"Clans" and Other Designations Wrongly or Rarely Used

Turning to the family and kinship, it was noted above that the community's constituent sections, or confederations, are composed of what is glossed as "tribes" (mataifa ) and that these, in turn, are made up of patrilateral descent groups (mbari ), called "clans" in some historians' accounts (Berg 1968:40–42, Pouwells 1987:79, 84 passim). The use of the term "clan" for any part

of this society, however, is likelier to produce misunderstanding than to illuminate its social life.

The kin groupings that compose the tribes were not based on strict patrilineal descent, did not in all cases believe in a common ancestor, were not exogamous, and were only localized in the sense that all the members of a confederation or section lived in the same area without, however, any residential distinction by descent groups. The only basis for using the term "clan," in fact, is that English-speaking group members use it.

Looking at this usage, however, strongly suggests that the term is applied loosely to "kin" or "fairly close kin" rather than to any sort of unilineal descent group. For example, an informant said "the clan" was coming to a gathering at his house, and the people who came included not only his patrilateral kin but also some related through his mother and some through his wife (who was not his cousin). When I asked him if he considered them all to be "his clan," he said that he did. This is quite consistent for the use of "clan" as described by Prins (1967:80–81), whose reservations are in accord with those noted here.

The two words for groupings of kin that were used in the fairly recent past but seem not to be currently in use are nyumba and mlango. "Nyumba" is most readily glossed as "house" and is used for the nuclear family members and their siblings and parents. "Mlango" means door in Swahili and, in this usage, refers to the broadly conceived category of kin and, sometimes, affines related through either parent. It was never used to refer to a social group of any kind. It was, rather, a category used to place an individual or nuclear family in a context of kin and affines. Prins notes that the term "mlango" is an alternative to "clan" or mbari. Kindy gives a historically useful list of the names of all the mbari making up each of the tribes (1972:49–51; see also Berg 1968:40–41).

There are hints in my informants' discussions that mbari were once the basis for joint activities including warfare and dances, but if this did occur in the past, it has not done so for most of this century. Many informants, including some of those who know their "tribe," do not know which mbari they belong to. Even in the earlier period when mbari was widely known, it appears that it was not the primary framework for close relationships beyond the household. This framework, especially for women and children, was and still is provided by the mtaa (pl. mitaa ), or neighborhood.