, and – not least in this sexsegregated society – what it means to be a woman and not a man, and vice versa. As I have described previously, spirits and human beings both oppose and resemble each other. Through their behaviour they both contradict and copy each other. Through the faculty of mimesis one can, on the one hand, argue that women and men represent the spirits.2 Yet, on the other hand, considering the perceived reality of spirits, one may also claim that it is the spirits who represent humans. Humans and spirits are distinct beings who contextualize each other through an idea of difference. Yet, through participating in the same world – dunia – and through sharing a body, humans and spirits are also tied together through an idea of sameness. When human beings and spirits meet, people may observe how differences relating to kabila and gender may actually be differences of aesthetics and attributes rather than of essence. Through the process of being inhabited by spirits, difference is encompassed in one and the same body; familiar bodies may accommodate foreign spirits, and feminine bodies may transform into male, and vice versa. Through people’s relationships with spirits, differences that are presented as essentials, such as those between humans and spirits as well as those represented by kabila and gender, are revealed as malleable and susceptible to negotiation, as constructed and liable to be deconstructed and even reconstructed. Fatma Abdirahman’s relationship with her spirit from Madagascar makes it possible that her body becomes an other (see Chapter 3). By the transformation of her body into a spirit and thereby another self, Fatma can also be seen to engage in a process where her self-image is deconstructed and reconstructed both with regard to otherness within the person as well as otherness with regard to more external sociocultural aspects such as gender and kabila. Let me give another illustration. Chapter 3 described how Fatma, after she eventually decided to arrange for her spirit, went to the ritual leader Bi Amani. When she arrived, she felt that Bi Amani ignored her by continuing to speak on the phone while Fatma was left waiting. Such incidents are easily interpreted as humiliating and offensive. In my opinion, Fatma in this situation felt that Bi Amani intentionally tried to offend her – what people talk about in terms of kuringa (putting on airs) or also kudharau (to behave arrogantly). In this situation Fatma, in order not to be perceived as a woman without modesty, controlled herself. She did not disclose her thoughts and feelings in front of Bi Amani. Fatma herself could not ask Bi Amani, who holds authority both as an elderly woman and as a ritual leader, to terminate her phonecall, as this would both reveal that she herself had no shame and make Bi Amani lose face. Fatma did not wish to reveal that Bi Amani had managed to offend her. In this situation, Fatma’s male spirit climbed to her head and acted on her behalf.

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Spirits, in contrast to people, are known to speak from their heart. They do not hide their thoughts and feelings. Spirits do not adhere to the code of concealment and secrecy as human beings do, and they are not expected to behave with selfcontrol. Fatma’s spirit told Bi Amani to put down the receiver, and so she did. Although, as I have previously discussed, the spirits may disclose information about their human seats that makes their seats feel shy and embarrassed, the spirits can also do what human beings cannot, without shaming either themselves or others. So, in this situation, the spirit could react to Bi Amani’s offensive behaviour in ways that Fatma could not. What is interesting in this incident is the fact that, among Fatma’s spirits, the male one took control. In this situation it appears that it was Fatma’s male spirit – not her female spirit – who had authority over the ritual leader, Bi Amani. Similarly, in the case of Aweda and her brother Saidi (see Chapter 7) it was Aweda’s male spirit and not her female spirit who protected her against her brother Saidi. If these examples are representative, they show that although female and male spirits alike have more strength than human beings, there is a tendency in practical situations that gendered images of the human world spill over onto the spirits. Nevertheless, a clear distinction is made between humans and their spirits; Fatma herself, as well as others, discriminate between Fatma and her spirit. In this ending discussion it is tempting to conclude how an interpretation of the relationship between Fatma and her spirit would appear in terms of a more psychological form of explanation, such as the following: that Fatma, being inhibited by the importance of self-control and modesty, as well as the fact that she is younger than Bi Amani, transferred her feelings of anger onto an image of a male spirit. In this perspective the spirit served as a channel for feelings or emotions that Fatma could not express without being gossiped about and losing her good reputation. Such a reading would, perhaps, be more in line with the perspective associated with Ioan Lewis’s important work on spirit possession which I have mentioned earlier (1966, 1976). Zanzibaris would not, however, project this human situation onto the spirits. Spirits are not understood to only exist in the world to solve human dilemmas. It just happens that they do so from time to time. Spirits and humans are seen as different beings despite the fact that both are sharing a body in the human world. To this extent the spirits form part of a process where self is at the same time coupled and separated from non-self. The distinction between a human self and a spirit self, or between self and nonself, also makes possible a continuous contextualization through which who one is or is not can be negotiated; a process which may remind us that a sense of self is actually tied to the ambiguity of self and other (Evens 1994). In Zanzibar Town people make a distinction between spirits and themselves – a distinction which can, then, be linked to an idea of difference on another level, that is, the distinction between self and other. Thus, we are here witnessing a continuous process of differentiation and identification. For Fatma, her relationship with a Christian spirit from Madagascar provides her a vehicle by which she can reflect upon and express who she is or who she is not, both with

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respect to kabila and gender. Because spirits are perceived as individual characters, Fatma can also, through being inhabited by a spirit, negotiate and articulate what she is like and what she is not like, with respect to moral values and ideals. Where her spirit is outspoken and lacking in respect, in terms of Zanzibari ideals, Fatma is contained, modest and respectable. Through embodying a foreign, gendered spirit, Fatma can also be seen to become the other. On the basis of her knowledge about the other and about the opposition between herself as a Muslim woman from Zanzibar Town and the other who, in this situation, is a Christian male from Madagascar, she enacts the other, perhaps, to the extent of becoming this other. This reading provides one possible interpretation of what actually takes place, yet it is not one Zanzibaris themselves would make. To Zanzibaris, spirits are real. When inhabited by spirits, people’s bodies become host to another being. Through this process they are, according to Kramer (1993), moved to the extent of becoming the other. Still, according to Zanzibari terms, being inhabited by spirits does not imply that a person becomes an other. Rather, the other inhabits one’s body. This being noted, I shall now explore the phenomenon of masheitani in terms of what Fritz Kramer has called aesthetic empathy.

