If you have a manual push mower today, there is a good chance that its design borrows components from the rotary blade lawn mower that was created by Black American inventor John Albert Burr in the 19th century.
John Albert Burr received a patent for his new and improved rotary blade lawn mower on May 9, 1899. Burr came up with the idea for a lawn mower that had traction wheels and a rotating blade that was made specifically to avoid becoming clogged up with grass clippings.
In addition, John Albert Burr made it feasible for lawn mowers to go closer to the borders of buildings and walls by improving the design of lawn mowers. You have the ability to examine United States Patent 624,749 that was awarded to John Albert Burr.
Life of John Albert Burr
John Albert Burr, who was born in the state of Maryland in 1848, was a youngster at the time of the American Civil War. His parents were slaves who were eventually set free, and it’s possible that he too was a slave up to the age of emancipation, which occurred when he was 17 years old. However, he did not avoid manual labor entirely because, when he was a teenager, he worked in the fields as a laborer.
However, others took notice of his abilities, and affluent Black activists made it possible for him to enroll in engineering programs at a prestigious private institution. He made a career by repairing and maintaining various machines and farm equipment using the mechanical talents he had acquired over the years. He relocated to Chicago and started working in the steel industry there. In 1898, when he submitted his application for a patent on the rotary mower, he was a resident of Agawam, Massachusetts.
The Rotary Lawn Mower
“The object of my invention is to provide a casing which wholly encloses the operating gearing so as to prevent it from becoming choked by the grass or clogged by obstructions of any kind,” reads the patent application.
The design of John Albert Burr’s rotational lawn mower helps alleviate the annoying jams of clippings that are the scourge of manual lawn mowers. It was also more maneuverable, and it could be used to go closer to objects like buildings and posts so that it could clip them more precisely. His invention graphic clearly illustrates a concept that is still used for manual rotary mowers today and is fairly common.
There were still several years before powered lawnmowers became available for residential usage. A lot of people are going back to using manual rotary mowers like the one that Burr designed since the lawns in many modern communities are getting smaller.
Burr never stopped looking for ways to enhance his invention and patent it. In addition to this, he invented machines that could shred, sieve, and spread the grass clippings. It’s possible that his legacy will live on in the form of today’s mulching power mowers, which return nutrients to the lawn rather than bagging them for compost or disposal.
His innovations not only reduced the amount of work needed, but they were also beneficial to the grass. He was awarded more than 30 patents in the United States for lawn care and agricultural innovations.
John Albert Burr Later Life
Burr was able to bask in the glory of his achievements. He obtained royalties for his innovations, which is in contrast to the situation of many other innovators, who either never see their concepts commercialized or quickly lose any benefits they may have had. He loved giving lectures and going on trips. He had a long and healthy life, passing away in 1926 from influenza at the age of 78.
Muhammad Ture, also known as Askia Muhammad (1493–1528), established the Askiya dynasty and was responsible for strengthening the administration of the empire as well as consolidating Sunni Ali’s conquests. Muhammad Ture put Songhay on the map of the Islamic world when he traveled to Mecca to make the pilgrimage and spread Islam throughout the region.
Muhammad Ture stretched the Songhay empire into the desert, drove back the Tuareg of the southern Sahara, and took the salt-producing town of Taghaza in the north, drawing inspiration from Sunni Ali’s previous victories. Through that conquest, he ensured that Songhay would receive the greatest possible benefit from trans-Saharan trade.
In addition, Ture dispatched an army as far west as Takrur, where they engaged in combat against Middle Niger raiders, including the Mossi and the Dogon. The Hausa states of Gobir, Katsina, and eventually Kano were subjugated by the troops led by Muhammad Ture in the region to the east. These victories allowed Songhay to become part of the larger economic network that encompassed trans-Saharan trade. Following the conclusion of the expansion wars, Ture improved upon the administrative structure established by Sunni Ali.
Songhay empire
He partitioned the empire into four viceroyal provinces, each of which was governed by a viceroy or governor who was traditionally selected from the royal family or a loyal servant. In terms of the central administration, Muhammad Ture established a council of ministers that included the balama (commander-in-chief), the fari-mundya (chief tax collector), the hi-koy (navy chief), the korey-farma (minister responsible for foreigners), the warrey-farma (minister in charge of property), and the hari-farma (minister in charge of agriculture and fisheries).
Muhammad Ture, in contrast to his predecessor, understood the significance of Islam as a vital ideological foundation for the objectives of state establishment and development. He utilized Islam as a means to bolster his authority, bring his vast realm closer together, and encourage trade across the Sahara. Soon after he became king, Ture showed his concern for the faith by making the journey to Mecca, which is considered a pilgrimage. While he was in Cairo, he was successful in convincing the Caliph of Egypt to acknowledge him as the “caliph” of the entire Sudan.
Following his pilgrimage to Mecca, Muhammad Ture brought Timbuktu back to life and reestablished it as a significant educational and Islamic center. Because of this, the reputation of Songhai went far and wide, and as a result, Muslim academics and clerics were drawn to the city for the sake of scholastic pursuits as well as for trade.
Songhay empire
The ‘ulama and priests of Timbuktu were showered with accolades and benefits as a result of his actions. It should not come as a surprise that the authors of Timbuktu in the seventeenth century heaped acclaim on Askia Muhammad while condemning Sunni Ali as a dictator. It should not be inferred from this, however, that a significant number of the population converted to Islam. The Songhay government received revenue from a variety of different sources. Muhammad Ture was able to fund the administration of his empire through the collection of tribute from vassal kingdoms, taxes on peasants, and contributions from his generals.
Slaves may have been used to cultivate the land on royal estates located in the Niger floodplain and the Songhay heartland, both of which contributed a significant amount of revenue to the state. The brisk trade across the Sahara resulted in a significant increase in revenue. The goods that were exchanged included gold, which was a major driving force behind the trans-Saharan trade, as well as kola nuts from the southern forest and captives, who were primarily taken during raids into Mossi territory located south of the Niger Bend and sold as slaves in Muslim North Africa.
Salt from the Sahara, luxury goods, cloth, cowrie shells, and horses for the military were some of the things that were brought into the Songhay kingdom from North Africa. The commerce also included cloth made from native Sudanese cotton and, in locations such as Jenne, Timbuktu, and Gao, woolen cloth and linen from North Africa.
Muhammad Ture, who had been ruling for 35 years at the time of his death, was old, blind, and sick when his children overthrew him and put him into exile on the island of Kankaka in the Niger River in 1528. He eventually made his way back home, but he passed away four years later, in 1538. Muhammad Ture’s successors lacked the bravery, competence, and devotion to duty that he had displayed as a king.
