StapleTanzania
Ugali
Maize meal cooked stiff and turned out as a mound, eaten with fish, beans or greens across the whole country. The measure of a cook is whether it holds together cleanly.
Serves 6 · 25 minutes
Zaramo
Matrilineal coastal farmers whose land became Dar es Salaam, absorbed into the city they were surrounded by, keepers of the mwali girls' seclusion tradition and of the sculptural style that gave Tanzania its best-known figure carvings.
Identity
Population: Estimated 1 to 1.5 million
Location: The coastal hinterland of Dar es Salaam and Pwani Region, from the Ruvu to the Rufiji margins, Tanzania
Language: Kizaramo, now heavily displaced by Swahili
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (G33, Ruvu group, close to Swahili)
Traditional governance: Matrilineage heads and village elders historically, with a strong role for ritual specialists; Tanzanian local government today.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Coastal Zaramo
Communities absorbed into the growth of Dar es Salaam.
Ruvu and Kisarawe Zaramo
Inland farming communities in the hills behind the city.
Zaramo of the Rufiji margins
Southern communities intermarried with Ndengereko and Matumbi neighbours.
Culture
Clothing: Kanga and kanzu, in the coastal pattern; the elaborate dress and ornament of a girl emerging from mwali seclusion is the community's distinctive ceremonial appearance.
Food: Rice and coconut, cassava, ugali, coconut-based fish and bean stews, mango and cashew from the coastal belt, and the mnazi palm wine of the coast.
Ceremonies: Mwali, the girls' seclusion and coming-out; unyago instruction; ngoma dances of many named kinds; Islamic observance, the community being overwhelmingly Muslim; healing and possession ceremonies of the coastal complex.
Marriage customs: Matrilineal descent with a marked role for the mother's brother; bridewealth modest; residence historically with the wife's kin, a pattern that urban life has largely ended.
Initiation rites: Mwali seclusion for girls at puberty, lasting weeks to months, with instruction from senior women and a public emergence in full ornament; boys' circumcision in Islamic form with its own instruction period.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Tanzania, at national rather than community level — 12 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
StapleTanzania
Makande
also Maize and bean stew
Maize and beans simmered slowly with coconut milk, the Chagga and Pare version of the East African staple. Richer and looser than Kenyan githeri.
Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes, plus soaking
National dishTanzania
Nyama Choma na Kachumbari
Goat grilled slowly over charcoal, chopped and eaten with a tomato and onion salad. Ordered by weight at a nyama choma joint and shared standing around the board.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
National dishTanzania
Mchemsho
also Boiled one-pot
Everything boiled together in one pot — plantain, potato, cassava, carrot, beans and meat — in a light broth. Northern Tanzania's household dinner, and what a Tanzanian cooks when feeding a crowd.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Street foodTanzania
Chipsi Mayai
A chip omelette cooked flat in a pan and cut in wedges, sold from every street griddle in Dar es Salaam and Arusha. Cheap, filling and universally eaten.
Serves 2 · 25 minutes
Street foodTanzania
Mishkaki
also Marinated beef skewers
Beef marinated in papaya, ginger and spice, threaded on sticks and grilled over charcoal on every Tanzanian street corner after dark. The papaya is what makes it tender.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes, plus 4 hours marinating
Festival & feastTanzania
Pilau
Spiced rice with beef or goat, made for weddings, Eid and Christmas. The onions must be fried genuinely dark, which is where the colour comes from rather than from any powder.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Festival & feastTanzania
Mkate wa Sinia
also Vitumbua tray bread, Rice tray cake
A soft, faintly sweet rice and coconut cake steamed or baked in a tray, cut into diamonds and served at coastal weddings and at the end of Ramadan.
Serves 10 · 1 hour, plus 6 hours soaking and rising
Regional specialityTanzania
Mchuzi wa Samaki
Fish curry in coconut milk with tamarind, from the Swahili coast. The tamarind is what separates the coastal version from anything cooked inland.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes
Regional specialityTanzania
Ndizi na Nyama
also Machalari, Green banana and beef stew
Green cooking bananas stewed with beef until they take on the meat's flavour and thicken the pot. The Chagga dish of Kilimanjaro, and one of Tanzania's most beloved.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Drink & sweetTanzania
Kahawa na Tangawizi
Black coffee boiled with ginger and sold from brass pots carried through the streets of Zanzibar and Dar, poured into tiny cups and drunk in one.
