case of study about sandawe tribal
About Farkwa The
village of Farkwa is located in central Tanzania, about three hours by
rough road north of the official capital, Dodoma, and two hours south of
the next town, Kondoa.The population is about 2000, made up mostly Sandawe people, but including people from neighbouring tribes such as Gogo, Barabaig and Maasai. To view a larger interactive map showing the location of Farkwa click here. The Sandawe people
The
Sandawe are unique in Tanzania, as their language is unrelated to any
other of the 120 languages spoken in the country. It is a click
language, distantly related to that of the San (Bushman) people of
southern Africa. The Sandawe believe that they migrated from South
Africa in the distant past, but it possible that they are descendents of
San people who may have inhabited a large part of sub-Saharan Africa
but who were gradually pushed into the more inhospitable regions by the
Bantu and Nilotic pastoralists and cultivators coming from the north and
west. Cave paintings similar to those of the San in South Africa are
dotted around the Kondoa region. It is believed these artworks were made
by the ancestors of the Sandawe between 800 and 3000 years ago. The
Sandawe population is about 70,000. They use Swahili to communicate with
non-Sandawe people.
Farming
The
Sandawe until about 100 years ago were hunters and gatherers, living
amongst settled farmers and herdsmen. They are still renowned for their
skills in finding and surviving on bush foods in drought times. They are
now farmers, growing food mostly for their self-sufficiency, with
occasionally some left over to sell. The main crops are sorghum, millet
and cassava, supplemented with beans and various vegetables. Some people
grow maize, which is preferred as a grain, but it is less reliable in
bad years.
The climate at Farkwa is precarious. Rainfall varies from 250mm in a bad year to 1000mm in a good year. Sometimes there is too much rain, causing severe erosion and making roads impassable. During the dry season from May to November there is rarely any rain at all. Sowing crops starts early in the wet season so that there is enough time for growth and ripening. Often the rains come late, or there may be a lengthy dry period during the wet season, causing crops to fail. There is no irrigation. All cultivation is done with a hand hoe. Wild animals take a proportion of the harvest. Farkwa is surrounded by bush, and many of the plots of farmland are a long way out in the bush. Wild pigs, baboons, porcupines and birds are most destructive. Crops have to be guarded as harvest time approaches to minimise losses. Elephants occasionally come. Farmers usually keep some goats, pigs, poultry and occasionally cattle to supplement their diet. The Sandawe eat more meat than neighbouring tribes, a legacy of their hunting ancestry. Goats are housed at night to protect them from leopards and hyenas, and are taken out during the day to graze on the grass and browse on the shrubs. In the dry season they survive on fallen leaves and dead grass. Community Life
Most
of the people are Catholics. The church was established by Italian
priests in the 1920’s, and is the main meeting place in Farkwa. There is
also a small Muslim population but no mosque. The church runs a small
hospital and dispensary and a kindergarten, and sometimes offers sewing
classes. The primary and secondary schools provide education. World
Vision has an office in Farkwa to assist the community with development
needs, and there is a local government office.
There is a monthly market that brings buyers from large towns far away. Farkwa has a few small shops selling a limited selection of fruit and vegetables, drinks, biscuits, flour, sugar, kerosene and basic household hardware items. Clothes are made by local tailors. A guest house accommodates travellers. Daily buses, which carry goods as well as people, go to Dodoma and Kondoa where there are big markets and better services. Housing
Houses
are mostly made out of mud bricks and have a soil roof which must be
replaced every five years. The roof is made by placing sticks close
together, thatching with dry grass or crop stubble, and covering with
soil. Some people plant couch grass on the roof to help stop the soil
washing off. More affluent people build with concrete blocks and roofing
iron. Houses are scattered among farmland, usually in family groups.
Water is supplied by a community bore and is pumped to four locations
around the village, where people come and pay by the bucketful which
they carry back home. Water is used very sparingly. Hardly anyone can
afford guttering or a rainwater tank.