An aesthetic moving together I maintain that when women and men become inhabited by spirits they become the spirits. By becoming the spirit, the character of the performer is cast as that which she or he represents. This process is in line with what Kramer (1993: 200) labels ‘aesthetic empathy’. It refers to a process where non-human agencies are understood to enter a person in order to make themselves visible and able to act in the world. Thus, the term aesthetic empathy echoes a Zanzibari perception of relationships between people and spirits. Women and men hold that spirits inhabit human bodies at will, in order to materialize in the human world and get what they want from human beings. What Zanzibaris observe when humans embody spirits, are the voice, eyes and movements of the other within familiar bodies, and not a host empathizing with a memorized script and handed-down phenomenon (Kramer 1993). Fatma becomes her spirits; she is not acting like a spirit – she is the spirit. Her voice changes, as do the words she speaks; the expression in her eyes changes, as well as how her gaze is perceived; her body movements and gestures change, as does her conduct. When the spirit leaves her body, she feels physical pain due to the way her spirit has used her body. The reason why people accept what they see and feel in relation to the spirits as reality is not so much a question of what Zanzibaris believe is happening as it is of how what they believe is brought to life in a continually re-created ritual space (Schieffelin 1993). Through the course of performance and whenever spirits enter this world, ritual space is recreated. In this situation, the ritual leader, the members of the ritual group and the spirits present must commit the audience to the task of participating in the construction of the ritual space. This is again

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accomplished through mimesis, but also through the singing done by both humans and spirits, and through conversations between human beings and spirits. As the people present interact with the spirits, the spirits become live personalities and, thus, the reality of the spirit world is created in the interaction between people and spirits. People’s interactions and engagement with the spirits focus the attention of all. Through the songs, body movements, fragrance, use of colours, sound and rhythm moods and emotions are aroused and intensified. Important elements of difference and distinction in the phenomenon of masheitani and the rituals called ngoma ya sheitani are tied to aesthetics, and the semantic uses of the body and the spaces in which it moves. This is a process through which feelings and imaginations are shaped into certain forms. The following scene will illustrate such a process. Once, at a ritual, one of the participants suddenly disappeared. When she returned I asked her where she had been. She explained that she had had to run away in order to prevent her spirit from climbing to her head. She said: Spirits are attracted by fragrance, sound, taste and colours. If during a ritual you feel that the spirit is about to enter your body, you can run away so that you neither smell the scents of incense or perfumes nor hear the songs or the music. Then the spirit may leave again. But that does not always work. Quite often the spirit will still climb to your head and oblige you to return, because so eager the spirit is to participate in the ritual.

Spirits are attracted by and called for through sensual means. Spirits are identified by their preference for particular fragrances, sounds, tastes, colours, gestures, manners, and by certain rhythmic movements of the body. Thus, the senses play an important part in experiences of altered states of body and altered states of mind. The aesthetic merging of human beings and spirits, performers and audience, that takes place in the ritual contexts create and recreate the reality of spirits. In these contexts judgments, sentiments and the body become appropriated in responding to human beings inhabited by spirits. Through the language of aesthetics, ideas as well as states of mind and body become visible, audible and sensible. They articulate with social activity, cultural patterns and existential problems (Geertz 1983). Aesthetics as a means of communication has a large degree of ‘openness’ attached to it. Familiar bodies inhabited by foreign spirits may be perceived to change with respect to kabila, traditions, habits, religious conviction, appearance and gender, as in the case of Fatma Abdirahman. Through aesthetics the body is transformed and, following this, the other is created, visualized and experienced. This process presupposes, however, an understanding of the body as permeable and as a potential seat of various distinct selves. Underpinning the reality of spirits materializing in the human world is also a perceived distinction between a person and her or his spirit. On the basis of this distinction, the spirits become part of reality detached from and independent of human beings. Yet, while remaining as disembodied beings in the human world, the spirits are attached to and

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conditioned by human bodies. Thus, the existence of spirits is once more clearly linked to the idea of difference as incorporated both in society and within the human body. Spirits materialize in the human world as different beings from the person whose body they inhabit. During certain sequences when a spirit inhabits a human body boundaries appear as being blurred. This is not due to a lack of differentiation between human beings and spirits. Rather it is caused by the fact that what spirits do may spill over onto the involved person and the involved person onto the spirit. While spirits may cause feelings of shame and suffering on the part of their human hosts, the human hosts, in their turn, may cause disappointment and anger to the spirits. People can neither shame nor inflict suffering on the spirits; they can only, through arrogance and lack of generosity, provoke the spirits. In regard to both human beings and spirits, who and what they are like have consequences for the other part in the relationship – although in different ways. Moreover, humans and spirits also develop sympathy and empathy for each other. Fatma’s spirit, for instance, reacts on behalf of Fatma and as such protects her. The phenomenon of masheitani represents social dramas through which people communicate with and about themselves. Through this process they see themselves from outside. Similarly, the ritual ngoma ya kibuki demonstrates the extremes of gendered behaviour which underscore differences between female and male. In these rituals, women shift between being inhabited by female and male spirits. Thus, they change between being perceived exclusively as female or male. Following Janice Boddy’s argument I have earlier discussed how people, when embodying spirits, become, so to speak, their non-selves. Indeed, this process allows the witnessing of the several dimensions which enlighten what they are not, in terms of kabila, character and, not least, gender. Still, through being inhabited by spirits of the same gender and a similar kabila, people also come to witness the several dimensions of what they are, and thereby gain a critical awareness not only of the other, but also of the self inhabiting them. As Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw’s (1994: 248–249) analysis suggests, ritual action brings various distinctions of self into play – namely, that one can observe oneself and, simultaneously, be aware of one’s more complex agency. Still, the phenomenon of masheitani is also based on knowledge about the other. In order to relate to the spirits people have to dramatize and interpret various kinds of gestures and bodily movements, as well as engage in and interpret objects and rules of aesthetics. This is precisely what the phenomenon of masheitani is about with its encompassing dynamics. They must know the language of the other. The language through which a group communicates with and about itself is not confined to talking codes. It includes what Victor Turner calls doing codes, or what Fritz Kramer calls mimesis. The knower is, says Kramer, implicated in the subject of her or his knowledge in the sense of being moved by it, to the extent of even becoming bodily possessed (Kramer 1993: 68). Understood in this way, the term mimesis denotes a creative process and refers to

