the home and ensuring good fortune for those who occupied it.
FIGURE 1.3. Women collecting water from a river (Arch.photo.cssp)
Another use of domestic water was for brewing mbege. This alcoholic beverage, made from bananas, eleusine, the bark of msesewe trees (which contains quinine and acts as a bittering agent), and water, served a number of purposes. As a ritual brew, it was an integral element of virtually all ceremonies, from celebrating the birth of children and sending the deceased into the spirit world to marriage rites and initiation into adulthood.53 Here it served as a means of offering tribute to the spirits, Ruwa, the wamangi, and elders. The brew could be used as a currency to pay fines or bridewealth, as a proxy for corvée labor, or as an offering for the use of canal water. In the early twentieth century, a market for nonritual brew developed as well. Either men or women could prepare mbege, depending on its intended purpose. Knowledge of how to brew was carefully controlled within the household and only given to children after they had achieved maturity.54 For mbege meant for ritual consumption, brewers procured ingredients from places of significance to the clan, the water coming from springs considered to be favored by the spirits. Brewing required on average 25 percent more liquid than what would become brew.55 If a family needed to produce two pots of beer to celebrate an initiation, two and a half pots of water were required.
Agriculture required the biggest volume of water. Some of this water was needed for tending livestock: goats, cows, and later chickens. Since families kept their animals in stalls, this water had to be carried to the kihamba in pots. Water could also be used to kill rodents that threatened crops. If an area of the kihamba showed signs of rodent activity, men flooded the area using water from a canal or using stream water carried by pots. Of all agricultural uses, irrigation was the largest for most families. Men irrigated their crops in the kihamba and shamba by opening up a branch of a canal and flooding their field for a specified amount of time. Irrigation patterns depended on the location and the time of year. During the rains, men irrigated only if necessary. During the dry seasons, and especially during droughts, men applied water frequently in support of kihamba crops. For shamba, irrigation enabled dry-season cultivation of eleusine and other grains.
Mifongo were managed on a day-to-day basis by the meni mfongo and a society comprising all the men who held the right to use its waters. By the nineteenth century, the position of meni mfongo had become a position for life, either passed from father to son or selected by the committee of users.56 They held responsibility for organizing all the management tasks including routine maintenance, emergency repairs, the setting of irrigation schedules, policing the canal to prevent pollution or misuse, and leading the rituals necessary to appease the spirits. The committee supported the meni mfongo by providing labor for the canal in exchange for the right to use water.
Successful management of mifongo depended on the completion of numerous tasks. Some of the most vital related to the spirit realm. People believed that the waters originated as a gift from Ruwa and that the spirits, particularly that of the founder, continued to influence the workings of the canal. The continued success of the canal depended on not only maintaining it physically but also maintaining the favor of the spirit. The meni mfongo held responsibility for organizing these offerings. Periodically, he would call together the committee and key elders to hold a ceremony near the canal intake. The ceremony began with an invocation to the spirit of the founder, such as the following: “Owner of this canal, I come to you because it is you who gave me this canal. I therefore beg you to give me water from this canal. May Ruwa bless us.”57 Those gathered then slaughtered a goat and threw the skin and intestines into the river.58 They took the meat back to the vihamba and then roasted and ate it. The ceremony served to pacify the founder and bring prosperity to the canal, while reinforcing the position of the meni mfongo and the importance of the knowledge he possessed.
Another key responsibility of the meni mfongo was organizing routine and emergency maintenance of the canal. Because of mifongo’s earthen construction and use of natural materials, they could be damaged by the increased water flows of the rainy seasons. These waters also deposited silt that filled the intake and the primary canal. These problems demanded that all users mobilize, sometimes with very little notice. Routine maintenance took place at the end of the kisiye and fuli.59 Once the rivers had crested, the meni mfongo organized the users to perform maintenance. Each family with rights to the canal provided at least one man for labor. Households that could not manage this, such as widowed women, made an offer of mbege instead.60 Older men often accepted this responsibility, however, leaving younger men to more physically demanding work such as clearing forests or participating in warfare. The first step was to remove grasses and eroded soil from the primary canal, restoring its width and depth. The group performed this work with the intake closed so that running water would not interfere. This stage of maintenance required the most time, and it took place in the mornings over the course of a few days. Next, the workers restored the canal’s intake. This involved removing the excess silt built up from the rains, reconstructing the weir, and ensuring that an adequate amount of water again flowed into the canal. Rehabilitating the intake took less time and effort than cleaning the primary channel, and only a few men participated. At the conclusion of these efforts, the men gathered at the home of the meni mfongo and celebrated with a meal and mbege.
Emergency maintenance had to be carried out much more quickly. Once the meni mfongo had been notified of a break or blockage, he sounded a call to the men using a horn. Those who heard the sound of the horn knew to assemble at his home the next day prepared to carry out whatever maintenance was necessary. The meni mfongo then organized those who came, proceeded to the location of the problem, and supervised repair of the canal. This work was likely much less pleasant than routine maintenance as it most often took place during the rains, when temperatures were cooler, the rivers higher, and the terrain muddier.
Another important management task of the meni mfongo was his setting a timetable for use of the canal: who could use it and when, and how much water could be used at a given time. Guidelines varied widely across Kilimanjaro, as they reflected local circumstances such as the size of the canal and the number of users. In most cases, meni mifongo allowed users to draw as much water as they needed for domestic purposes but required it be taken in the mornings, when the water was usually clearest, most clean, and thought to possess healing powers. This allowed women, the primary collectors of domestic water, to complete this work in the mornings and dedicate their afternoons to cultivation. For irrigation, meni mifongo granted each user a specific period of time in which he could open his branch canal and irrigate his lands. This reflected how time, rather than volume, was the standard for water measurement before the twentieth century. In some areas, a turn lasted half a day, so one user could irrigate from sunup to midday and another from midday to dusk. Irrigation rarely took place at night. The criteria by which the meni mifongo set the timetable reflected the individual politics of each canal. Gutmann noticed that in Marangu, irrigation began with the users who were farthest downhill on the right side of the mfongo. “Then follows the one who lives higher up, and so forth to about the middle of the country. Then the sequence shifts to the left side, again beginning with the one living farthest down. If the left lower half is finished, the upper half follows the same sequence until every user had had a chance to water. Then the series starts all over again.”61 This pattern could be flexible depending on the availability of water. Two or more users could share a turn if the canal had sufficient flow. If one user’s crops began to wither, the meni mfongo could require that the “person who has the water . . . must turn the water over to the man with the dry field.”62 The meni mifongo reserved special privileges and the right to alter the timetable at any time. For many canals, they claimed complete rights to the water on every third day.63 Since irrigation for a whole day was rarely necessary, they would then grant those who needed more water part of this day in exchange for vegetables, eleusine, or mbege.
In addition to a timetable, most canals had bylaws covering