Songhay empire
They also failed to live up to his legacy. They were embroiled in blood feuds and fratricide as they fought for control of the throne. Musa, Ture’s son and successor, was brutal to the point that he was killed in 1535 for his actions. Askia Bankouri, his successor, who exiled his uncle Muhammad Ture from Gao and succeeded him as ruler of Gao in 1537, was himself deposed. Not only did the subsequent king, Askia Ismail, succeed in bringing Muhammad Ture back from exile, but he also showed his ability to rule effectively. Unfortunately, after only two years on the throne, he passed away.
Askia Daud, who followed Ismail as ruler of Songhay, governed for a long time (1530–1584), was successful in repressing unrest, and enforced a lengthy era of peace and stability in the region. This was fortunate for Songhay. However, 10 years later, the Moroccan Sultan Al-Mansur invaded Songhay at a time when Songhay was once again wracked by dynastic disputes, resulting in a weakening of the court.
This occurred at a time when Songhay was already in a precarious position. The initial invasion led by Al-Mansur in 1584 was unsuccessful; however, Al-second Mansur’s attempt in 1591, which was more sophisticated and better prepared, was successful and put an end to the Askiya dynasty.
The Maasai are a Nilotic people who live across much of Kenya and Tanzania’s northern half. Due to their proximity to the various wildlife parks in the African Great Lakes region and their striking appearance, this indigenous community is among the most well-known on a global scale.
The Maa language is spoken by the Maasai people. It is a Nilo-Saharan language, like Dinka, Kalenjin, and Nuer. A few have learned English and Swahili, the two official languages of neighboring Kenya and Tanzania. Kenya’s Maasai people increased from 377,089 in the 1989 census to an estimated 841,622 in the 2009 census.
Origins of the Maasai People
Maasai People
The Maasai people likely originated in the region around the Upper Nile. They are said to have climbed out of a wide, deep hole that was surrounded by a long, vertical rock, according to their tales. They started moving their herds into the huge, dry, savanna-like (grassland) region of East Africa that spans the borders of Kenya and Tanzania around the year 1600.
They now live in a region limited to the west by Lake Victoria and to the east by Mount Kilimanjaro. At its greatest east-west width, Maasailand is about 186 miles (300 kilometers) long. It stretches around 310 miles (500 kilometers) from north to south. More over 150,000 Maasai live in Tanzania, while another 140,000 call Kenya home.
Language of the Maasai People
Maa is a language that is not exclusive to the Maasai people; the Samburu and the Chamus are also native speakers of Maa and live in central Kenya.
Maa is believed to have originated to the east of the modern city of Juba, which is located in southern Sudan. There are almost twenty distinct varieties of the Maa language. Olmaa is the name that the Maasai give to their native tongue.
Traditional Folklore of the Maasai People
Maasai People
Maasai myths and folklore shed light on the development of contemporary Maasai beliefs. They tell tales about how the Maasai climbed out of a crater, how the first Maasai prophet-magician, Laibon, appeared, how they defeated the evil giant, Oltatuani, who preyed on Maasai herds, and how Olonana tricked his father into giving him the blessing meant for his older brother, Senteu (a legend similar to the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau).
Relationships between the sexes in modern Maasai society are discussed at length in one origin story. According to this theory, the Maasai sprang from two separate but equal groups: one composed entirely of women and the other of men.
The Maasai maintain that the eland antelope was the original kind of cattle, and the Moroyok women’s clan specialized in raising antelopes. The women kept herds of gazelles instead of the usual livestock of cattle, sheep, and goats. During migrations, zebras carried their belongings, and elephants were their loyal companions, breaking down branches and bringing them to the ladies so they could use them to construct dwellings and corrals.
Clean antelope corrals were another result of the elephants’ sweeping. The women fought and argued, but the cattle managed to get away. When the women weren’t happy with their labor, even the elephants abandoned them. The Morwak, the male-dominated tribe, were also traditionally farmers, the myth claiming so. The men occasionally came across ladies in the woods.The girls from these relationships stayed with their mothers, while the boys went to live with their dads.
Women who had lost their herds often moved in with men, giving up their independence and their place in society. This marked the beginning of their dependence on men, service to them, and submission to their power.
Traditional Religion of the Maasai People
Maasai People
The Maasai have always considered themselves to be God’s chosen people, setting them apart from the surrounding, largely Christian communities of Kenya and Tanzania. The Maasai, like many other African peoples, believe that one supreme being (Enkai) formed the three human races and created the world.
The Torrobo (Okiek pygmies) were the first, a little people that lived off the land and hunted and gathered honey and wild animals that God provided. The second group consisted of the adjacent Kikuyu, who were blessed by God with abundant seed and harvest.
The Maasai were the third, and they were the recipients of livestock that descended from heaven on a long rope. The Maasai were given the honorable gift of raising cattle, unlike the Torrobo and Kikuyu, who were doomed to suffer from bee stings and famines and floods, respectively.
To get back at the Maasai for giving him cattle, a Torrobo severed the “umbilical chord” connecting the worlds. Most Maasai still depend on cattle as their main source of income and food, because these animals can be used for everything from food to shelter.
Rites of Passage and Manhood initiations of the Maasai People
Maasai People
The Maasai people view life as a sequence of painful victories and trials. A man’s life span can be broken down into three distinct stages: youth, maturity, and old age. Typically performed on children at the age of four, this procedure involves the removal of the lower incisor teeth with a surgical blade. The little boys tested their strength by dipping their arms and legs into hot coals.They allow hundreds of tiny cuts to be made into their flesh when they consent to having tattoos placed on their stomachs and arms as they mature.
After that, both boys and girls get their ears pierced. Piercing the ear canal by inserting a hot iron into the ear cartilage is a common practice. After the incision has healed, a hole is formed in the earlobe, and rolled leaves or mud balls are inserted into it to increase its size. In modern times, plastic film containers may do the trick. It’s preferable if the slit is fairly large. Earlobes that fall to the shoulders are ideal.
The next and most significant step in a young Maasai’s life is circumcision (for boys) or excision (for girls). Every father has an obligation to see that his children experience this ritual. The ceremonies, which may take place in isolated communities known as imanyat, are attended by close friends and family members. The imanyat that have to do with male circumcision are called “villages of little birds,” or “nkang oo ntaritik.”
The act of circumcision causes a lot of physical discomfort and is a real test of a young man’s resolve. Boys inflict disgrace and dishonor on themselves and their families if they flinch during the act. Their peers mock them, and they have to pay a one-cow fine as a bare minimum. The bravest boys, though, are rewarded with livestock.
