Section Competitions

The rationing and the earlier blows to section unity affected the ability of the sections to unify and compete with one another. Nevertheless, until the early 1960s, the members of the Three Tribes and the Nine Tribes did engage in such sectionally based competitions as team card games, various sports, and marching societies (quaride ) that competed in precision of marching, elegance of uniform, and the skill of their bands. These primarily male activities were paralleled by competitions between women's dancing societies, called vyama .

Continuing until independence in 1963 was what several male informants have said was the most basic and fundamental expression of community life: the performance of a men's dance called tware and a related one called diriji . A large proportion of the men from each section, including the "Arabs," participated in these. In tware, the men from each side formed two lines, one for the Nine Tribes and one for the Three Tribes, facing one another. To the measured beat of the tambourine-like tware drum, each side attempted to outdo the other in the gleaming whiteness of their gowns and kofia (white skullcaps worn by Muslims) and in the elegance and grace of their movements in this very restrained dance.

No prize was awarded; in fact, no judgment was made. But each side assessed its own performance against that of the other and decided for itself who had been the most "noble." And "noble" is the word for this dance. It is performed in celebration of the marriage or circumcision of Twelve Tribes members but only for those who are understood to be descended from forebears all of whom were free men and women (i.e., waungwana). Moreover, only those with this sort of family background were allowed to participate in the dance.

A similar sort of dance, diriji, was also held and was seen, informants say, as another expression of community life. It, too, was restricted to those considered waungwana and was performed by the confederations in opposition to one another.

Many of the most important relations between women in the community were, like the men's dances, carried out in sectionally organized groups. This is so despite the existence of a group made up of all the "noble" old women, the wamiji (miji refers to city; wa - is the suffix for nouns referring to humans). This group acted as the ritual guardians of the community without respect to section lines, condemning improper ceremonial and ritual behavior and lending their presence to important celebrations regardless of section membership. Old men had the same title but seem not to have actively involved themselves as the women did (Stroebel 1979:80–84).

Like the wamiji, section lines were not regarded for the weddings, funerals, and circumcisions that were the center of their social life in this sexually segregated society. Women invited all community members of their gender to the rites. This was so even though those who cooperated most closely with one another in the laborious and elaborate preparations for these ceremonies were almost always from the same neighborhood and, therefore, section.

But this does not mean that sectional opposition had no part in female activities. In women's social lives, the competition between the sections came out most clearly in the women's dancing societies, or vyama (sing. chama ).^[5] There were a number of these societies, but the two main ones were based on section membership (ibid., 160–164). In a way somewhat similar to the men's marching societies, the women's competition involved elegance of costume, skill in dancing, and excellence of music between section-based groups whose members included the descendants of slaves as well as women whose forebears were understood to include only waungwana.

The women's competition went beyond those of the men. In addition to dancing skill, they also competed in the excellence and lavishness of the food presented at their dances, the elegance of their clothing and jewelry, and, especially, in the mordant wit of the songs reviling members of the competing group. These were sung at the dances and dealt with such embarrassments of the opposite section as one of its men having elephantiasis of the testicles, the pretensions to high social standing despite having a slave fore-

bear of one of its families, and the sexual indiscretion of one of its women. Men, especially older and more prestigious ones, disapproved of these women's competitions, but since they were mainly carried out within the confines of the women's separate groups whose activities were not held in the men's presence, their disapproval only kept their own wives and daughters out.