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a form of situated knowledge where the act of replication also includes an interpretation of those who are replicated. It is through this form of knowledge and interpretation that people communicate about who they themselves are or are not and, as I have shown, come to recognize themselves in the spirits.

Improvisation, play and the dramatization of a life-world Despite a compulsory framework, meetings between humans and spirits are characterized by improvisation and play. Humans can neither foretell the exact conduct nor the moods of individual spirits. It is precisely the tension between these apparently paradoxical dimensions which allows the negotiation of ideals and values. This is so because improvisation and play both refer to people’s own experiences. Through the phenomenon of masheitani, society performs discourses on morality. These discourses are tied to the experienced gaps between that which ought to be and actual, real life experience. In discourses related to spirits, humans disclose a concern with the contradictions and tensions between ideals and values and lived reality, and, thereby, for what Turner (1984: 29) labels ‘unrealized or new actuality’ in contrast to fiction. This new actuality contradicts the dominant moral discourse. As parody and comedy rituals are endowed with the power to renew, yet they need not do so. To Zanzibari women and men, the ways of the spirits represent the ways things should be. Spirits behave according to their norms and rules. Yet, throughout the rituals another face appears as well (Turner 1967, 1984), because spirits behave as human beings should – but actually do not. At the same time, spirits, also, behave as people do – but should not. Spirits are ambiguous: they both restrict human practices and represent possibilities for renewal. On the one hand the behaviour of spirits mirrors human practices, while on the other the spirits represent that which ought to be; they behave strictly according to their own norms and rules. In life, women and men continuously move between ideals or values and practices and experiences which negate these very same ideals and values. The crux of the matter is to handle the code of concealment and disclosure. Mirroring sexual relationships between women and men, spirits, who do not divorce, behave as humans should but do not. By expressing emotions such as jealousy, greed, anger, desire and lust the spirits openly do that which humans do secretly – but should not in terms of their ideal moral code. By openly expressing these emotions in front of their human complements spirits also dramatize an image of the consequences associated with acting out such emotions in public, that is, disharmony, antagonism and conflict. To Zanzibari women and men notions of concealment and disclosure are important. In contrast to human beings, spirits speak from their hearts and do not adhere to a code of secrecy and concealment. While people transgress important distinctions, spirits do not. Yet spirits may easily confuse human practices, for instance, by initiating sexual relationships with human beings, as in the case of Rukia (see Chapter 7). Rukia, a married woman,

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has a sexual relationship with a sheitani ya ruhani. Although women and men have to conceal their extramarital relationships, sexual relationships with spirits can be disclosed without shaming either the woman involved or her husband. Still, what spirits can reveal, people should conceal. Transgressions relating to questions of sexuality are, among human beings, not in themselves considered preposterous. What is seen as significant is the handling of transgressions, as shown in the case of Bwana Abdallah and his wife Laila (see Chapter 7). Laila told her husband that she had been with other men, and as a result Bwana Abdullah divorced his wife. However, when Laila was criticized, it was not the fact that she had been unfaithful that was focused upon, but rather that she had not been cunning enough to keep this a secret. Moreover, in regard to homosexuality, those homosexuals who do not scramble gender markers, and thereby do not disclose the fact that they prefer a sexual partner of their same sex, are not considered as less feminine or masculine than heterosexual women and men. On the one hand, spirits are known not to transgress distinctions between what are perceived of as categories of kabila and gender. By keeping to the rules, spirits do what people are supposed to do but do not, because people transgress the very distinctions they themselves create. People are imperfect. They may even, despite the importance placed upon self-control and concealment, lose control and disclose their secrets. On the other hand, the spirits openly disclose a lack of self-control; they speak from the heart and make public that which among humans is held to remain private. Spirits are understood to have the strength to express their various emotional states and sexual attractions, even towards those whom they cannot marry, in front of other spirits and human beings. Hence, the spirits reveal that which is threatening to people – namely, a transgression of the distinction between what is seen as secret and to be concealed and what is considered public and liable to be disclosed. Yet, despite these potentially threatening transgressions, people come to the rituals and moreover, they seem to enjoy them. They find the rituals entertaining. To my mind, the aspects of enjoyment and entertainment are partly linked to the fact that the spirits both confuse human categories and, simultaneously, make commonplace many human practices that are not in accordance with human ideals. Thus, when human beings and spirits meet, humans may grasp the tensional conditions they live by and yet are left with the problem of finding the appropriate answers. During ngoma ya kibuki, people may dramatize, for instance, the taken-for-granted-ness of gender categories with reference to their own experiences of gaps between celebrated ideals and life as lived. Through the spirits’ strict observance of gender categories, idealized notions of gender differences and the ideas of complementarity associated with femininity and masculinity in the human world are reconstructed. The spirits, due to their excessive behaviour, represent stereotypes of gendered emotional behaviour. Emotions, or rather emotional expressions, are central in shaping and articulating who you are and what you are like. In a Zanzibari context emotional expressions are experienced as gendered, with respect both to human beings and

