Insults, Conflict, and Secrecy/Privacy

Insults and being offended by them are connected to a central value in all close Swahili relationships, sitara. This highly desired condition involving concealing a substantial proportion of all information concerning self and family was mentioned above. This condition, sitara, is based on siri , secret[s], and is connected to insults and offense by the fact that others' ability to shame or insult depends on their knowing about the life and activities of the insulted and his or her family. Being accused of being kufye, too easily insulted, or any other undesirable trait, depends, as informants explicitly formulate it, on people knowing about what you do. If you conceal what you do by maintaining sitara, you are protected so that, quite literally, one cannot have too many secrets. To have siri is not so much an admirable trait, the

way having haya is. Rather, it is a prudent and sensible one whose absence is "idiocy" (upumbafu).

With "privacy" or "secrecy" there can be little basis for insults or, to carry this further, for "shame" (aibu), a singularly important process to be considered at length in the next chapter. It is worth nothing that the only Swahili dictionary written in the Swahili language (Akida et al. 1981) defines "sitara" as "hali ya kuficha jambo la aibu" ([the] condition of hiding [a] thing [i.e., matter, source of] shame). The state of having sitara is obviously a desirable one from the perspective taken by the Swahili I know. Openness is not valued, as far as I could determine, by any community member, although there was substantial variation in how much people wanted hidden and how vigorous they were in doing that.

The importance of privacy and concealment is seen further in the disapproving term, mwazirifu (lit. exposer), referring to someone who talks quite openly about shameful things in the family. Children and elderly widows are said to be the usual "exposers," both because they talk too freely with anyone who will listen to them and because they go to people's houses at mealtimes and accept food. This last is viewed with horror by the family of the one who does it, because it is understood to imply that there is not enough food at their own houses. Worse yet, an exposer may go to people's houses and actually ask for food.

Such people spoil the privacy/secrecy, sitara, of their families and provide the material the insulters can use and the thin-skinned can be offended by. The mdaku is an outsider who seeks the facts the "exposer" is quite ready to give away. This last creature, like the first, provides the ammunition for insult.