Serves 6 small cups · 20 minutes
Drink & sweetTanzania
Togwa
also Fermented maize drink
Lightly fermented maize and millet drink, sour and faintly fizzy, drunk cold through the day. Non-alcoholic, probiotic, and given to children and the sick.
Serves Makes 2 litres · 30 minutes, plus 24 hours fermenting
Stories & Oral Literature
The City on the FarmUrban history
Dar es Salaam was founded in the 1860s by Sultan Majid of Zanzibar on Zaramo land, became the German and then British capital, and has grown into a city of over five million. The Zaramo were not displaced so much as enveloped: their villages became wards, their farmland became suburbs, their language gave way to Swahili, and their identity became difficult to distinguish from the general coastal Muslim identity of the city. It is one of the clearest cases in Africa of a people absorbed by a metropolis grown up on top of them.
The Mwali FiguresArt history
Zaramo carvers produced the mwana hiti, small standing female figures with a distinctive columnar body and crested coiffure, given to girls in seclusion and kept afterwards as objects associated with fertility and with the lineage. They are among the most recognisable East African sculptures and are held in museum collections worldwide. The style fed into the twentieth-century Tanzanian carving trade centred on Dar es Salaam, where Zaramo and Makonde workshops have supplied both markets and forgers for decades.
The Uncle's ClaimSocial institution
Zaramo descent runs through women, and a man's heirs are his sister's children rather than his own. The arrangement survived the arrival of Islam, which prescribes a different inheritance, through a long-running accommodation in which Islamic law was followed in form and matrilineal claims settled in practice. Tanzanian courts have had to adjudicate the collision repeatedly, and urban land in Dar es Salaam has made the stakes considerable.
Proverbs
“The child belongs to the mother's brother's house.”
The matrilineal rule, stated as it is lived.
“The city eats the village that fed it.”
A modern Zaramo saying about Dar es Salaam.
“A girl who comes out of seclusion is looked at by everyone.”
On the public character of the mwali emergence.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Mulungu as the high god in the older layer, now understood within Islam; ancestral spirits (wazimu) attached to matrilineages; the coastal spirit complex of possessing spirits with named characters and demands.
Beliefs: Sunni Islam of the Shafi'i school, general since the nineteenth century; the possession and healing traditions of the coast, in which a spirit is negotiated with rather than exorcised; matrilineal ancestral offerings.
Ancestors: Matrilineal ancestors are addressed at graves and at the mwana hiti figures; the mother's brother's line carries the obligation.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Mulungu
The high god of the older layer
Wazimu
Ancestral spirits of the matrilineage, addressed for health and fertility
Coastal possessing spirits
Named spirits with characters, tastes and demands, addressed through ngoma
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Coastal villages of rectangular houses with makuti palm thatch among coconut and cashew; urban wards where those villages have been absorbed.
Building techniques: Pole and mud walling with coral lime rendering nearer the coast; makuti palm thatch; carved doors and lintels in the Swahili manner in better houses.
Village layout: Houses along a path with the mosque at the centre, coconut and fruit trees marking matrilineal land, and the seclusion house for mwali set apart.
Artifacts
Mwana hiti figure
Sculpture
Small standing female figure given at mwali seclusion, the signature Zaramo carving.
Ngoma drums
Instrument
Drums for the many named dances of the coastal repertoire, including healing ngoma.
Carved Swahili doors
Architecture
Studded and carved doorframes of the coastal tradition, made in Zaramo workshops.
Mwali ornament
Adornment
Beadwork, oil and dress in which a girl appears at the end of seclusion.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1700
Ruvu-group Bantu speakers settle the coastal hinterland behind the Swahili towns.
1800s
Caravan routes to the interior cross Zaramo country; Islam spreads inland from the coast.
1862–1891
Dar es Salaam is founded on Zaramo land and becomes the German colonial capital.
1905–1907
The Maji Maji war affects the southern coastal hinterland; German reprisals fall heavily on the region.
1961–present
Dar es Salaam grows past five million; Zaramo villages become city wards and Kizaramo gives way to Swahili.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Tanzania National Bureau of StatisticsGovernment of Tanzania
- British Museum — mwana hiti figuresBritish Museum
Premium & scholarly sources