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to spirits. When dealing with spirits the articulation of gendered emotions becomes crucial – that is, expressions of emotions coded in gendered forms. The disembodiment of the spirit’s gender makes it important that their articulation of gender differences is strictly in accordance with the accepted gender images. Thus despite, or rather because of, their lack of a body in the human world, spirits inscribe gender differences in human bodies through aesthetics. Yet, through the process where human bodies shift between being perceived as female and male according to a language of aesthetics which includes the performance of emotion, gender becomes disembodied and literally, deconstructed. And, as such, gender is presented as a cultural construction rather than a natural fact. Rituals therefore represent one sort of arena where ambiguity and paradoxes can be reflected upon and dealt with within a coherent set of meanings. According to Vincent Crapanzano (1980), an important aspect of ritual operations is to adjust individual experience to more objective social processes and to the immediate reality. Thus, the ritual drama of ngoma ya kibuki may help to perpetuate the contradictions of gender in this society. In this multicultural society another central theme is that of kabila. The notion of kabila is important among both humans and spirits. Perceptions of the various makabila are, as discussed earlier, associated both with everyday life and with more formalized politics. Which kabila, locally translated into ‘tribe’, a person or a spirit is said to belong to is taken as an indicator of their ways of being in the world as well as their sociopolitical attitudes and social, political and economic positions. Still, these indicators do not necessarily relate to the actual lifestyle and life situation of a person, whereas they always seem to be accurate when it comes to the spirits. When spirits inhabit a human body, they transform the subjected body into another kabila. In such contexts, the subject body see the world from a different position and from a different point of view. And when a body changes and is associated with a kabila different from its own, the social construction of kabila through its aesthetic idiom becomes – at least for a moment – apparent. Although people will refer to their own kabila and to that of others, this does not mean that they are not aware of the potential flexibility inherent in such identity construction. The meaning of kabila, commonly referred to by Zanzibaris as ‘tribe’, does not refer to an essence, but rather to a way of being in the world and of being associated with a particular place of origin. The kabila a person belongs to remains, of course, a matter of descent. But as it is quite common that people belonging to different makabila intermarry and form other kinds of sexual relationships, most people will often belong to at least two, and to a certain extent keep negotiating the identity they would consider most favourable in personal, social and political terms. Moreover, over time, women and men can through lifestyle, aesthetics, performative acts, choice of milieu and surroundings, change their identity with respect to kabila (Fair 2001). When humans and spirits meet, both the social and aesthetic construction of kabila are emphasized. Rituals are often seen as contexts where tensions between official and unofficial understandings of social life, moralities, values and ideas are being revealed – at

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least to the anthropologist. This being said I am aware that participants in a performance do not necessarily share a common experience or even agree on its meaning. However, what they do share is the experience of participation. Still, ritualization both implies and demonstrates a relatively unified corporate body, often leading participants to assume that there is more consensus than there actually is (Bell 1992). This relative lack of consensus results from the fact that those involved in rituals are differently positioned within society, and as individuals they bring in their experiences. The spirits present and represent both cultural stereotypes and individual idiosyncrasies. In ritual contexts where spirits and humans meet, there is, due to elements of improvisation and play, ample room for both. Observing the behaviour and manners of spirits seems to make possible a displacement of subjective experience and a linking of this experience to others through the mediation of shared constructions and typifications as Bruce Kapferer (1983) also argues for Sri Lanka. Although, it might be through the phenomenon of masheitani that women and men come to terms with what I see as discontinuities between their ideals and values and their lived experiences, the ritual process also conveys the limitations of ritual and ritual experiences in transformative terms. What is communicated can transgress the experiences of individual women and men, but it cannot move beyond that which is imaginable to the people present. Through becoming the other, Zanzibari women and men may come to see the world from an other perspective; still, what they see, feel and do is limited by their own fields of experiences. These are fields which encompass the potential tensions between ideals and experience. Two questions nevertheless remain. They concern the relationship between humans and spirits. Who is miming whom? Who is parodying whom? These two questions presuppose a perceived distinction between human beings and spirits. In this world humans and spirits are reflecting upon each other, especially concerning differences associated with kabila, gender, and questions of morality related to notions of self-control and no control, private and public, concealment and disclosure. The presence of spirits and the relationships between humans and spirits make possible, I suggest, a reflexive awareness of being in the world. It is, perhaps, the excessive behaviour of spirits that creates such a reflexive awareness. Yet it is primarily human beings who, through their engagement in the world, manipulate and transgress moral ideals and values. It is humans and not spirits who engage with the other. For humans, the presence of spirits represents a constant reminder of the other, of the necessity to relate to the other and of the fact that questions of morality, such as the social constructions of good and bad, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, and so on, are related to kabila and, to a certain extent, to gender. The processes of reflexivity inherent in the phenomenon of mashetani are special in the sense that there are no ‘as if ’ aspects involved. People do not behave as if they were spirits – spirits are present in human bodies; for them spirits are real. Yet, I argue, when humans and spirits meet, people may become aware of

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their ability to construct reality, or rather, of the constructedness of reality and the dimensions of relativity inherent in questions of morality. By human bodies being inhabited by foreign spirits, humans observe and may also come to acknowledge that differences associated with makabila and genders may actually be embodied within one and the same body. When interacting with spirits, they come to see their own otherness. Through their engagement in and with the spirits, human beings come to recognize their ability to identify and take part in, and with, the other. In this sense, humans and spirits embody each other. Through the phenomenon of masheitani, people reflect not only upon the relationship between self and other, but also upon their capacity to embody the opposition between self and other. And yet, as women and men’s relationships to the various kinds of spirits reveal, humans may simultaneously despise the other, fear the other, admire the other and become fascinated by the other.