In order to prepare for motherhood, young women must undergo a more extensive and difficult process. (Women who fall pregnant prior to excision are shunned and ostracized for the rest of their lives.) Women who have successfully completed this challenge often report feeling completely fearless going forward. After the rituals are done well, the participants and guests drink a lot of mead, which is an alcoholic drink made from honey, and dance.
The boys are then prepared for the life of a warrior, and the ladies are prepared to give birth to the next generation of fighters. The young lady’s prospective husband will come and get her in a few months so that she can join him and his family. After a boy has completed his childhood and undergone circumcision, he must thereafter fulfill a civic requirement that is equivalent to military service. For up to a few months, they have to fend for themselves in the wilderness, where they learn to conquer their own egos and put others before themselves.
The community’s most cherished possession, cattle, is shared among its members. However, they are also obligated to spend time in the village, where they sacrifice calves at rituals and give livestock as gifts to newly established families.
A warrior’s growth into manhood at this juncture includes learning nkaniet (respect for others) and making positive contributions to his community. The eunoto ceremony marks the end of a man’s “young warriorhood.” This is the time when he goes into the bush to learn new things and then returns to his village to use what he has learned to help his neighbors.
Clothing of the Maasai People
Maasai People
Clothing evolves as society and geography do. As an example, after a young man gets circumcised, he must wear black clothing for a period of time. Red, however, is the preferred shade. African prints in bright primary colors are common, but other common patterns include blue, black, stripes, and checkers. In the 1960s, the Maasai started substituting commercial cotton material for animal skins, including calf hides and sheep skin.
Traditionally, Maa people would wrap themselves with sheets called shkà. The most common color for them is red, though you may also find them in blue or with patterns (e.g. plaid). Warriors don’t avoid wearing pink, especially if it’s adorned with flowers. The Swahili word for “kanga” describes the ubiquitous one-piece clothing worn by many people. There is a wide variety of kikoi, or sarongs, worn by Maasai people who live near the coast. But if you must, stripes are the recommended pattern.
Until recently, the Maasai in Tanzania used sandals crafted from cowhides. Tire tread strips or plastic are used as the soles these days. Men and women alike often accessorize with bracelets made of wood. Maasai women often make jewelry from woven and beaded materials. The beadwork is an integral aspect of their body decoration. White represents calm, blue symbolizes water, and red represents the warrior’s blood and bravery, though these associations are not universal.
The Maasai women have a long tradition of beadwork, and the Maasai people have traditionally used body jewelry and body painting to express their social status and individuality. Prior to European contact, the beads were primarily made from resources at hand. The white beads could have been manufactured from a variety of materials, including clay, shells, ivory, or bone. Beads in black and blue were fashioned from iron, charcoal, seeds, clay, or horn. Seeds, woods, gourds, bone, ivory, copper, and brass were all used to make red beads.
Beadworkers in Southeast Africa began using more complex color palettes and newer, brighter beads when large shipments of European glass beads arrived at the end of the nineteenth century. Today, consumers tend to favor opaque glass beads that are both thick and smooth due to their lack of surface embellishment.
Culture of the Maasai People
Maasai society is very patriarchal, with the group’s oldest men (and sometimes their retired counterparts) making all of the main decisions. Many elements of conduct are covered by the extensive body of oral law. In the absence of formal execution, disputes are typically resolved by the exchange of livestock for money. For minor offenses, an out-of-court method known as “amitu,” “to make peace,” or “arop” is used instead of going to court.
The Maasai are monotheists who pay their respects to a supreme being they call Enkai or Engai. Both the Black God, Engai Narok, and the Red God, Engai Na-nyokie, exist within Engai. Oodo Mongi, the Red Cow, and Orok Kiteng, the Black Cow, with five subclans or family trees, are two more pillars or totems of Maasai culture. The lion is the Maasai people’s totem animal, however, unlike the giraffe, it is a vulnerable species.
Maasai lion killing is not like trophy hunting because the animal is utilized in an initiation ceremony. Ol Doinyo Lengai, known as the “Mountain of God,” is found in northern Tanzania and is visible from Lake Natron in southern Kenya. The laibon is the most important human figure in Maasai religion. He or she performs shamanic healing, divination, and prophesying and guarantees victory in war and sufficient rainfall.
Due to the rise of notable figures, they now play a part in politics as well. Each laibon’s influence stemmed from his or her own unique traits rather than their official rank. Many Maasai now identify as Christians or Muslims. Since the 1970s, the Maasai have made a living off of selling elaborate jewelry to tourists.
Due to the historically high infant mortality rate in the Maasai culture, newborns are not considered full members of the community until they reach the age of three months. More babies are surviving thanks to efforts to encourage Maasai women to seek medical care at clinics and hospitals during pregnancy.
Remote locations are the one and only exception. Mortuary rituals are minimal for the Maasai who still follow their ancient customs, and the deceased are often exposed to animals and passers-by. Scavengers are likely to ignore a body if it is covered in the fat and blood of a killed ox because they believe it is flawed and could bring shame to the community. Since it was once thought that burying people was bad for the environment, only powerful chiefs were ever buried.
Cattle are essential to the Maasai people because they provide them with meat, milk, and other foods. A man’s worth is determined by the number of animals and children he has. There’s nothing wrong with having a few extra kids around, and a herd of fifty cattle will make you look good.
A man is deemed to be financially impoverished if he has an abundance of the former but not the latter. They believe that stealing cattle from other tribes is a question of reclaiming what is properly theirs because of a religious belief among the Maasai that God gave them all the cattle on earth.
Cattle provide for all of the Maasai people’s dietary requirements. They partake of the meat, milk, and occasionally the blood. Meat from bulls, oxen, and lambs is reserved for feast days and rituals. Because of a decline in livestock numbers, the Maasai now rely more on cereals like sorghum, rice, potatoes, and cabbage to sustain their way of life (known to the Maasai as goat leaves).
Social organization of the Maasai People
The Maasai age group is the basic social unit. As soon as they can toddle, young boys are put out with the calves and lambs, although boys’ youth is largely spent playing, with the exception of ritual beatings to test courage and endurance. Cooking and milking are tasks assigned to the female gender and are taught to young girls by their mothers.
A new generation of Morans or Il-murran (warriors) with unique names is begun every 15 years or so. Most boys in this age range, 12–25, are participating since they have entered puberty and are not included in the earlier group. Boyhood initiation into the ranks of warriors often includes a ritual of circumcision performed without anesthetic. Boys who live in or near a town with access to medical care may participate in the ritual in more comfortable settings than in the past, but they will still be required to undergo the rite of passage without anesthetic.
The process is normally carried out by the elders, who will utilize a sharpened knife and improvised cattle hide bandages. Emorata is the Maa word for circumcision. The young man is obligated to remain silent throughout the entire procedure. When you show your anguish, you shame yourself, albeit only temporarily.
