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‘LET US SWIM IN THE POOL OF LOVE’: LOVE LETTERS AND DISCOURSES OF COMMUNITY COMPOSITION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY TANZANIA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2013

Andreana C. Prichard
Andreana C. Prichard*
Affiliation:
The University of Oklahoma
*
Author's email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article uses a series of love letters exchanged between an African Anglican priest and a teacher-in-training before their marriage to investigate the relationship between the fashioning of the individual self, marriage, and community at the dawn of Tanganyika's independence. When seen through marriage's historical position as an institution central to community composition, these letters illustrate how the family – and the intimate process of building families – could become an alternate site of national imagination. These two young lovers understood their marriage as an explicitly political act of community composition, and cast themselves as characters in the drama of national imagination. In negotiating their twentieth-century marriage, Rose and Gideon became political innovators, selecting, producing, and testing the content and boundaries of the nation.

Keywords

East AfricaTanzaniapostcolonialmarriagekinshipliteracy
Type
Personal Affect and Postcolonial Nation-Building
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 103 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank T. H. Breen, Emily Callaci, Jonathon Glassman, Joshua Grace, Tessie Liu, Kathryn de Luna, Daniel Mains, Kenda Mutongi, and David Schoenbrun and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their many valuable insights; and also the commentators and audience members at the 2010 African Studies Association Annual Meeting, the 2010 ‘Emotions as History’ conference at the Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern University, and the 2008 ‘Surprises in the Archives’ conference at the University of Galway for their helpful comments on portions of this article. Funding from the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program and from various sources at Northwestern University supported this research.

References

1 Because of the intimate nature of this story I have used pseudonyms and changed immediately identifying details. In all cases, I have tried to remain faithful to the original nature of the names and have drawn replacements from those commonly used in the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa communities during the period. Attempts to contact Rose and her family were futile. Library St. Mark's Anglican Theological College, Dar es Salaam (LSMATC), Personal papers of Gideon Furahani (PPGF), G. Furahani, ‘Curriculum Vitae’, 1965. Original in English.

2 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, Korogwe, 1 Jan. 1962. Original in English.

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12 Barber, Africa's Hidden Histories.

13 Barber, ‘Introduction’, 3; Thomas, ‘Schoolgirl pregnancies’, 191.

14 At most colonial-era boarding schools, for example, rules governing students’ communication with outsiders were strict, and pupils could generally expect school officials to read their letters. Thomas, ‘Schoolgirl pregnancies’, 191.

15 Mair, L., African Marriage and Social Change (London, 1969), 1Google Scholar; Thomas, ‘Schoolgirl pregnancies’, 190. When they were writing, Rose and Gideon were likely aware that their letters would be read only piecemeal by a headmistress or letter-carrier, be it a postal worker, family member, or friend. After Gideon's death, his family donated the letters as part of his personal papers to the Anglican Church of Tanzania.

16 LSMATC PPGF, G. Furahani, ‘Curriculum Vitae’, 1965. Original in English.

17 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Magila, 9 Mar. 1962. Original in English.

18 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Muheza, 9 Dec. 1962. Original in English.

19 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Mpwapwa, 23 May 1963. Original in English.

20 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Mpwapwa, 10 Jan. 1963. Original in English.

21 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Mpwapwa, 23 Aug. 1963. Original in English.

22 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, Korogwe, 12 Sep. 1963. Original in English.

23 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Mpwapwa, 21 Sep. 1963.

24 Dale, G., ‘An account of the principal customs and habits of the natives inhabiting the Bondei country, compiled mainly for the use of European missionaries in the country’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 25 (1896), 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Interview with Sister Phillipa Community of the Sacred Passion (CSP), Shoreham-by-Sea, 5 Sep. 2008; Interview with Rev. Maimbo Mndolwa, Dar es Salaam, 8 Jul. 2008.

25 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Magila, 10 Nov. 1967. Translated from Swahili.

26 Kenyatta, J., Facing Mt. Kenya: the Tribal Life of the Gikuyu (New York, 1965)Google Scholar.

27 Ivaska, Cultured States, 204.

28 Ibid. 10.

29 See C. M. Eastman, ‘Codeswitching as an urban language-contact phenomenon’ and Swigart, L., ‘Two codes or one? the insiders’ view and the description of codeswitching in Dakar’, in Eastman, C. M. (ed.), Codeswitching (Philadelphia, 1992), 1–17 and 83–102Google Scholar.

