Traditional Activities and Industry with Fipa People in Tanzania

Ironsmiths were hereditary specialists. The knowledge was integrated with magic and a special bag of magical ingredients was passed from father to son. The Twa chiefs of the Wafipa, any of his family, and all women were forbidden to visit the site of a kiln or forge, while all other visitors had to acknowledge the smith's authority with a payment. The smith and his assistants were supposed to abstain from sexual intercourse, for the smelting and forging of ironwork was a very specialized craft totally bound up with knowledge and magic, using very particular ingredients from doctors and sorcerers. Spinning and weaving locally grown cotton was universal and always the work of men. The cloth was open, heavy, strong, and durable, was white with a black-stripped border and five by six feet long, sufficient for the toga-like dress worn by men and women (somewhat as the Wahehe are said to look). _____________________________________ Persception on Birth, life, and death with Fipa People in Tanzania ____________________ Aside from extracting two or four lower incisors before or after puberty, the Wafipa had no initiation ceremony for either sex. It was general practice among unmarried girls to extend their labia minora by constant manipulation. This was thought to enhance their sexual attractiveness and favor giving birth. If a birth was difficult, the midwives asked the name of the unborn child's father, for it was thought that unconfessed adultery could cause death in childbirth. At the birth of a girl, the father brought firewood on his head; when a boy was born, a bow and arrow was carried in the father's right hand. Following death, a meeting of kin decided the issue of inheritance and a widow was assigned to the heir, if she was willing. If a woman died in childbirth, the unborn child was cut from the belly and placed on its dead mother's back inside the grave, while the women would weep and chant inside the hut with the corpse; the men would sit quietly outside. Following the burial, the hut in which the woman died was totally destroyed. The dead were not "thrown away", Sangu-style.