Reflections on embodiment and modes of knowing A focus on distinctions grounded in Zanzibari perceptions of difference and sameness as they are revealed not only between humans and spirits, but also between different categories of people such as makabila and genders, has allowed us to grasp central aspects of indigenous discussions about and perceptions of the other, and thereby of themselves: about who they are and what they are like. Through the phenomenon of masheitani, the other is presented, represented, experienced and incorporated both in social life and within individual bodies. At the same time, the presence of masheitani belonging to a number of identified makabila is, also, a constant reminder of kabila as a marker of difference. Yet, while existing socioeconomic stratification and political rhetoric emphasize an essentialist divide, on a personal level the phenomenon of masheitani, and the practical philosophy and logics behind it, seem to enable negotiations of ‘multicultural identities’ – negotiations which move beyond the personal level and influence people’s lives and their relationships. Being inhabited by foreign spirits implies that experiences other than those that are ideologically and politically immediately accessible can be reflected upon and reproduced by means of enactment, through gesture and aesthetics. Through the process of enacting a foreign spirit, more or less unknown experiences become known and familiar and, hence, incorporated by the individual. By being played out in public, this knowledge takes on a social dimension and is also incorporated by the larger collective. In this sense, being inhabited by foreign spirits concerns practical activity – it is production, rather than mere representation. Humans and spirits do not merely imitate each other. They in fact become each other, as far as Zanzibaris are concerned. Through becoming an other, that is, a spirit, individual persons inhabited by spirits along with those observing the process of transformation, enter new fields of understanding. Taking the position of the other, human beings come to experience the emotions and dilemmas of other

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members of society and to act upon them by themselves being transformed into another social identity. In doing so, they come to see the world from various perspectives. Hence, the possession phenomenon as understood and practiced by women and men in Zanzibar Town presents less certain forms of knowledge than they express actual modes of knowing. An approach to knowledge emphasizing ‘embodiment’ and the process of ‘mimesis’ is based on the understanding of the experiencing or also, subject body. Furthermore, within this approach the nature of knowledge is seen as grounded in intersubjectivity and the focus is on embodiment as an existential condition – a ‘being in the world’ (Merleau-Ponty 1962). The approach emphasizes the fact that most people do experience themselves bodily; the experience of being by having bodies. Following phenomenological approaches, it is the body in the sense of ‘being-in-the-world’, and not an idea of the mind, that becomes the focus of this analysis; thus, embodiment is seen as an existential ground for culture and self. Accordingly, knowing refers to an intimate corporal act that implies the ability to yield into and, thus, become the other (Merleau-Ponty 1962; Benjamin 1979; Taussig 1993). In the process of enacting an other the self becomes transformed in the sense that, through the enactment, it actually becomes an other. In this process of mimesis otherness is experienced. In their specific approach, participantobservation, anthropologists do stress the creative dimension of mimesis. By participating in everyday-life and thus using their own bodies in similar ways as others in the same environment (Jackson 1989), they are supposed to position themselves in the place of the other, and thereby, gain the possibility of experiencing the world as an other. Their methodological concern and, thus, their understanding of how to acquire knowledge, actually acknowledges the importance of embodied knowledge, lived experience, and intersubjectivity, and does not only emphasize mind and rationalism in the Cartesian sense. This is important to bear in mind, because understanding or knowledge does not only consist of after-the-fact reflections on prior experiences; but is rather formed by the way they, in the process, acquire experiences (Johnson 1987: 104). Subsequent philosophical reflections on our experiences are made possible simply by the more basic modes of understandings (ibid). As fieldworkers, however, anthropologists can only hope to occupy one position within a society while there are, obviously, many positions. The current emphasis on culture as a domain of competing and conflicting meanings that are continuously contested draws our attention to the necessity of investigating multiple subject positions as well as multiple models of reality. Such a definition of culture has also inspired a greater awareness of the importance of contextual interpretation, and problems related to the body and mind construct are no exception. Yet a major fact remains that, in the quest for new models and understanding of cognitive processes and experience, anthropologists may come to substitute the so-called Cartesian dualism of mind and body with folk models, or rather modify their own commonsensical perceptions, experiences, and descriptions of internal states and processes. One way to escape such limited

Dramatization of the other

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projects is to leave behind the idea of the subject mind and the object body and elaborate from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thesis (1962), exploring knowledge and human experience in terms of perception and from the position of intersubjectivity and thus the subject body, or in his words ‘the real body’ – le corps propre. In conclusion, it is worth while mentioning that not only ‘we’ would be impossible without our bodies, but so would the spirits. The human body – enacted, perceived and conceptualized – is crucial for the existence of the spirits who are involved in the life and surroundings of Zanzibari women and men. In the context of spirit possession, spirits inhabit human bodies, materialize, interact with people and meddle in their affairs. When humans and spirits meet, people engage in discourses on difference and sameness between humans and spirits, between women and men, as well as between what Zanzibaris conceptualize as makabila. In these contexts where humans and spirits comment upon each other’s lifestyles, attitudes, habits, aesthetics and moral values, identity constructions and the formation of human relationships are involved. The phenomenon of masheitani allows for the coexistence of contradictions, ambiguities and paradoxes life itself produces. The presence of spirits provides openings through which people represent and construct moral meanings and therefore types of relationships which become constitutive to this particular society. It is from this complexity that the politics of rituals and their identified spirits emerge in Zanzibar Town.