Mistakes in the delicate and laborious process can cause scarring, malfunctions, and discomfort that last a lifetime if they aren’t treated immediately. During the 3–4 month healing process, urinating may be unpleasant or even difficult, and boys are required to wear black clothing for the subsequent 4–8 months.
During this time, the young men who have recently undergone circumcision will reside in a “manyatta,” a “village” constructed by their mothers. There is no defensive wall surrounding the manyatta, putting the onus of security on the shoulders of the warriors who live there. Since warriors do not own livestock or tend to stock, no inner kraal is constructed. However, there are other initiation rituals that must be completed before a warrior may be considered a senior member of that order.
Current Il-murran will become junior elders, in charge of making political decisions, until the next generation of fighters is introduced. This ceremony, called Eunoto, marks the transition from warrior to junior elder. Former warriors have their long hair cut off, and the elders are required to keep their hair short.
Warrior males are forbidden from having sexual contact with circumcised women but are allowed to have uncircumcised female companions. Those warriors who were able to follow this code are held in high regard at Eunoto.
Most of the time, the warriors are out on walkabouts, exploring the vast Maasai territory beyond their own sections. Also, they are getting more and more involved in the business of trading cattle, growing and improving their basic stock through trades, and bartering instead of stealing.
An urban legend among the Maasai states that before a young man can be circumcised, he must kill a lion. The practice of hunting lions in Southeast Africa has been outlawed, but it is still carried out when lions attack Maasai livestock, and young warriors who engage in traditional lion slaying suffer little to no repercussions.
With lion populations on the rise, at least one initiative has been launched that encourages receiving compensation when one of these predators kills cattle, rather than resorting to hunting and killing. Still, if you kill a lion, you’ll be a local superstar.
Excision (also known as “female circumcision,” “female genital mutilation,” and “emorata”) is practiced on young women as part of an elaborate rite of passage ceremony known as “Emuratare,” which ushers young Maasai girls into adulthood via ceremonial circumcision and then into early planned marriages. The Maasai consider female circumcision to be obligatory, and a man of Maasai descent may reject a prospective bride who has not been circumcised or provide a significantly lower bride price if she has not.
Even highly educated female lawmakers like Linah Kilimo face stigma in Eastern Africa if they choose not to undergo circumcision. There is a lot of backlash against the practice of female circumcision, or female genital mutilation, both domestically and internationally. One prominent critic is Maasai activist Agnes Pareyio, who herself had the procedure. In certain communities, a “cutting with words” ceremony featuring singing and dance has recently taken the place of physical mutilation.
Nevertheless, the custom is still highly treasured by the community. Male and female genital mutilation are both referred to as “emorata” in the Maa language. Both Kenya and Tanzania have passed laws making female genital cutting illegal. In most cases, a non-Maasai “practitioner” (often from the Dorobo ethnic group) is requested to perform these circumcisions. Blacksmiths, known as il-kunono, craft knives, short swords (ol alem, simi, or seme), spears, and other bladed weapons for Maasai who do not produce their own.
Women who are undergoing the circumcision ritual also dress in dark attire, paint their faces with marks, and then hide their faces after the procedure.
When a married woman becomes pregnant, she is spared from any physical labor, including milking the cows and chopping firewood. Pregnant women are treated differently and sexual activity is prohibited.
Traditional polygyny among the Maasai is viewed as a long-standing and functional response to the high rates of baby and warrior mortality among the tribe. Furthermore, polyandry is commonplace. However, these days, people rarely use this method anymore. A woman’s wedding to her husband includes her entire generation. Traditionally, men have been obliged to make room in their bedroom for a female guest of the same or a younger age.
Whether or not she decides to go out with the male guest is entirely up to her. Since the Maasai social structure is patrilineal, any offspring would be considered the husband’s descendent. A “Kitala,” or temporary divorce or asylum, can be granted by the father of a woman in the event of extreme abuse. All financial and legal matters, including as the return of the bride price and child custody, are settled by mutual agreement.
Cultural Heritage among the Maasai People
Maasai myths, stories, folktales, riddles, and proverbs are all part of a vast body of oral literature. The knowledge of them is handed down from generation to generation. In addition to performing, the Maasai are also accomplished composers. When a warrior has done something worthy of acclaim, women rarely find themselves at a loss for words or music.
They make up songs to tease each other with, work songs for tasks like milking cows and plastering roofs, and songs to pray to their traditional god (Enkai) for things like rain and food.
The word “Wolof” also refers to the Wolof language, as well as to the states, cultures, and traditions of the Wolof people. Older French books often use the spelling Ouolof. You can also find Wolluf, Volof, and Olof, as well as rarer spellings like Yolof, Dylof, Chelof, Galof, Lolof, and others, up to the 19th century.
Wollof and Woloff are both used to talk about the Gambian Wolof in English, but Wollof is closer to how the name is pronounced by people who speak English. Jolof is also often spelled as Jolof, but this is usually in reference to the Jolof Empire and Jolof Kingdom, which were in central Senegal from the 14th to the 19th centuries. In the same way, Jollof rice is the name of a rice dish from West Africa.
WOLOF TRIBE HISTORY
Wolof tribe
The voyages of Ca da Mosto, which took place between 1455 and 1457, are credited with providing the first significant documentary information on the Wolof language. Oral traditions claim that the Wolof people became unified into a political federation known as the Dyolof Empire, with its capital located in the northwestern part of Senegal, perhaps during the century that immediately preceded the present one.
This empire began to break apart into its component sections somewhere about the middle of the sixteenth century, which resulted in the establishment of the four major Wolof kingdoms of Baol, Kayor, Dyolof proper, and Walo. The succeeding histories of these kingdoms are fraught with political intrigue, rebellions, exploitation, and warfare, both against one another and against the Moors. This was true throughout their entire history.
Wolof tribe
It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that interactions with Europeans took on a truly significant role, with the exception of the slave trade. Along the coast, a few commercial cities sprouted up over time, the most important of which were the vital slave ports of Saint Louis and Gorée. Other smaller economic hubs also emerged.
Around the year 1840, peanut cultivation was first introduced to Senegal, and the crop quickly became the country’s primary export. In the 1850s, the French made their first major attempts to capture the Wolof kingdoms. The primary motivation for these efforts was to safeguard the French nation’s economic interests.
The Wolof put up a fierce resistance, but by the turn of the century, they had been totally conquered. French colonial administration continued until Senegal attained its independence in 1960.
Wolof tribe Wolof Tribe
During this same time period, the Wolof, a people who had a lengthy and conflicted relationship with Islam (which was frequently antagonistic), became rapidly and completely Islamicized. The French were instrumental in fostering the growth of urban centers, which proved to be one of the most important contributors to westernization during the twentieth century.
