Water Brings No Harm. Matthew V. Bender
and his friends to live at his home, for “events are at hand.” He then warned the man by saying, “If you hear a noise as of a great water running fiercely, hold fast to the supports of the hut. And on hearing this noise, remain in silence. For Ruwa shall pass among men in his strength.” Eight nights later, Ruwa brought a great flood from the forest:
The water carried away the evil people and all others, and their huts and their food and all their possessions. And the merciful man when he heard this noise, did everything as he had been commanded. And they were saved, all who were with him. The water by its force carried all those people with their cattle, sheep and goats far into the plain. And those people Ruwa turned into elephants. And their cattle became buffalos and eland and their like. And their sheep became pigs and porcupines. And their dogs became leopards and hyenas and their like.71
When the man of mercy awoke, he found the whole country empty. He and his people then set out to repopulate the mountain and build a great society. This fable aligns the powers of water with those of Ruwa. Through Ruwa’s actions, water acts as an agent with the power to cleanse, reward, and punish. As water flows from the forest to the plains, evil is washed away and the landscape is recreated for the benefit of the virtuous, thus reestablishing the dichotomy of the mountain as good and the surrounding lands as evil.
The cleansing power of water arises in relation to the body as well as the landscape. Several cultural and religious practices involved using water to purify the body when it was harmed. On Kilimanjaro, wrongdoings were considered to be the actions of spirits, and as such they were not merely temporal concerns. Rather, they implied a continuing evil influence on the victim of the transgression, one that could only be eliminated with a rite of purification. Dundas notes numerous examples of grievances subject to rites of purification. Victims included a man bitten by a woman, a man struck by his wife with a cooking pot, a man greeted while carrying a carcass on his head, a man wounded by a leopard, a man who pronounced a curse, a betrothed girl who became pregnant by another man, a woman who bore twins, any goat that bore twins in its first delivery, and any sheep or cow that bore twins at any time.72 In order to right these wrongs, the victim needed to undergo purification. These rites were the responsibility of specialists, members of a particular clan who possessed knowledge to placate the spirits. In many chiefdoms, certain clans developed a reputation for their purification skills, such as the Wako-Mariwa of Marangu.73
The following is an example of a cleansing ceremony recorded by Dundas.74 In the first step, the unclean person gathers the necessary ingredients: the skin, dung, and stomach contents of a hyrax, the skin and blood of a monkey, the shell and blood of a snail, certain herbs, the tail of a lizard, the skin of a gazelle, the blood of a female sheep, rainwater taken from a hollow tree in the forest, fresh water drawn from a spring in the early morning, two black sugarcane stalks, and fresh mbege. Then the specialist arrives, along with other members of the clan and family. The specialist digs a hollow in which to mix the ingredients and then makes two gateways of sugar cane. As the people gathered pass through the gateways, the specialist dips his gnu tail into the mixture, brushes the people, and says while facing Kibo, “The evil and uncleanness become gentile as these that you will not be tormented again.” He then sprinkles the liquid over their heads to imitate rain. The specialist repeats this the next four days, in both the morning and evening. Following the last performance, everyone gathers the remaining liquid and casts it into a river while saying, “The evil and sin and uncleanness which comes from us go with this river. The water of this river carry it to the plain.”75
This purification ceremony illustrates the significance of water in these types of rituals. The unclean person gathers two distinctly pure forms of water, one from the forest (the home of the spirits) and another from a spring in the early morning. The water serves as the base of a medicine used first to anoint the person and his or her family, second to simulate rainfall (which implies the bringing of new life), and third to carry the evil from the vihamba to the plains. Water therefore assumes several functions: it cleanses the individual of evil, it brings that person life or rebirth, and it extracts evil to its rightful domain, the plains. The properties of water inherent in ceremonies such as purification appear in various adages, further demonstrating the significance of spiritual knowledge of water in daily life. One of these is mringa uwore mbaka voo, “water brings no harm.” The adage implies that if a destructive event such as a flood occurs, it is the product of either intervention by a malevolent spirit or desire by Ruwa to purify the landscape. As a gift from Ruwa, water itself can bring only good unless it is tampered with.
The management of water also figured centrally in education and initiation practices. These were social rituals that defined people in relation to those around them, conferring upon them social status and community membership. Through its placement in these rites, water marked various stages of transition for individuals as they progressed to adulthood. Its cleansing and curative properties contributed to the rebirth of the person at various stages in life. In his 1940 study of childhood on Kilimanjaro, Otto Raum defined education as “the relationship between members of successive generations.”76 In the era before mission schools, children received education by listening to and learning from their elders, following elders’ instructions and examples. These interactions took place in many different contexts (within the home, at the home of an elder or specialist, on the grounds of the kihamba, in the forests, etc.) and could involve one-on-one instruction, group instruction, or hands-on training in everything from speaking and cooking to religion and farming.77
As a vital resource, water was a prominent theme in childhood education. From an early age, children learned the nature and significance of the water sources around them from their parents and elders. They were taught to respect the physical sources as well as the spiritual forces that gave them vitality and continuity with their ancestors. As children entered adolescence, they learned the processes associated with procurement and distribution. Girls learned from their mothers how to collect water, from where, and when, while boys learned how to irrigate, as well as the responsibilities of canal construction and maintenance. The adolescents also came to understand much about the world around them, politically and socially, through the concept of water. These lessons together created adults who would continue this physical and social system well after the death of their elders.
The lessons taught to children about the importance of water began at an early age. As soon as they could walk, they heard stories, fables, and tales designed to instill proper behavior and respect. Leoni Motesha, from Mkuu Rombo, recalled such a fable from her childhood involving a wolf and a goat:
The two were the best of friends, until the goat had two children. Then the wolf began to use every trick possible to eat one of them. Near their homes was a small pool that most animals used for taking water. One day the wolf went to Mr. Lion, the chairman of the animals, and told him that the goat children were spoiling the water by swimming in it. The lion decided to charge the wolf with standing guard over the water. One evening the two goat children came to the pool to take some water. The wolf ran to them, caught one, and ate him. The other child went home and told her mother that the wolf had eaten her brother. The mother goat went to the lion and told him to arrest the wolf because he had killed one of her children. The lion responded by saying that it was her punishment because her children had spoiled the water. The mother goat returned home, crying all the way, and from that day the goat and the wolf became enemies.78
Stories such as these drew on the power of negative reinforcement. By showing the misfortune of one family caused by children swimming in a water source, this story intends to frighten small children away from unacceptable conduct. Wilhelm Maunga, also from Mkuu, recalled a similar story that also involved animals:
There once was a pool for all the animals. That is, except for the hare, because he refused to give his labor when they constructed it. The hare always came and took water and then spoiled the rest by swimming in it. The wild animals chose the monkey to guard the water. The hare used a trick and took a bottle of honey and asked the monkey to let him have some water in exchange for some honey. The monkey agreed, so the hare gave him honey. The monkey tasted it and said, “It is very sweet, give me another one.” The hare told him that he would if he could tie the monkey’s legs together. The monkey agreed, and the hare tied his legs. But the hare didn’t give