Some Universal Bases for Aibu

I will begin the description of aibu's operation by identifying a few of the ideal understandings that are taken to be sources of aibu for members of this group regardless of who is being judged or who is doing the judging. When I asked informants to tell me specifically some aibu-evoking acts or qualities that they knew about and that were undoubtedly aibu producing for anyone, the following were mentioned: stealing; impregnating an unmarried woman and being impregnated if unmarried; using foul language in the company of "decent people"; being seen naked in public; dressing outrageously; using, selling, or supplying alcohol; making it clear to others that you would like them to give you goods or money; going to people's houses and making a nuisance of yourself by shouting or pounding on the doors, especially at night; and failure of a man to protect a woman of the community from assault by outsiders.

This is almost surely not a complete list of actions or failures constituting obvious and undoubted aibu for everyone, but it is important to note that most of the things mentioned here are of the gross, rarely occurring sort that figure little in everyday life for most people. Even these egregious activities may include some that are undoubted aibu only when taken out of their actual social settings and presented as isolated examples of evil.

So, for example, impregnating someone outside of marriage is aibu, but there are men—probably not a few—who have lovers outside their community-approved marriages and who sometimes impregnate these non-Swahili women. Is this impregnation an aibu for the man? It certainly is so far as the wife of the impregnator is concerned and probably also in the eyes of her parents and siblings. It most often is not for the man's male friends, many of whom would view his liaison as more admirable than shameful.

A Swahili woman being impregnated outside marriage is a great and undoubted aibu for her as judged by everyone including her peers. The impregnator is also shamed, and this event, rare as it is, is admired by no one. However, the same is not true if a Swahili man impregnates his non-Swahili lover. Here the existence of a basis for shame depends on who is doing the evaluation.