WOLOF TRIBE SETTLEMENT
Wolof tribe Wolof Tribe
The majority of Wolof tribe, perhaps between 70 and 75 percent, live in rural villages; the remainder of the Wolof population is a key component in many of the bigger metropolitan towns of Senegal as well as in Banjul, the capital of the Gambia. Villages of Wolof people are typically fairly tiny in size, with an average population range of approximately 50 to 150 people; however, some political centers can have as many as 1,000 to 2,000 people living in them.
The majority of Wolof communities adhere to one of two primary layout designs for their residential areas: a village that is composed of two or three distinct groups of residential compounds and has no central focus; or a nucleated village in which the residential compounds are grouped around a central plaza, which is typically where a mosque is situated.
Wolof tribe Wolof Tribe
In either form of village, the compounds often take the shape of square huts (traditionally round, as is still the case in Gambia), with walls constructed of millet stalks or banco (a material similar to adobe), and conical roofs that are thatched. Millet stalks have been used to construct a perimeter fence around a number of small huts that have been used for cooking, storing goods, and housing animals.
Villagers that are better off financially may own one or more contemporary, multiroom, rectangular buildings made of cement blocks and topped with tile or corrugated tin roofs. These residences may have one or more garages. In many Wolof communities, there is also a Fulbe encampment or hamlet located nearby. These Fulbe “belong” to the community and are responsible for herding its cattle.
WOLOF TRIBE KINSHIP
Wolof tribe
Kin Groups and Descent: Residential groups, which typically share a single compound, function as the most fundamental element of a village’s social structure. These groupings typically consist of a patrilocal extended family at their center, although they may also have individuals who are not related to one another. Every one of these kinds of business organizations is led by the eldest male member of the primary family unit.
Patrilineages are typically what make up residential groups that are next to one another. It’s possible that the larger and more significant patrilineages have branches in more than one community. Patrilineages have historically been the most influential family branches at the political-legal level, particularly with regard to the control of land and political posts. This has been the case for many centuries.
The most senior male of a patrilineage takes over as laman, the position of official head of the family. The Wolof people also acknowledge the meen, which is a matrilineal line of descent. There is a great deal of debate in the academic community regarding the question of whether or not the meen actually is a matrilineage and, consequently, whether or not the Wolof have a system of double descent (refer to Diop 1985 and Irvine 1973 for two opposing viewpoints, pro and con, respectively, on this matter).
Wolof tribe
In today’s world, the Meen does not exist in the form of a corporate entity, nor does it play any role in the political or legal system. It is essential to have a strong moral compass because it is thought to be the primary source of one’s moral character and because it contains one’s maternal relatives, to whom they can turn for assistance in times of need, such as when they are ill or when they are having financial difficulties.
Kinship Terminology: The Wolof have bifurcate-merging kin terms in the first ascending (parental) generation (i.e., father’s brother and a mother’s sister are called by the same terms as father and mother, respectively, while a father’s sister and a mother’s brother are called by separate terms).
This occurs because the Wolof do not distinguish between the siblings of the same parent. The use of the cousin label does not correspond to any of the conventional categorizations. Cross cousins are differentiated both from parallel cousins and from one another, but they are not given their own names. Parallel cousins are referred to by the same terms as one’s siblings.
Wolof tribe
Cross cousins are distinguished from one another and from parallel cousins, but they are not given their own names. The correct names for these individuals are “child of the sister of the father” and “child of the brother of the mother,” respectively. According to the joking relationship that exists between cross cousins, one’s matrilateral cross relatives are referred to as “master,” and one’s patrilateral cross cousins are referred to as “slave,”
WOLOF TRIBE LIVELIHOOD
The Wolof people have always lived in established agricultural and artisanal communities. Millet has traditionally served as the primary source of nutrition, with rice coming in as a close second when the rains are abundant. Cassava is also grown, but its value lies in the fact that it has historically provided Wolof farmers with a source of income. Peanuts have been the most important crop for exportation ever since the colonial era.
The Wolof culture is patrilineal, and members of the caste that owns agricultural land pass it down through the generations. Farmers in a hamlet typically offer the landowner rent in the form of waref in exchange for the right to cultivate the land.
Farmers of Wolof descent typically supplement their diet with fish that has been either dried or smoked, as well as the chickens and goats they raise themselves. Cattle are also kept, but not for consumption; rather, they are used for milk production, for tilling the ground, and as investment vehicle.
People who live in rural Wolof communities do not eat beef very often, and when they do it is often as part of a ceremonial meal. Some modern-day towns collaborate on the sale of their peanut harvest by using shared agricultural equipment and operating as a cooperative.
Those Wolof people who are members of artisan castes are the ones who work with metal, weave and dye textiles, produce leather items, make pottery and baskets, tailor clothes, produce thatch, and engage in other forms of economic activity. Another set of Wolof smiths specializes on making gold jewelry, whereas the first group creates implements for agricultural use.
Caste and gender have always been used to determine one’s vocation in life. There are distinct castes of men who work as blacksmiths, leatherworkers, and weavers (now the profession of former slave descendants).
Men have traditionally been responsible for religious and political duties, while women have traditionally been responsible for domestic duties such as bringing water from wells or rivers and keeping the household running smoothly. In addition, women are responsible for the planting, weeding, harvesting, and collecting of firewood. Women who belong to the pottery caste group assist with the many procedures involved in the production of pottery.
This is the history behind what started the Rwandan Genocide: Conflicts in post-independence Rwanda can be traced back to the colonial legacy of separating and dividing communities, as well as to the creation of a sectarian, one-party regime in Rwanda that could only stay in power by excluding or killing its opponents. Even though ethnicity is usually seen as a cause of conflict, it has often been used to hide the real reasons for the Rwandan conflict: authoritarian institutions and political cultures, as well as outside influences that have helped authoritarian regimes.
Before 1994, there were about eight million people living in the country. Most of them were Hutu (84%), Tutsi (15%), or Twa (1 per cent). But the current Rwandan government wants to get rid of putting people into groups based on their ethnicity. It says that Rwanda’s ethnic groups, which have been seen by many in those groups as being at odds with each other throughout history, are actually “three strands of the same rope” and are all part of the same Rwandan nationality, Banyarwanda, which is most obviously shown by the fact that they all speak Kinyarwanda.
From this point of view, the ethnic division of this country was not unavoidable; it was the result of a colonial policy. Rwanda got its independence in 1962, but it was on the colonists’ terms. The Tutsis who had been running the country for the colonists but were for independence by 1959 were overthrown and sent away with the help of the Belgians. When the previously oppressed Hutu majority took power, sectarian divisions got worse.
