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4 He Who Eats with You Kinship, Family, and Neighborhood
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Mother's Siblings and Father's Siblings

The mother's brother, mjomba , occupies a fairly distinctive position in the parental generation, and informants agree that this man is more likely to be sympathetic and helpful than a father's brother, Baba ya pili [lit., second father] or Baba mdogo [lit., little father]. Several informants say that if one's father dies while one is young, it is better to be in the charge of a mother's brother than a father's brother because, given the partrilateral emphasis in Islamic inheritance laws, the former is not in a position to try to appropriate your share of your dead father's estate as the latter is. Further, and at least


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as important, there is more likely to be "love" (upendo ) on the mother's side of the family. The mother's brother's wife is referred to by a distinctive term, mkaza mjombe .

Like mother's brother, father's sister is referred to by a term, shangazi , that distinguishes her from other kin of the parental generation, although there is no distinctive term for her husband. However, no particular distinctive qualities in the relations between people of either sex and their father's sisters were observed or reported by informants. If anything, it is my impression that mother's sisters play an active role in people's lives more often than father's sisters do. When I mentioned this impression to informants, they uniformly agreed and said that it was due to the fact that when children are small, they go with their mothers when the latter go visiting. Since mothers visit their sisters more often than their husbands' sisters, the children become more accustomed (zoea ) to them and, therefore, have closer relations with them.


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4 He Who Eats with You Kinship, Family, and Neighborhood
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