The Future
Farkwa
people face problems such as lack of adequate health and education
facilities, food insecurity, no or insufficient cash income for basic
necessities, and unreliable water supply. However it is a peaceful
community where children are safe and valued and people are cheerful in a
clean natural environment free of noise except for the occasional truck
passing through. Life is gradually becoming better for Farkwa. The
secondary school opened in 2005, a phone tower was erected in 2006, and
low cost mosquito nets are available. Many families have members working
in distant towns and cities, sending money back to their relatives. No
tourists come but there is great potential, for people to appreciate a
unique people, a beautiful environment, the cave paintings and wildlife
at the nearby reserve.
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The Sandawe of Tanzania
Religion: Traditional Nature Animism
Registry of Peoples code: Sandawe: 108634
Registry of Languages code (Ethnologue): Sandawe: sad
NARRATIVE PROFILE
Location:
The Sandawe people are a small group living in north central Tanzania in Kondo District, near the town of Kondoa, between the Mponde and Bubu rivers.
History:
The Sandawe are a small remaining group of a race of people that originally lived over much of Africa. The San, called the Bushmen by the Dutch in South Africa, were the first people we know of in the Rift Valley. As they came under pressure from invading and immigrant peoples, the non-aggressive hunter-gatherers often moved away or were absorbed by intermarriage, or more often were killed off. The San as a group are considered to be the oldest human lineage in the world.
Southern Cushites then Eastern Cushites were followed by the Highland Nilotes (Kalenjin Cluster), then the early Bantu. Oral traditions of the Kikuyu of Kenya refer to the Athi (the ground people), whom the Kikuyu paid for the right to move into their land. The Athi are thought to be the original San people of the area.
Some San peoples seem to be in existence now speaking the Bantu language of their dominant neighbors. The herding and tilling of the immigrant peoples, with their metal implements and weapons, upset the Sandawe way of life and sources of food.
Identity:
The Sandawe are racially different from the surrounding tribes. Whereas most of the tribes in Tanzania are Bantu people, and the nearby Maasai are Nilotic, the Sandawe speak a San language. Some Sandawe have features more like the San people of southern Africa, while others look more like their Bantu neighbours.
They have a coppery brown skin and tend to be smaller than the surrounding peoples. Photos show some Sandawe to have knotty hair like that of the Bushmen, commonly referred to as peppercorn hair. They are reported to have the epicanthic fold of the eyelid (like East Asian peoples) common to the Bushmen. See two photos of Sandawe among other Tanzania peoples here.
The Sandawe are a remnant of the earlier inhabitants of the area, thought to have once covered all of eastern and southern Africa. Another related people in Tanzania are the Hatsa (or Hadzapi). Some think the pygmies in Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire are related, though they now speak the Bantu language of their neighbors and have more Bantu features.
The Bantu name "Twa" for the pygmy peoples living int he forwested areas around the Great Lakes of Eastern Africa is the same word the Zulus use for the Khoisan click-language speakers they found in their early migrations into what is now Natal province of South Africa. One San tribe there today is still called Twa.
Language:
The Sandawe language includes click sounds as consonants and is also tonal. Totally unrelated to other languages around them, it is difficult to learn. The language is related to the languages of the Bushmen (San) and Hottentots (Khoi) of southern Africa and is classified as a Khoisan language. It is considered to constitute a separate branch of the Khoisan family of languages.
The Hadzapi, also in northern Tanzania, are the only other aboriginal people in Eastern Africa still speaking a Khoisan language. Their language is also so different that it likewise constitutes aseparate branch of Khoisan. Comparative linguists theorize from comparison of the Sandawe and Hadzape languages with other San languages that the point of origin of San speech was here in Eastern Africa.
Political Situation:
The traditional living patterns of the Sandawe left them isolated from other peoples. They were pressed by immigrant groups for millennia. Into modern times they were outside the political and social mainstream. The socialist Tanzania government forced the Sandawe to limit their movement and settle down. As they lost their hunting areas, their sources of food diminished, but they found it hard to make a transition. Their experience with farming and herding has resulted in economic disaster.
