“Gendered Narratives,” History, and Identity: Two Centuries Along the Juba River among the Zigula and Shanbara

Abstract

The argument that a process of “making tribes” has invested Africa from early colonial times has been used to explain the emergence of some ethnicities which appear not to have existed before colonialism. This emergence was often accompanied by the creation of written records of male historical discourse, thus not only giving them undue prominence but also suppressing female historical discourses which were not considered pertinent to “history.”Yet whenever history is recounted orally by either men or women, it contains messages directed to a “gendered” audience (i.e., an audience composed of people of both genders) whose participants perceive messages differently and reproduce separate but interacting discourses. Such diverse perceptions result from certain aspects in oral genres as well as small, coded markers which can evoke immensely potent but gender-specific experiences. Such instances may become public symbols and, along with more obviously historical narratives, greatly influence how people relate to their past. Thus men and women in the same audience, hearing the same story, can make connections between elements of a narrative which are obscure to outside researchers.Recently, it has become quite common for historians of Africa to deconstruct written historical sources on the basis of the agendas of both the original writer and his informants. These agendas are rarely explicit and thus hiddenly selective. Such deconstruction is a legitimate scholarly procedure; however, as female voices have rarely been recorded—the resulting analysis reinforces the omission of women's roles in the process of remaking history and creating identity.

Shifting memories and forced migrations: the Somali Zigula migration to Tanzania

“…The Zigula who lived in southern Somalia in 1988 were a group of approximately 25,000 Kizigula-speaking people inhabiting approximately thirty villages (Declich 1995a: 120). They had presumably arrived towards the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth century, as Zigula are reported to have lived along the River Juba for approximately seven decades before the 1865 von der Decken exploration of that river (Kersten 1871: 303).…”

The Role of Shift-Induced Interference in the Development of a Typologically Rare Phonological Contrast in Somali Bantu Kizigua

“…Although there are reports of some Zigua people arriving in Somalia as early as the 1700's (cf. Grottanelli, 1953), the first mass migration to Somalia began in 1836 and was precipitated by a drought and famine in Tanzania (Declich, 1995). According to Eno and Eno (2007), Arab-Omani traders took advantage of this environmental disaster by luring the Zigua to Somalia and by promising them the opportunity to work on fertile land.…”

“…He used these marriages to build alliances between different ethnic groups in Gosha. It is also known that he was born a slave with Yao origins and lived in Brava for the first 20 years of his life before escaping to Gosha (Declich, 1995 Finally, as the 20 th Century progressed, the languages spoken within the community changed. With Italian colonization came the introduction of Italian.…”

“…17. According to Declich (1995), there may have actually been several periods of famine and several waves of migration in the 19 th Century.…”

Travel Writing, Experiences, and Silences: What is Left Out of European Travelers' Accounts—the Case of Richard D. Mohun

“…Francesca Declich criticizes the project of deconstructing written historical sources for the implicit agendas of both historians and informants, arguing that this deconstruction reinforces the omission of women's roles. 45 She proposes to subvert this process by analyzing oral sources from a gender perspective to reveal the local conceptions of history hidden by relying only on male voices. Unfortunately, this is an option I do not have, since I have only written sources.…”