Notes 1. This perspective evokes questions about ritual performance and intentionality. Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw have discussed the disjunction between action and intention in ritual (Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994: 260). 2. Victor Turner has argued that an actor can get into the role of a stranger from a different culture only by an inner assimilation that reflects one’s own identity, and not by mimesis. According to Turner the assimilation of foreign culture appears to be ‘poiesis’, understood as a creative process. Kramer criticizes this view as based on an idea that disparages mimetic behaviour as inferior copying.

GLOSSARY

Below follows a limited glossary of Swahili terms. The glossary does not include all the words used in the text, only terms that appear more than once or hold ethnographic or theoretical significance. I have not included Swahili words used in the notes. Moreover, the different kinds of spirits and spirit rituals do not appear here; they all appear in the index. In Swahili nouns have no genus; they are classified according to meaning. There are in all eight different classes. Prefixes are used to indicate noun classes in singular and plural form such as: m-/wa (human beings and animals); m-/mi (objects and plants); ki-/vi (objects); ji-/ma (objects and organic material); u-/u (objects and abstract nouns); mahali denotes places. Ku- is a prefix for verbal nouns. Hence, most Swahili words consist of a root to which prefixes and suffixes are appended, for instance, Wa-, denoting people; M-, a person; U-, a place; and Ki-, a language or also cultural manner, more generally. Ya-, is the genitive form such as in ngoma ya sheitani. Although Swahili is a Bantu language, many Swahili words are also related to Arabic, Hindi and Farsi and some to Portuguese or English. a – she or he -abudu – worship adabu – good manners aibu – shame; -aibisha – to shame; -aibika – to be shamed akili – intelligence, reason -amini – to believe, trust, have faith in anamjaa – she or he is filled up (by a spirit) anamvaa – she/he (referring to a spirit) wears a person arusi ya siri – secret wedding; arusi – wedding ashiki – lust bahari – ocean bajia – small cakes from flour and vegetable baraka – blessing, grace, prosperity baraza – a stone bench against the outer wall of the house biashara ya pesa ndogo – small-scale business binadamu (pl. wanadamu) – human being buhuri – incense

Glossary

159

chafu – dirty, unclean, impure chano (pl. vyano) – meal, dish of food offered to spirits; flat round platter with a low rim for serving food choyo – covetousness chuo (pl. vyuo) – Qur’anic school dawa (pl. madawa) – medicine, medicament, remedy dawa ya miti shamba – herbal medicine desturi – customs, habits, practice dhambi – sin dhati – will dhiki – depression dhikiri – sufi ritual, dikhir dini – religion dunia – the world (as it is experienced) fahamu – consciousness, (from the verb -fahamu – know, perceive, comprehend, remember fahari – pride fani – worthiness -fanya dawa – to prepare or perform medicine -fanya heri – to conduct blessings fikira – thought, thoughtfulness, reflection fitina – chaos, discord, antagonism fundi (pl. mafundi) – ritual leader, person skilled in any craft, art, profession hadharani – in public hal-ud – non-alcoholic, fragrant oil hamu – lust, urge hanithi (pl. wahanithi) – homosexual haramu – forbidden, prohibited haya – shamefulness, modesty heshima – respect -hizi – to feel, sense hupo kabisa – unconscious, absent (-minded) huruma – compassion, sympathy husuda – antagonism, envy, spitefulness -ingia dawani – to enter a process of medication (to enter into the ritual healing process) ini – liver -itwa – to be called; from the verb ku-ita -to call jaa – full; be filled by jamaa – family, community member, with whom you have family-like relations jazba – ‘trance’ -jifanya – to pretend, disguise oneself jini (pl. majini) – spirit, jinn -jizuia – to control oneself, to contain oneself

160

Glossary

kabila (pl. makabila) – tribe, population kadhi – Islamic judge kaffir (pl. makaffir) – unbeliever kama mwendazimu – as if a lunatic (kama – as if ) kanzu – longsleeved calico gown (usually white) for men kasida – songs in Swahili praising Allah and the Prophet kayamba – a rattle instrument -kesha – vigil, to stay awake for a full night khanga – colourful, rectangular cloth worn by women, shawl kijicho (pl.vijicho) – evil eye kikuba (pl. vikuba) – a medallion or small bundle made from various flowers and herbs and worn by women as perfume kilinge (pl. vilinge) – ritual group, a place for performance, secret meeting kinga – protection kishenzi – lacking in manners kisoto – a special kind of khanga (see above) usually associated with the bride kiti (pl. viti) – stool; also referring to the person inhabiting a spirit kiumbe – animated being -kogesha – to wash, to clean; kogeshwa – to be cleaned or purified by somebody -kudharau – to be proud, arrogant -kufunga mkoba – to close the basked; to end the ritual season -kufungua mkoba – to open the basked; to open the ritual season kupa kidole – point a finger at you -kuringa – to put on airs -kushika sikio – to pull the ear (often used to facilitate communication with someone’s spirit) -kutoka nje – to come out, to be introduced to the public, after a ceremony or ritual enclosure -kuwa hai – be alive -kuwa na – to have, possess (a spirit) maana ya ndani – inner, hidden meaning (maana – meaning) maarifa – knowledge, intelligence madrasa – Qur’anic school mahaba – passion maiti – corps makabila (sing. kabila) – tribes, populations malaika (sing. malaika) – angles malaya (pl. wamalaya) – prostitute maono – emotions, perceptions, something perceived by the senses maulidi – reading of Prophet Mohammad’s life mbele ya watu – in public, literally, in front of people mchawi (pl. wachawi) – witch mfalme (pl. wafalme) – king mganga (pl. waganga) – specialist in matters of illness and health / traditional healer mgeni (pl. wageni) – guest, visitor, stranger