Customs:
The Sandawe are known as a monogamous people, in contrast to the traditional practice of their neighbours. Some sources, however, comment that they have recently adopted polygamy from their Bantu neighbours. They have been associated with rock art that is very similar to the rock art of the southern San peoples, but with some unique features. See links at the end of this profile for more on this topic.
They have traditionally been hunters and gatherers of food, moving their portable shelters wherever there was game. In the past generation, the village-based development program of the Tanzanian central government has encouraged the Sandawe to develop a more sedentary lifestyle based on farming. Maybe one-fourth of the Sandawe have migrated to the areas around the towns of Arusha and Dodoma.
The Sandawe now own cattle and cultivate with metal hoes instead of their original wooden digging sticks, but still maintain their hunting, including pig and elephant. The men also still gather wild honey and women gather wild fruits and vegetables and dig roots with sticks.
Because of their healthy lifestyle and wide diet, the Sandawe have a much higher level of health than their Bantu neighbors. They do not suffer the kwashiorkor or other deficiency conditions of their neighbors. During the 20th century, the Sandawe have shifted from their traditional movable structures called sundu, to more solid rectangular houses of the tembe type of their Bantu neighbors.
Sandawe hold all-night dances to the music of drums in the moonlight. The Sandawe have a great musical and dance tradition, with beer-drinking at their celebrations. There are celebrations for each area of life, each with its own music: hunting, hoeing, circumcision, etc. Curing rituals have their own music. Their instruments are musical bows and a trough zither.
The elders tell the children stories of the past, conveying their history, traditions and wisdom. They also value riddles and have an art of humorous insult. In many of their traditional stories the Sandawe identify with the small animals whose cunning and intelligence gives them victory over their more powerful enemies. Men today commonly wear the Muslim brimless hat, called kofia, common to other peoples in central Tanzania.
Religion:
Islam has influenced the eastern section of the Sandawe. Roman Catholicism has influenced the southern section. Most Sandawe still practice their animistic faith which includes the reverence for the moon. The moon is seen as a symbol of life, fertility and good will. Their traditional beliefs emphasize living in harmony with nature, which is a common feature of the San people of southern Africa.
The Sandawe religion gives a central place to cave spirits living in the hills, to ancestor worship and divination. They fear the cave spirits and no hunting, herding or wood-gathering is allowed near their caves. They make annual sacrifices to appease the hill spirits, shouting prayers loudly as they climb to the sacrificing area. They also sacrifice at the graves of their ancestors in public ceremonies.
The San peoples practice their traditional tribal religious rituals and they are very closed to Christianity. They believe in a High God, called Warongwe, a distant spirit that is not active in their lives. They see certain animals (especially the praying mantis) and celestial bodies (sun, moon, morning star, and the southern cross) as symbols of divinity. The moon is believed to be the source of rain and fertility. They also believe that dancing near a sacred fire will bring healing. Some reports indicate 10% of the people are Muslim.
One source comments further on the nature-relationship of their traditional religion:
"The gods of the Sandawe are activated by an erotic dance, phek'umo, in which the act of love is mimicked in embrace by the dancers. The Moon is seen to be part of the cycle of fertility; in the cycle of months and in the menses of women...so people dance by moonlight and adopt stances and postures in the dance which represent the phases of the moon. This dance embeds the necessity for human and earth fertility in the body, mind, and spirit of the dancers as they work the fields or the banana in Tanzania."However, one of the few scholarly articles accessible on the Sandawe culture commented in 1969, "Nowadays the phek'umo is rarely performed...."1
Christianity:
Estimates of percentage Christian vary considerably. Some estimates are as high as 80%, but other investigators say this is unrealistic. The Africa Inland Church has three Tanzanian families and one missionary family engaged in outreach to the Sandawe. More workers are needed. A Bible translation project is underway in the Sandawe language.
Several Anglican and Pentecostal groups have worked with the Sandawe people, and there are gospel recordings in their language. There has been little positive response to the gospel. The transition to a more settled farming life may make it easier to plant a church community among the Sandawe people, as well as to improve their health and education.
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1Eric Ten Raa, "The Moon as a Symbol of Life and Fertility in Sandawe Thought" Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), pp. 24-53.
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