Mutual Choice in Forming a Social "Pool"

In general, my observations and discussions with group members support the conclusion that each Swahili is part of a pool of individuals whose members choose one another for relationships of varying intensity, frequency of association, and duration. Some of these relationships are rather distant, and others involve regular mutual assistance, exchanges of some kinds of confidential information, and strong emotional bonds. Ties of kinship make up a substantial part of the basis for forming this ego-centered pool, but neigh-

bors from adjoining houses are another important element, especially for women.

For men, membership in the pool is also affected by the mosque they regularly attend with a man's closer relations—both with kin and nonkin—often mainly with others who attend the same mosque. Since which mosque a man regularly attends is commonly more influenced by proximity than anything else, neighborhood (in the sense of the general area, about which see below) is important for men but is generally a wider area than it is for women.

Individuals choose and are chose from their pool according to personal preference, leaving the other pool members as more or less available sources of material help, social support, and, for women, emotional warmth when limited or exceptional circumstances make these desirable. This availability is maintained through relationships kept active in occasional visits to one another's homes and joint participation in weddings, funerals, and maulidi.

Particular kinsmen may or may not be active in preparing for one another's life crises or religious rituals, but they will make some contribution and will almost always be present. Men who attend them use their pools as the basis for choosing a baraza. Some men do not attend a baraza regularly, but there is an explicit value on men associating with one another rather than being isolated in their homes, and a main venue for such association, second only to the mosque before and after prayers, is the baraza.

In my limited experience with them, women are more often in close contact with more of their kin than men are. Women seem to draw on the "pool" of their husbands' kin, however, rather more selectively depending on their and their affines' preferences, on the women's relations with their husbands, and on their husbands' relations with the members of his extended family.

Men are generally more distant and more selective in all their relationships save, often, with their wives (more of this in chap. 10). There are men who see a great deal of several of their father's brothers' sons and little of their mother's brothers' sons even though informants report that warmer and more satisfactory relations are likelier on the mother's side. There are mature men, including some with children of their own, who associate closely with their fathers and are involved with them in a range of financial, religious, and social matters. But there are others who see their fathers only rarely and have little to do with them. The same can be said of relations between brothers.

Neighbors

For both men and women, the pool of possible close and/or especially significant associates is not limited to kin. Neighbors, including those who are unrelated, are often among those with whom there are the closest relationships, often involving mutual assistance and strong emotional ties. There is a proverb that, if it lacks the trenchancy of many others, nevertheless charac-

terizes the nature of relations with neighbors as compared to kin: Hallah, hallah jirani kuliko ndugu mli kule (God, God [much used to give emphasis] the neighbor [is more] than [a] kin [who] is over there [i.e., at a distance]).

As with kinship, ties based on proximity are a likely basis for close relationships without there being any necessity for such relationships to develop. To be jirani (neighbors; wamtaa is a less common alternate term) is to have the basis for a close relationship, but normatively, informants agree it need only be a cordial one. Some neighbors are likely also to be kin, and the dual tie increases the likelihood of frequent and close association. Other neighbors, however, may not even be Swahili, and close relations even with such outsiders are, within limits to be described, fairly common.

Old Town is no longer a purely Swahili area and has not been since the railroad to Nairobi and Uganda was completed before World War I. The steady increase in the presence of non-Swahili in the area has resulted in greater and greater population density, with much of the additional housing, as well as some formerly Swahili housing, being occupied by outsiders. The limited census I was able to make indicates that outsiders, mainly Indians and Arabs of various sorts (but most commonly those from the Hadhramot area of Yemen), now occupy more than half of the houses in the area. The eastern part of Mombasa island, which was almost purely Swahili prior to World War I (when the rest of the island was used for agriculture), is now a cosmopolitan area only slightly less polyglot than the area adjacent to Old Town that has become the business district and, to the west of that, a mainly non-Swahili residential and industrial area leading to the modern port.^[9]

Despite its greatly increased non-Swahili population, Old Town is not completely heterogeneous. There are almost no resident Christians there, and almost all of the minority of non-Muslims are Hindus. Among the Muslim majority in Old Town, the Swahilis' fellow Sunni are the largest group, although there are some Shia (all or almost all from India), a small number of unassimilated Omanis of the Ibathi canon, and, again mainly Indian Muslims from other non-Sunni groups. Ethnic heterogeneity is, as this suggests, rather greater than religious.

Relations with Non-Swahili Neighbors

Many Swahili women and some men have close relations with unrelated neighbors, some of whom are from other ethnic groups. This close association with outsiders, however, is almost exclusively with those who are Sunni Muslims. Close relations with Indian neighbors, even if the Indians are Sunni, are not very common unless they are Baluchis (see chap. 2), whom the Swahili view as far more like themselves than members of any other outside group. Close relations with Hadhrami Arab neighbors (and the Mombasa Hadhrami are all Sunni) are, however, by no means unusual.

Close relationships between whole Swahili households and unrelated neighboring households are quite common, and people often speak of their neighbors as being "ndugu" even when, on inquiry, it appears there is no known blood relationship. Such relations are very positively evaluated by everyone I talked to, and the issue of whether "real" kin might be unhappy about close relations between their relatives and unconnected neighbors was dismissed as farfetched. A number of informants pointed out to me that Islam enjoins neighbors to care for and love one another and quoted Prophet Mohammed as saying that the only thing that remained to be done to make neighbors the same as kin was to find a way for neighbors to inherit from one another.

Warm and mutually supporting relationships are extremely common between Swahili families that have lived in the same nearby houses for generations, but even neighbors who have lived near one another for only a matter of years often have wide-scope and intensive relations. Such relations sometimes develop even when the neighbors are Sunni from some non-Swahili group.

In many cases, of course, the members of neighboring households differ in the closeness of their ties with one another. Most frequently, it is the wife-mother in the Swahili household who is close to her counterpart in the neighboring household, and other relations between members of the two households vary from cordial or polite to truly friendly. Occasionally, the relationship between households focuses on the husbands-fathers, but this is far less common and these relations, like most men's relations, are usually restrained and polite rather than close, even if the men sometimes do important practical favors for one another.