Glossary

161

mhuni (pl. wahuni) – morally loose person mila – traditions (often referring to traditional aspects of religion) mishipa (sing. mshipa) – blood vessels, veins; used about minor organs of the body mizimu (sing. mzimu) – sacrificial places, localities associated with certain spirits msagaji (pl.wasagaji) – grinder; female homosexual mtalaamu – intelligent or knowledgeable person mtu (pl. watu) – person mungu – god mwalimu (pl. walimu) – teacher, a person learned in the Qur’an mwanadamu (pl. wanadamu) – human being mwanamke (pl. wanawake) – woman mwanamume (pl. wanaume) – man mwari (pl. wari) – female initiate; a women preparing a ritual on behalf of her spirit; in general usage: a young unmarried woman mwele (pl. wele) – person to be healed during a ritual; patient mwenye elimu – a person with education mwenye maarifa – a person with knowledge or insight mwenyezi mungu – god almighty mwili – body mzaidizi (pl. wazaidizi) – apprentice nafsi – innermost self namna tofauti – of a different kind ndani – within, inside; inner, secret, private nia – intention, purpose njia ya ndani – implicit, hidden ways ngoma (pl. ngoma) – ritual, drum ngoma ya sheitani (pl. ngoma ya sheitani) – spirit ritual, ritual performed on behalf of spirits nguvu – strength; mental and physical strength nuksi – bad luck -ona – to see (with the eyes); used on any mode of perception by the senses or the mind ota – to dream -panda kichwani – to climb to the head -pandishwa – lit. to be climbed, also; possessed by spirit -pata – to get pepo – spirit -piga nyungu – perform the initial ritual on behalf of a spirit -piga ramli – divination, soothsaying from figures in the sand -pita – pass by; -pitia – pass through -punga – to summon spirits; sway, move to and from raha – bliss riziki – necessaries of life, means of subsistence -roga – to use enchantment on, to put a spell on roho (pl. roho) – soul, life-force, vital principle, neck, throat, breath, greed

162

Glossary

sahani neupe – the white plate where the paraphernalia of a sheitani ya kibuki are kept sandarusi – gum gopal shehe (pl. mashehe) – a person learned in Islam, religious leader of a Mosque sheitani (pl. masheitani) – spirit sherehe – display, rejoicings -shinda – to stay overnight, pay a visit, remain shuka – a man’s loin cloth, sheet subiani – a kind of ruhani spirit sad to have bad intentions suna – that which is recommendable according to Islam tabia – habits, condition, state tafrahni – frustration tamaa – desire, longing, ambition; tamaa mbaya – lust taraab – a genre of sung Swahili poetry -tengeneza – to put right, repair, to put in order -toa – to give out, to reveal -toa amri – to set the rules -toa jina – to reveal the name -tolewa – to take out, to exorcise uchawi – witchcraft udi – aromatic aloe wood uganga – sorcery -umbwa – to be created -umwa – to be sick; mgonjwa – a sick person urithi – inheritance, origin usafi – impure, dirty ustaraabu – civilized utu – humanity uvumba – an odoriferous gum uwanja – walled courtyard uwezo – abilities uzingizini – in sleep, while being asleep vikuba (sing. kikuba) – small bundles made from various flowers and herbs and worn by women as perfume -vunja usu – to lose face waganga (sing. mganga) – specialists in matters of illness and health / traditional healers wakubwa (sing. mkubwa) – the elders, of high rank walimu (sing. mwalimu) – teachers, persons knowledgeable in the Qur’an wivu – jealousy ya kike – feminine ya kiulaya – European, Europeanness ya kiume – masculine ya siri – in secret

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INDEX

A aesthetics, 16, 18–19, 66–77, 116–17, 130, 139–41, 148–51, 155–57 African-Arab dichotomies, 29, 59n12, 74–77 Ardener, Shirley, x, 122n1 B Benjamin, Walter, 3, 17, 23n12, 18, 156 Boddy, Janice, 6, 53, 57n1, 145, 150 body, 58n10, 98–99, 109, 116–19, 139, 120–21 bodily experience, 13, 48–49, 89–91, 99–4, 148 body language, 96, 150–151 body/mind, 4, 95–99, 104–8, 156–57 perceptions of body, 58nn10,11, 98, 116–19, 148 Bourdieu, Pierre, 1, 2, 15, 18, 33, 138 Butler, Judith, 4, 17, 22n3, 110, 119, 139, 141 C Caplan, Pat, x, 34, 57n1, 58n9, 122n1 comedy, see parody cosmology, 43–46, 49–50, 81, 123 Csordas, Thomas, 4, 22n4 D dawa, 23n11, 93n3 difference, 1, 32–33, 73–77, 92–93, 138–39, 154–55, 157 see also aesthetics; gender; kabila distinction, 1–5, 16–18, 33, 95, 149–50 Drewal, Margaret, 140–41

E embodiment, 3–6, 22n4, 103–4, 146–47, 155–57 emotion, 17–19, 23n13, 35, 107–8, 131–33, 137–39, 152–53 F fieldwork, ix, 6-14, 23n9, 156 G Gender, 9, 17, 36–38, 41n17, 109–22, 122nn1,2, 123–24, 132–35, 154–55 complementarity, 34–35, 111–12 difference, 2–3, 130–31 gender/sex, 109–10, 116–121, 139–42 images, 121–22, 138–39, 147,153 markers, 116–20, 122n6, 128–31 performativity, 17, 53, 74, 110, 119, 139, 140–41 Giles, Linda, 31, 57n1, 58n9, 78n2, 79n12 H homosexuality, 116–22, 122n5, 128–29, 139–41 hanithi, 117, 118–19 msagaji, 117, 144n8 see also sexuality honour/shame, see respectability humour, see laughter Hutcheon, Linda, 15–16, 137, 142 I identity, 27–29, 40nn12,13, 62–66, 73–74, 77–78, 84, 93n4 see also gender; kabila

