Selecting the Families of Those Who are to Marry

A central factor in the extending or accepting of a marriage proposal is the view that the two families have of each other's standing as waungwana

(nobles). The suspicion of the existence of a slave forebear, which, as noted previously, bars the object of suspicion from the muungwana status, will almost invariably put the suspected family beyond consideration save by families who are themselves suspect.

The Swahili follow the Shafi canon of Sunni Islam, and that canon, informants tell me, requires that those to be married be kufu . This means that they must be of the same "tribe," the term used for this by English-speaking informants but probably referring in some part to prestige and economic standing. An informant told me that the founder of Shafi said that the child of a religious judge (kadhi) should not marry the child of a blacksmith.

Just all of what is involved in kufu is not entirely clear, since, as seen, Swahili do marry people from other ethnic groups, but community members agree that a proposed marriage can be rejected if the proposed partners are not kufu. At the same time it is also agreed that a rejection on such grounds is the most insulting possible. This suggests that objections based in kufu are at least sometimes used as a way of saying the proposer is not a muungwana, a person of undoubted free birth, or, at least, is of such low station as to be unworthy.

The economic situation of the two families is important to those involved, and although each generally prefers, pari pasu, the other to be equal or somewhat more financially secure, only extreme poverty is a likely source of serious objection to the marriage. The prestige of the occupations has significance in itself, with highly remunerative but low-prestige positions less desirable than less remunerative but more admired ones.

The significance of kufu, equality, is seen in some uses of kin terms for nonkin. Women, usually of different generations, who are fond of one another sometimes address one another as mavya, a reciprocal term for husband's mother and son's wife, even if the actual relationship does not exist. The term, it was explained to me, is a friendly one asserting the equality of the women and the propriety of a marriage that would unite them in the relationship it indicates. Similarly, women fondly call boys of their daughter's age Bamkwe (a contraction of "Bwana Mkwe," where "mkwe" is a reciprocal term for spouse's parents and child's spouse), even if the boys are young children.

Birth and economic status are by no means the only basis for evaluating marriage proposals. The suspicion of serious, unacceptable behavior or character traits on the part of either of the young people will bring the other family to oppose the marriage. If the young woman is thought to have a quarrelsome or difficult character or if her association with the other sex is thought to have been too free, the proposal is unlikely to be made by the groom's family.