30 Topan, F., ‘Tanzania: the development of Swahili as a national and official language’, in Simpson, A. (ed.), Language and National Identity in Africa (Oxford, 2008), 257Google Scholar; Whiteley, W. H., Swahili: The Rise of a National Language (London, 1969; repr. Hampshire, UK, 1993), 61Google Scholar.

31 Whiteley, Swahili, 61.

32 Topan, ‘Tanzania’, 257; Whiteley, Swahili, 61.

33 Mkilifi, M. H. A., ‘Triglossia and Swahili-English bilingualism in Tanzania’, Language in Society, 1:2 (1972), 197–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Eastman, Codeswitching, 10; Blommaert, J., State Ideology and Language in Tanzania (Köln, 1999), 160Google Scholar.

35 Eastman, ‘Codeswitching’, 1–2; Topan, ‘Tanzania’, 258.

36 Mkilifi, ‘Triglossia’, 210; Eastman, ‘Codeswitching’, 5.

37 Topan, ‘Tanzania’, 258; Eastman, ‘Codeswitching’, 5; Whiteley, Swahili, 99.

38 Topan, ‘Tanzania’, 257.

39 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, no location given, 20 Apr. 1966. Original in English and Swahili; Whiteley, Swahili, 99; Topan, ‘Tanzania’, 259. This insistence also held true for people in Mkilifi's study, Mkilifi, ‘Triglossia’, 203.

40 Mkilifi, ‘Triglossia’, 203.

41 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, Korogwe, 21 Dec. 1962. Original in English.

42 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, New Hall, 22 Aug. 1964. Original in English.

43 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Moshi, 1 June 1964. Original in English.

44 LSMATC, PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Mpwapwa, 30 Sep. 1964. Translated from Swahili.

45 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Mpwapwa, 29 Aug. 1964. Original in English.

46 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, New Hall, 22 Oct. 1964. As with his other handwritten notes, this appears to be a rough draft with strike-throughs in the original. Original in English.

47 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Magila, 17 Jul. 1965. Translated from Swahili.

48 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Magila, 25 Feb. 1966. Translated from Swahili.

49 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Muheza, 27 Oct. 1965. Translated from Swahili.

50 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Muheza, 15 Dec. 1967. Translated from Swahili.

51 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Korogwe, 28 Mar. 1968. Translated from Swahili.

52 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Muheza, Feb. 1968.

53 LSMATC PPGF, in Personnel File of Miss R. Limo, PF9 UTSK1077 (PFRL), letter from J. Rwechungura, Regional Education Officer, Tanga Region, Ref. No. 579/UTS/K 1077/20, 12 Feb. 1968. Originals in English.

54 LSMATC PPGF PFRL, letter from O. Walter, Bunbuli Hospital, Lutheran Medical Centre, 31 Apr. 1968. For a discussion of anxiety and mental illness in letters by another African young woman, see Marks, S., Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (Bloomington, IN, 1987)Google Scholar.

55 C. Burns, ‘The letters of Louisa Mvemve’, in Barber, Africa's Hidden Histories, 89.

56 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, location unspecified, n.d. From context, likely 1966.

57 M. Mndolwa, electronic communication with the author, 26 Jan. 2009; Interview with Sister Phillipa CSP, Shoreham-by-Sea, England, 7 Sep. 2008. Thank you to one of this journal's anonymous reviewers for this insight.

58 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, Nyala, 11 Aug. 1968. Translated from Swahili.

59 LSMATC PPGF, letter from R. Limo, Korogwe, 1 Aug. 1968. Translated from Swahili.

60 Colonial officials, African men, and families were often concerned not just about the potentially declining morals of urban, mobile, or educated women, but also that their new roles and mobility would take them out of the home and render them incapable of fulfilling ‘proper’ duties. For more on this, see Thomas, L. M., Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya (Berkeley, 2003)Google Scholar; Geiger, TANU Women.

61 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, Nyala, 11 Aug. 1968. Translated from Swahili.

62 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, location unspecified, 14 Aug. 1968. Original in English; parenthetical comment in original.

63 Neil Kodesh refers here to the works of Terence Ranger and others whose scholarship deals with the ‘invented’ nature of ethnicity, language, law, and religion. Kodesh, N., ‘Renovating tradition: the discourse of succession in colonial Buganda’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 34:3 (2001), 511–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Thomas, Politics, 5.

65 LSMATC PPGF, letter from G. Furahani, location not specified, 21 Mar. 1968. Translated from Swahili.

66 Ivaska, Cultured States, 5.