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.