172

Indian Ocean, 25–27, 39nn6,7, 45, 58n9 Islam: in Zanzibar, 36–38, 40nnn11,14,16, 43–46, 58nnn1,5,6, 88, 93n1, 99 dini/mila, 49–50 sufism, 98–99, 108n3 suna, 68 J jinn, 1, 42–43 Johnson, Mark, 156 K kabila, 1–3, 8, 60–64, 109, 122n1, 145–46, 153–55, 157 ethnicity, 22n1, 28–31 place of origin, 3, 27, 32, 66–74 tribe, 1–3, 21n1, 28, 63, 124, 134 Kapferer, Bruce, 16, 136, 137, 154 knowledge, 17, 36–38, 47–50, 150–51 modes of knowing, 5, 13–14, 85, 115, 155–57 Kramer, Fritz, 3, 3n1, 23n8, 23n12, 1, 23n8, 145, 148, 150, 157n2 L Lambek, Michael, 6, 45, 57n1, 58n9, 108, 136, 147 laughter, 19, 106–107, 132, 134–137, 138 Lewis, Ioan, 5, 23n7, 43, 57n1, 80n16, 147 M masheitani, see jinn; sheitani; spirits Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 4, 18, 22n2, 145, 156, 157 Middleton, John, 3n1, 26, 38n1, 39n6, 57n1 mimesis, 3–4, 18, 23nn8,12, 53, 145–46, 149–50, 150–51, 156 imitation, 145, 154, 154, 155 morality, 3, 151–55, 157 concealment /disclosure, 51–52, 112–16, 151–52 moral ambiguity, 123, 137–38 see also transgression muliticultural society, 1, 27–28, 32–33, 40n14, 63, 153 see also kabila; plural society

Index

N ngoma ya sheitani, 1, 10–12, 36, 58n3, 77–78, 88–93, 123, 145 -ya habushia, 37, 71–73 -ya kibuki, 37, 68–70, 124–34, 142–43 -ya rubamba, 37, 70–71 -ya ruhani, 37, 66–68, 88–93, 95–98 O Otherness, 5, 16–17, 107–8, 134, 143, 145–57 other, 6, 53, 61–62, 150, 155–56 see also self P Parkin, David, x, 30, 40n11 parody, 15–16, 19, 120–21, 134–38, 142–43, 151–54 performance, 14–17, 116–19, 140–41 dramatization, 124, 134, 145–57 see also gender; ritual performativity see gender personhood, 1, 6, 42, 46, 50–51 plural society, 31–33, 40n12, 77–78 see also multicultural society Predictability/unpredictability, 63–64, 73–74, 79n16, 82–83,139–41 R respectability, 34–35, 40n14, 50–51, 52, 106–8, 112–13, 117, 148–150 religion, see Islam; multicultural society ritual, 14–16, 19, 24n14, 36, 85–88, 136–39, 148–49, 153–54 communication, 16–17, 18, 65–66, 84–85, 149–51 healing, 42, 54–57, 81, 83–84, 88–93 negotiation of ideals/values and identity, 16–18, 76–77, 120–21, 122, 139–42, 145, 151–55 politics of, 2 social drama, 15, 150 see also gender ritual leader, 10–11, 36–38, 41n20, 84, 86–87 S Self, 95, 147, 150

Index

self/other, 3–4, 16, 53, 93, 153 self-control, 105–6, 112, 132–33, 146–47, 152 nguvu /strength, 35, 37, 50–52 sex segregation, 6–7, 34–35, 36, 40n16, 124, 143n2 see also gender sexuality, 33, 46, 112–16, 117, 151–52 see also homosexuality Sharp, Leslie, 3n1, 6, 79n7 Sheitani, 1–2, 42, 43–45, 58n4 see also spirits -ya chang’ombe, 60 -ya habushia, 60, 65, 76, 78n2, 79nn12,13 -ya kibuki, 54–57, 75–76, 78n2, 79n7, 123–43, 143nn1,2, 144n5 -ya kichawi, 79n10, 83 -ya kinubi, 60 -ya kisomali, 60 -ya kizungu, 60, 64 -ya masaai, 60 -ya rubamba, 37, 64, 65, 74–75 -ya ruhani, 37, 64–65, 70n1, 74, 89–92, 114, 115–16 -ya subiani, 78n1, 82, 93n2 Sheriff, Abdul, 28 social drama, see ritual social organization, 27–38, 153 see also Indian Ocean; sex segregation; social stratification social stratification, 7–8, 27–29, 39nn3,4, 78nn3,4, 118, 155 sorcery, 51–52, 83–84, 114 spirits, 5–6, 14–15, 43–48, 60–61, 65–66, 81–83, 84–85, 151–52

173

experiencing spirits, 54–57, 95, 99–104, 145–46 relations with humans, 10, 48–51, 77–78, 81–93, 94n6, 105–8, 114–16, 118, 146–48 spirits and body, 17, 53, 82, 92–93 see also jinn; sheitani spirit possession,1–2, 8–10, 23nnn6,7,12, 42, 57n1, 58nn2,11, 95–98, 111–12, 126, 147 marginality, 5, 9 peripherality, 5–6, 9, 43–44 Stoller, Paul, 6, 18, 23n12 Swahili, 25, 31–35, 38n1, Swartz, Marc J., 31, 32, 51, T Tanzania, see Indian Ocean Taussig, Michael, 3, 17, 18, 23n12, 145, 156 transgression, 19, 110, 120–22, 132–33, 140–43 tribe, see kabila Turner, Victor, 3, 15, 18, 151, 150, 157n2 U unpredictability, see predictability Z Zanzibar, 9, 25–33, 61, 145, 157 place, 25–26, 39nnn2,3,5 politics, 26–31, 39nnn 8,9,10 see also social organization; social stratification