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
Zigua (Zigula)
Farmers of the Pangani hinterland whose nineteenth-century warlords armed themselves through the caravan trade, and whose people were taken as slaves to the Somali river valleys in such numbers that a Zigua-speaking community survives on the Jubba to this day.
Identity
Population: Estimated 800,000 in Tanzania, with tens of thousands of Zigula-descended Somali Bantu
Location: Handeni, Korogwe and Bagamoyo districts of Tanga and Pwani Regions, Tanzania; and the Jubba valley of southern Somalia
Language: Kizigua (Zigula), with a distinct Somali Zigula variety (Mushunguli)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (G31, Seuta group)
Traditional governance: Lineage elders and, in the nineteenth century, powerful individual war leaders; Tanzanian local government today; in Somalia, minority-community structures within the Somali Bantu.
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.
Zigua of Handeni
The inland heartland of the community.
Zigua of the Pangani valley
Communities along the river and the old caravan road.
Mushunguli of the Jubba
Zigula-descended communities in southern Somalia, speaking a preserved form of the language.
Culture
Clothing: Kanga and kanzu in the coastal pattern; contemporary dress; ceremonial and dance dress with beadwork.
Food: Maize and cassava ugali, coconut-based stews nearer the coast, sesame, rice, and the palm wine and millet beer of the region; in Somalia, the Zigula grew sesame and maize on the Jubba's banks.
Ceremonies: Ngoma dances of many named kinds; ancestral offerings; healing and possession ceremonies of the coastal complex; Islamic observance, the community being largely Muslim.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal with bridewealth in cash and goods; Islamic contract layered over lineage negotiation.
Initiation rites: Boys' circumcision in Islamic form with an instruction period; girls' instruction under senior women.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Tanzania and Somalia, at national rather than community level — 21 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.
Tanzania
12 dishes
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
Somalia
9 dishes
StapleSomalia
Canjeero
Thin fermented pancakes cooked on one side, eaten at breakfast with sesame oil and sugar, or torn into suqaar at any other time.
Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus overnight fermenting
National dishSomalia
Bariis Iskukaris
Spiced rice with goat, coloured with xawaash and studded with raisins, served with a banana. Somalia's national plate and the centre of every gathering.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
National dishSomalia
Digaag Qumbe
also Chicken in coconut, Somali coconut chicken
Chicken stewed in yoghurt and coconut with xawaash spice, a southern Somali dish that shows the coast's Indian Ocean connections in every spoonful.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Street foodSomalia
Bur and Sambusa
Fried dough sticks and meat pastries sold together at tea shops and Ramadan stalls, eaten with shaah and dates.
Serves Makes 20 each · 2 hours
Festival & feastSomalia
Hilib Ari
Goat roasted or fried in its own fat and served over rice or canjeero, the meat put out when a family celebrates. Cooked simply because good goat needs nothing else.
Serves 8 · 2 hours
Festival & feastSomalia
Xalwo
also Halwa, Somali halwa
A dense translucent sweet of cornflour, sugar and ghee scented with cardamom and often studded with peanuts, made for every Somali wedding and Eid.
Serves 12 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Regional specialitySomalia
Suqaar
Meat and vegetables cut into small cubes and fried fast with xawaash, eaten with canjeero or chapati. The Somali answer to a quick meal.
Serves 4 · 30 minutes
Regional specialitySomalia
Basbaas
also Somali green chilli sauce, Basbaas cagaar
The green chilli, coriander and lime relish that arrives with every Somali meal and without which nothing is considered properly served.
Serves Makes about 300ml · 15 minutes
Drink & sweetSomalia
Shaah Adays
Spiced milk tea boiled with cardamom, cinnamon and clove, offered within minutes of any arrival. Turning down the first glass is not really available to a guest.
Serves 4 · 15 minutes
Stories & Oral Literature
The Ones Who Walked BackHistory of enslavement and return
In the nineteenth century Zigua were taken in large numbers into the East African slave trade and sold into the Somali river valleys, where they were held as agricultural labour. Some escaped into the Jubba forests and established free communities. Their descendants, the Mushunguli, still speak a form of Zigula, retained Tanzanian farming practice, and were among the most vulnerable groups in the Somali civil war. Several thousand were resettled to the United States from 2003; others sought return to Tanzania. It is one of the very few cases in which an enslaved population's language survived intact in the place it was taken to.
The Warlords of HandeniNineteenth-century history
The caravan trade to the interior ran through Zigua country, and it armed it. Leaders such as Kisabengo and Mbaruk built followings on guns, tribute and the slave trade itself, carving out territories that no chiefly genealogy explains. Kisabengo founded Simbamwene, the settlement that became Morogoro. The period is remembered in Tanzania as one in which political authority came directly out of commerce and violence, and the Zigua were both its agents and its victims.
Handeni's WaterContemporary history
Handeni is among the driest and least served districts in north-eastern Tanzania, and the shortage of water has defined it for a century. The Handeni Trunk Main, built in the 1970s to bring water from the Pangani, has been the object of repeated rehabilitation programmes; the district's boreholes are contested, and dry-season migration to the coast for work is routine. The Zigua account of their own recent history is largely an account of water.
Proverbs
“The one who was taken remembers the road.”
On the Mushunguli, and on memory generally.
“A gun buys followers and keeps none.”
On the nineteenth-century warlords.
“Where there is no water there is no argument, only walking.”
On Handeni.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Mulungu as the high god in the older layer, now within Islam; ancestral spirits addressed at graves; the coastal complex of named possessing spirits.
Beliefs: Sunni Islam, general since the nineteenth century; possession and healing ngoma; ancestral offerings; rain rites in the drier interior.
Ancestors: Ancestors are addressed at graves and in healing ceremonies; among the Mushunguli, Tanzanian ancestral origin is itself a central element of identity.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Mulungu
The high god of the older layer
Ancestral spirits
Addressed at graves in matters of health and land
Coastal possessing spirits
Named spirits with characters and demands, negotiated through ngoma
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of rectangular houses with grass or iron roofs, sited by water in a dry landscape; coastal-influenced building nearer Pangani and Bagamoyo.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with grass thatch and makuti nearer the coast; raised granaries; water storage and cistern building in the dry interior.
Village layout: Houses around a swept yard with the mosque at the village centre and fields beyond; the water point as the settlement's organising feature.
Artifacts
Ngoma drums
Instrument
Drums for the named dances of the Zigua and coastal repertoire.
Handeni Trunk Main
Infrastructure
Water pipeline from the Pangani, built in the 1970s and repeatedly rehabilitated.
Mushunguli oral tradition
Intangible heritage
The retained Zigula language and Tanzanian origin narrative of the Jubba valley communities.
Bagamoyo caravan terminus
Heritage site
The coastal town where the interior caravan route met the sea, and a centre of the slave trade.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
Seuta-group Bantu speakers settle the Pangani hinterland and the Handeni plains.
1830s–1880s
The caravan trade arms Zigua leaders; large numbers of Zigua are enslaved and taken to the Somali river valleys.
1890s–1918
German administration; Zigua country is affected by the Maji Maji period and by the First World War campaigns.
1991–2003
Somali civil war; Mushunguli communities on the Jubba are displaced; several thousand are resettled to the United States.
2000s–present
Water supply remains Handeni's defining issue; Mushunguli return and recognition questions continue in Tanzania and Somalia.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Cultural Orientation Resource Center — The Somali Bantu: Their History and CultureCenter for Applied Linguistics
- Tanzania National Bureau of StatisticsGovernment of Tanzania
Premium & scholarly sources
- Ethnologue: Zigula and MushunguluSIL International