Every Rwandan citizen had to obtain an ID card that identified his or her ethnic group, just like in colonial times, which exacerbated these divisions.The Party for the Emancipation of the Hutu was very interested in the idea that the Tutsi, not Belgium, were the ones who oppressed the majority Hutu population (PARMEHUTU). It was led by Grégoire Kayibanda, who started the Rwandan First Republic and became its president after the “social revolution” of 1959–1962, when over half a million Tutsi were killed or forced to leave the country because of their ethnicity.
Rwandan Genocide Rwandan Genocide
During the 1960s and early 1970s, there were many violent expulsions, and the remaining Tutsi were kept out of jobs, public life, and positions of political, economic, or military power. This created a system of discrimination that was similar to apartheid. To get access to state jobs or economic assets, a Tutsi needed a Hutu patron in government. During the colonial and precolonial times, the relationships between clients and patrons were repeated, but in the opposite order.
Inter ethnic tension became the main cause of the country’s problems, and sectarian prejudice and exclusion became important parts of the state because they were seen as necessary for the country to stay together. So, some people say that 60 years of colonial and Tutsi rule and 35 years of Hutu supremacy after the 1959 revolution (which sent half of the Tutsi population into exile) have changed the way the two groups interact in a fundamental way.
Since independence, political conflict and violence between groups have caused the Hutu and Tutsi to have identities that are different and at odds with each other. These identities are “ethnic.” Based on this analysis, you can’t figure out what’s going on without using these labels, since these are the labels that people themselves use. Kayibanda was afraid of being betrayed, so he surrounded himself with supporters and family members from the south of Rwanda and gave more favors to those he felt he could trust.
So, people who used to support PARMEHUTU in the north and center of the country became cut off from the president and from the political and economic levers he controlled. Kayibanda failed to keep control of the army, which made it possible for his chief of staff, Juvénal Habyarimana, to build a power base with family, friends, and allies from Habyarimana’s home region of Gisenyi in northwest Rwanda.
By the early 1970s, northern and central Rwandan Hutu were plotting to overthrow the Kayibanda government. They said the president couldn’t protect the country from attacks by “cockroaches,” or small groups of exiles who wanted to get rid of him, or keep peace and stability in a country where sectarian revenge was common.
Rwandan Genocide Rwandan Genocide
So, on July 5, 1973, Habyarimana was able to take power in a military coup. The political tensions that led to Kayibanda’s ouster and the change from giving favors based on ethnicity to giving them based on region make it harder to say that conflict in Rwanda has always been based on ethnicity. Habyarimana set up a one-party state again, making sure that all of the political, military, and, by extension, economic power was in his hands and those of a small group of people, mostly family members, called the akazu (little house).
On the second anniversary of the coup, July 5, 1975, his Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement (MRND) released its manifesto. It made clear that the regime had once again adopted a quasi-apartheid agenda, which severely limited ethnic minorities’ access to education and state jobs and promised a strong official response to any perceived internal threat to national security.
Also in 1975, Rwanda and France signed agreements to work together on things like aid, trade, and cultural exchanges. This marked the official expansion of France’s influence in Africa from its own former colonies to include Belgium’s former colonies. A military technical assistance agreement made the military cooperation between France and Rwanda official.
At first, only a small amount of arms and military equipment were sent from France to Rwanda every year. Over the course of 15 years, this “little Switzerland of Africa’s” quietness and introspection hid a hardening of its authoritarianism. This was because it didn’t do anything to fix the basic injustice on which it was built: the forced exclusion of up to 600,000 citizens because of their religion. The main, long-lasting problem of Rwanda’s exiles came up again and again when tolerance for these people in neighboring countries was low. Habyarimana and the party he started insisted that “the glass was full.”
They said that with 8 million people living in 64,200 square kilometers and a high birth rate, Rwanda was too crowded to let the exiles come back. But in 1986, Rwandan refugees were at the front of Uganda’s National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) successful campaign to get rid of President Milton Obote. In 1982, Obote made a mistake when he tried to send Rwandans who had fled to Uganda back to Habyarimana’s hostile Rwanda. This made a lot of Rwandans in Uganda join the rebellion, and they eventually made up 3000 of the 14,000 soldiers in the National Resistance Army, or NRA.
These Rwandans made up a large number of the NRA’s top leaders, including chief of staff Fred Rwigyema and intelligence chief Paul Kagame (now Rwandan president). Rwigyema and Kagame came from a generation of exiles who had been radicalized by war and knew that, as Rwandans, they would always be stateless until their “right to return” was granted or taken away. They were also aware of the growing resentment toward the number of Rwandans in the new Uganda’s army and government, which was seen as dominance. So, in December 1987, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was founded in Kampala.
Rwandan Genocide Rwandan Genocide
The RPF was made up of Rwandan exiles in Uganda at first, but it also got support from the large Rwandan communities in Tanzania, Burundi, Europe, and North America. Rwandans who left their country wanted to get ahead by getting an education, and many successful professionals were ready to pay for the new movement. On July 27, 1987, the Central Committee of the MRND said again that it would not let a lot of exiles come back, even though pressure from other countries was getting stronger.
By the end of the 1980s, there was more pressure on the Habyarimana regime. A string of poor harvests and a decline in the price of coffee on the international market made this situation worse. Coffee was the country’s main export, and the cash crop economy was too dependent on it.
The regime was also unable or unwilling to deal with the country’s persistent poverty and frequent food shortages. Importantly, the problems of underused and unexploited land (including large areas of swamp that weren’t drained) and old ways of farming weren’t fixed, even though there were studies that suggested changes that would work.
Rwandan civil society and some of his foreign backers pushed for democratization, so Habyarimana let opposition political parties form and changed the name of his party, the MRND, to the National Revolutionary Movement for Development and Democracy. But he banned the new RPF and jailed people in the opposition who were too harsh on the regime. On September 7, 1990, Pope John Paul II visited the very Catholic country of Rwanda.
The pontiff didn’t ask his hosts to be more democratic or pay more attention to human rights, but Habyarimana thought that the sudden attention from the rest of the world called for a general amnesty for prisoners, except for those accused of subversion or endangering state security. This was a good move because it made room in the country’s prisons for the mass arrests that would happen after the RPF’s first offensive started three weeks later, on October 1.
After Tanzania’s previous president, John Magufuli, passed away on March 17, 2021, due to heart failure, Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn in as the country’s new leader on March 19, 2021. On January 27, 1960, Hassan became the first woman to lead Tanzania after being born in the village of Makunduchi, Tanzania, which is situated on the island of Zanzibar.
She is the sixth president of Tanzania and the first woman to manage this nation. Her father was a teacher, and her mother was a homemaker when she was growing up. Hassan received an advanced certificate in public administration from the Institute of Development Management in the year 1986, following the completion of her secondary school in the year 1977 (now Mzumbe University).
