Kuuliza si ujinga

Tanzania has about 120 tribes, and most of them are fairly small. But there are a few larger tribes. One of them is the Sukuma. At 15% of the population, they're one of the largest tribes in the country.

Yesterday, we went to a Sukuma cultural museum about 40 minutes out of Mwanza. In a way, the museum reminded me of places like Plymouth Plantation and Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, which show us how our ancestors lived. There was a hut built in the traditional Sukuma style (but of concrete so it would last longer), and inside it held the tools that a Sukuma would have used in the past: traps for catching fish and birds, clay containers for holding drinking water, a cup woven like a basket for drinking traditional beer, a hoe and a spear made by local blacksmiths. There were pavilions with displays on blacksmiths, showing a pit used for extracting iron from ore, and local bellows used to heat the charcoal in the pit. There was a pavilion full of royal drums, huge drums used to announce important events related to the king. Another hut showed tools used by traditional healers, and another was about Sukuma dances and dance competitions.

It's funny that, looking at African cultures, we tend to focus on things that are 'exotic' or different from Western culture. But in many ways, when we look at African tribes, we are also looking at our own past. It's true that the Sukuma entered the Industrial Age later than white Europeans, and that they were forging hoes by hand and using clay pots far more recently. But, with the exception of more culturally-specific items involved in dances or religion, many of the things I saw wouldn't have looked out of place in a museum about how Americans or Europeans lived in the distant past.

Another observation: the Sukuma have a museum to preserve their past. Most tribes don't. The tribe I live with, the Iraqw, seem to have lost most of their traditions. They certainly don't wear traditional clothes, the underground houses they used to build have entirely disappeared, and traditional dance troupes are few and far between. I don't know much about what tribal culture used to be like, so I don't know what else has been lost. But from what the older people tell me, the culture has changed and is changing fast. It's merging with the dominant Tanzanian culture, at the same time as Tanzanian culture is itself Westernizing. This isn't necessarily bad--in some ways, the changes are bringing development and the chance of a better future. But to lose a culture and a history so fast...it's disorienting. And it's hard to have pride in your past when your past is rapidly being obliterated by an outside culture. It'd be good if every tribe at least had a way to preserve their past, and write their history, before it's entirely lost.