Ngoma And Islam

Not far away in Manzese-Kwadjongo lives mganga Mahamoud Kingiri-ngiri, a Sufi Muslim of the Matumbe people from Kilwa. Unlike mganga Botoli, described earlier in this chapter, Mahamoud works with Kitabu (the book), magi (water), and nzizi (roots), and with Ruhani and Majini spirits of the sea. Unlike mganga Omari Hassan, who is Muslim and uses ngoma, as does non-Muslim Botoli, Mahamoud does not use or relate to ngoma, on grounds of his adherence to Sufism. The matrices of Bantu-African and Muslim culture, and the use and nonuse of ngoma by waganga, are clearly illustrated by these three healers.

Mahamoud has a well-built house near a stream, with banana and palm trees surrounding it. The two-story house contains his study, where he has his books; it also features a consultation bench, a place of prayer, a purification-bathing room, and an outdoor treating area.

When I visited him with a guide from the Traditional Medicine Research Unit, several of his four wives were seated in the hallway, with children on their laps. Mahamoud has had fifteen children, twelve of whom survive. He impressed me as an ambitious, intelligent, religious man, who took his work seriously and cared for his family. When asked whether he had been to Mecca on a pilgrimage, he said no, he could

not leave his wives and children that long, they needed him; anyway, he did not have the money.

With his several interrelated treatments, Mahamoud works with afflictions as diverse as polio (for which he has a compound of twenty-one medicines, to be taken with water over three days), excessive or irregular menstruation (I observed him treating one such patient; he read to her from a book), convulsive fevers, diarrhea and vomiting, and the preparation of aphrodisiacs for the impotent. He also works with Majini (of which seven are good and help treat, and five are bad and bring disease), and Maruhani (all seven of which are good and help treat). These spirits all stay in the ocean, but they come out or are found in other places; the Maruhani at clean places, the Majini at dirty places like latrines. When he treats, he begins with the name and other aspects of the life of the patient based on the birth date. Following a reading of his Arabic (geomancy?) texts, he goes to sacred places, starts to pray, and the spirits come forward, telling him what to do with the patient.

The Arabic text Mahamoud uses most is by the Egyptian Abdul Qattah of Macina. It tells of all types of diseases and treatments, including Maruhani and Majini. He also uses the Koran and has numerous other Arabic books in his study. He spoke Swahili and English. His father had insisted on sending his three sons to Koranic school, but he was the only one who had followed this line of work in the family tradition from his father and grandfather. One of his sons was being groomed to succeed him.

The family (patrilineal) therapeutic tradition began in the context of village protection during the Maji-Maji revolt earlier in this century against the German colonialists. Mahamoud's great-great grandfather had been head of a Matumbe village near Kilwa. In the thick of the Maji-Maji struggle, his grandfather was sent to the Arabs to learn of better medicine, for they felt inadequately protected. When his grandfather died, the work was passed on to Mahamoud's father, then to him.

When Mahamoud became mganga, he locked himself in a room and read books. Thus in isolation, the Maruhani came to him and asked, "What do you want?" "To be mganga ," he replied. The Maruhani explained cleanliness and emphasized purification with water. His house, especially the areas for prayer and healing, was immaculately clean; a floor of white porcelain tile was visible beside the "bath tub."

I asked Mahamoud Kingiri-ngiri why he did not use ngoma, when some others—Zaramo, reported in Swantz, and Zigua such as Isa Hassan—did, especially with Ruhani spirits. He emphasized Islamic restric-

tions but also that ngoma was just "happiness," not real medicine. Perhaps a further answer lies in his being part of a Sufi brotherhood, which is in effect a ritual community that functionally substitutes for ngoma. This Sufi brotherhood did not have a saint, he said, but they had a tradition of sheikhs.

The three Tanzanian waganga profiled here represent a continuum from classical ngoma practitioners to degrees of Islamization. In the coastal association in which the Hassan brothers are instrumental, Islamic brotherhood structure and urban professionalism have changed the ngoma tradition. The symbolism and the rituals have been affected less. With Mahamoud Kingiri-ngiri, the etiology of ngoma is addressed from within an Islamic framework. Plant lore has been retained, but the legitimation has become that of folk Islam and mysticism. A similar continuum could be traced from classic ngoma to independent Christian churches in Tanzania, which, however, I could not pursue.