In 1994, she attended the University of Manchester in England and received a post-graduate diploma in economics from that institution. Hassan was employed as an administrator for the Ministry of Planning and Development prior to beginning her career in politics. Prior to that, she worked for the United Nations World Food Program. 1978 was the year when Hassan tied the knot with Hafidh Ameir, an agriculturalist. They are parents to four children.
Hassan was first elected to Zanzibar’s House of Representatives in a one-off election in the year 2000. This marked the beginning of her career in politics. Hassan was subjected to discrimination from male members of parliament despite the fact that Tanzania’s constitution mandates that women make up at least 15 percent of the entire body in parliament.
During the following ten years, however, Hassan served not only as Minister of Gender and Children but also as Minister of Youth Employment and Tourism in the administration of President Amani Karume. She was the only woman in a high-ranking position in the cabinet at that time.
Hassan served as a member of parliament from 2010 until 2015, during which time she also held the position of Minister of State in the Vice President’s office under President Jakaya Kikwete. Hassan was given the responsibility of updating the country’s constitution when she was serving as Vice Chairperson of the Constituent Assembly.
Hassan is so dedicated to better comprehending and improving Tanzania’s economic policies that she earned a Master of Science degree in Community Economic Development in 2015 from the Open University of Tanzania and Southern New Hampshire University as part of a collaborative effort between the two educational institutions.
Hassan also made history during this same year when she became Tanzania’s first female vice president, serving under President Magufuli. In this capacity, Hassan served as the president’s representative at a number of important gatherings, such as the Twenty-First Summit of the East African Heads of State, which took place on February 27, 2021, and the Southern African Development Community Summit, which took place on November 7, 2019.
Tanzanians now view Hassan, who is affectionately referred to as “Mama Samia,” as the president who will reconcile the political conflicts that exist in their country. The totalitarian Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party has been in power since 1977 and presently enjoys an overwhelming majority in parliament.
Throughout this time, the CCM has suppressed several opposition parties. Hassan made headlines in 2017 while she was still serving as vice president after she made a controversial visit to opposition leader Tundu Lissu in a Dar es Salaam hospital after he survived an assassination attempt, which many believed was sanctioned by the CCM.
Samia Suluhu was named the first female running mate in the history of the ruling party (CCM) in July of 2015, when the late Dr. John Magufuli, the presidential nominee for the ruling party (CCM), announced that she would be running with him in the 2015 general election.
Samia Suluhu
Samia Suluhu became the first female President of the United Republic of Tanzania after her party, CCM, was victorious in the election. In the 2020 election, CCM received a landslide victory, which allowed her to keep her position as Vice President.
Samia Suluhu was sworn in as President of Tanzania in March 2021. She took over after John Magufuli’s death.
Kwame Nkrumah was born in 1909 in Nkroful, in Ghana’s Western Region. From 1926 to 1930, he went to school at the Government Training College in Accra and Achimota. Before moving to the United States in 1935, he taught school. From 1939 to 1943, he went to Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he got bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics, sociology, education, theology, and philosophy. In May 1945, he moved from the U.S. to the U.K. to get his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics.
Kwame Nkrumah Bio
In 1935, Kwame Nkrumah moved to the United States. There and in Britain, Kwame Nkrumah went to school. While he was in Britain, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) asked him to come back home and be its full-time secretary. He accepted the offer after some hesitation.
POLITICAL CAREER PATH
Kwame Nkrumah Bio
On December 16, 1947, he got to Ghana. The UGCC had been going on for five months before he got there. Its goal was to make sure that “by all legal and constitutional means, the control and direction of the government shall pass into the hands of the people and their chiefs as soon as possible.” Even though the UGCC was only run by lawyers, businessmen, and intellectuals from the upper class, it was still able to stir up strong nationalist and anticolonial feelings across the country and open a number of branches.
Kwame Nkrumah was an instant hit, and he quickly got a lot of people to join the UGCC. But on June 12, 1949, he left the UGCC and started his own party, the Convention People’s Party (CPP). By the end of 1950, the CPP had surpassed the UGCC as the more active party, and its leader had become the most popular nationalist leader the country had ever seen. So, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the CPP won the first general election in February 1951, when Kwame Nkrumah was in prison for the “positive action” he had called for on January 9, 1950.
The CPP won 34 of the 38 seats that were chosen by the people. Nkrumah was let go and put in charge of the government. During his first term in office, from 1951 to 1954, Nkrumah took a pragmatic and hands-off approach. He was able to promote social, economic, and political changes, such as building roads, railways, and communications, making primary school free and mandatory for children between the ages of six and twelve; opening a lot of primary and secondary schools, training colleges, and a new University College of Science and Technology, an institution for higher education.
Kwame Nkrumah Bio
Politically, Nkrumah put in place a new system of local government that greatly limited the power of the traditional ruling elite. This forced the British government to put in place a new constitution in 1954 that gave Ghana internal self-government by putting in place a parliament. After June 1954, Ghana probably would have gotten its independence within a few months if not for the sudden rise of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) and the Togoland question, which was about how the British-mandated territory of Togoland would be run after Ghana got its independence.
This was finally settled by a vote in 1956 that was organized by the UN. Most of the people who voted said that British Togoland should join the Gold Coast (the former name of Ghana). The motion for independence was passed by the new parliament in August 1956. On March 6, 1957, Nkrumah said that the Gold Coast was “free forever.” Nkrumah did a number of things to make the opposition parties weaker and the CPP stronger. The Deportation Act was one of them. It led to the deportation of a number of strong opposition party members who were thought to be foreigners.
The most well-known of these measures was the Preventive Detention Act (PDA), which was passed in July 1958 and gave the government the power to hold anyone who threatened the security of the state for five years without a trial. Between 1958 and 1960, 67 people in the opposition were jailed because of this law. From 1957 to 1960, Nkrumah’s career was a continuation of the pragmatic and hands-off style of the years before.
Kwame Nkrumah Bio
He let foreign companies keep controlling the import-export trade, mining, insurance, and manufacturing. In 1959 and 1960, there were no limits on sending profits abroad, and more goods from the dollar areas and Japan were added to the open general license. So, the economy of the country grew quickly, and many new industries were built, which made more jobs available. However, economic growth aided firms and companies based outside of the country. At the same time, the open door policy led to more money leaving the country than coming in.
This caused the country’s foreign exchange reserves to keep going down. Most people remember Nkrumah for his work in foreign policy. His policies in this area were based on three main goals: freeing all of Africa from colonial rule, uniting all independent African states, and bringing together and reviving the culture of all black people in Africa and around the world. In Accra, Ghana, in April 1958, he set up the Conference of Independent African States.
He then held the All African Peoples’ Conference in Accra in December 1958, the All-African Trade Union Federation Conference in Accra in November 1959, and the Conference on Positive Action and Security in Africa in Accra in April 1960. In addition to these conferences, Nkrumah took the first real step toward African unity by forming a union with Guinea in November 1958. In April 1961, he expanded this union to include Mali, making it the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union. In June 1958, Nkrumah went on an official tour of the United States. He did this to further his pan-Africanist goals.
KWAME NKRUMAH DOWNFALL
Kwame Nkrumah Bio
From 1960 to 1966, things went downhill, fell apart, and ended in tragedy. In July 1960, Nkrumah changed the country’s constitution. This gave him more power and made him a constitutional dictator who could rule by decree, fire any public employee, and overturn the decisions of parliament. In 1964, Ghana became a one-party state, which was in line with his socialist beliefs. This was the second change to the constitution.
Instead of holding party elections in 1965, he went on national radio and told everyone the names of the new politicians he had chosen to represent the 104 constituencies. In the field of economics, Nkrumah gave up his laissez-faire approach in favor of the socialist approach, which required active state control and participation in all parts of the economy and the creation of a large number of state corporations. By March 1965, 47 state corporations were up and running. By the end of 1965, almost all of these companies were losing money.
Kwame Nkrumah Bio
This was because they didn’t have enough trained workers, didn’t plan well or do feasibility studies, were inefficient, or were run by family members or friends. The country also had a severe lack of food, goods made or imported, spare parts, and raw materials, and there was a lot of unemployment. By the start of 1966, the country had run out of money and was close to having its economy fall apart. Armed forces and police worked together to pull off a coup d’état on February 24, 1966. This led to the National Liberation Council taking over for Nkrumah.
Nkrumah went to Guinea to hide out. He was flown to Bucharest because he had skin cancer, where he died on April 27, 1972. His body was flown to Guinea, where a state funeral was held for him. But it was later dug up and flown to Ghana, where it was first buried in his village of Nkorful and then moved to the polo ground in Accra, where he had announced that his country had won the battle for its independence.
The Kenyan Highlands are in the south-central part of Kenya. They are surrounded by dry areas to the south and north, plains that go to Lake Victoria to the west, and the plateau east of Mount Kenya to the east. The Rift Valley divides the Western Highlands, which are mostly home to Southern Nilotic people of the Kalenjin group, from the Central Highlands, which are mostly home to Bantu people like the Igembe, Meru, Tharaka, Chuka, Embu, Mbeere, Kikuyu, and Taita.
The Nyandarua (Aberdare) Range and Mount Kenya in the west, and the Tana River in the northeast, mark the edges of the Central Highlands. The Taita live in the upland valleys and slopes of the Dawida, Saghala, and Kasigau regions. They grow bananas, sugarcane, and yams in the fertile valley bottoms and raise cattle in the higher areas.
The Kikuyu live on the ridges of the Central Highlands. They grow perennial crops like arrowroot and sweet potato, and they also raise livestock. The Embu live on the fertile, well-watered slopes of Mount Kenya above 1200 meters, and the Mbeere live in the lower, dry savanna. The Embu live in a good place for intensive agriculture, but the Mbeere raise cattle and grow drought-resistant field crops like maize, millet, and sorghum.
Bantu People Bantu People
The Chuka and the Meru are two tribes of highland farmers who live close to each other on the northeastern slopes of Mount Kenya. From the few pieces of information we have about the history of these Bantu people during the Iron Age, we still don’t have a full picture. Most of these pieces of evidence come from historical linguistics, archaeology, and people’s own stories. Putting together a timeline of historical events and making sure that historical findings from different disciplines fit together is especially hard.
According to the most popular theory about where these people came from, they came from Zare and settled in the Kenyan Highlands. Their languages belong to the Thagicu group of northeastern Bantu. Based on the number of words they have in common, the highland Bantu languages must have started to develop from proto-Thagicu around the 10th century. There is no single origin story for the Bantu people of the Central Highlands. The Chuka, Embu, Mbeere, and Kikuyu people who live south of Mount Kenya say they came from Igembe/Tigania, which is in the northern Meru region.
At the beginning of the migration, they were herders and hunters. After they settled in the higher forest areas of the Highlands, however, they turned to farming. Kikuyu oral traditions keep track of age groups going back into the past. Based on today’s age groups, it could be said that the Kikuyu left Igembe/Tigania in the fifteenth century and moved to the northern part of their modern settlement areas in the early seventeenth century.
Bantu People Bantu People
The Meru say they came from an island called Mbwa, but many scholars think it is Manda Island, which is off the coast of northern Kenya. It is thought that these migrations happened in the first half of the 1800s. Several highland Bantu groups agree, based on their oral histories, that the highlands were bought from southern Nilotic Okiek hunters.
Also, the oral histories of the Kikuyu, Chuka, and Embu talk about the Gumba, who raised cattle and made iron. The Kikuyu are said to have tried to settle in the highlands, but the Gumba fought them off, and it wasn’t until the 1800s that the Kikuyu won. The Kikuyu are very clear that they learned how to make iron and how to do circumcision from the Gumba.
Archaeological finds near Gatung’ang’a in central Kenya, which have been tentatively attributed to the Gumba, point to a population that raised cattle, worked iron, and used obsidian and Kwale-like pottery. The finds are dated to the 12th–13th and 15th–16th centuries. The culture shown by these artifacts is a mix of things from the later Stone Age and the Iron Age. If it really was a Bantu culture, it must have been in the highlands before the migrations that the stories talk about. When you try to put the results of historical linguistics and oral traditions together, you can see that they don’t match up.
On the one hand, the overall picture that comes out of the oral traditions shows that the highland Bantu came from many different places, including Igembe/Tigania, the coast, and Mount Kilimanjaro. On the other hand, the uniformity and current spread of the so-called Thagicu languages suggest that they all came from one place in the Highlands and then spread out from there. The Kikuyu also use words from southern Cushitic languages to talk about circumcision, but Bantu words are used to talk about working with iron.
Bantu People Bantu People
This, along with the fact that the origin stories of the different clans are very different, makes it clear that Kikuyu culture is a mix of different traditions that overlap. The ecological and topographical diversity of the Highlands is probably what explains why the languages are so similar and the migration stories are so different. This can be seen in the way that governments are set up. After the Kikuyu took over the highland ridges, for example, they created localized lineages that were linked to specific ridges.
Each ridge is home to a certain group of lineages that live in a fortified settlement. On the other hand, the neighborhood is the main political and social unit of the valley-dwelling Taita. It is made up of a number of lineages that all have the same rights and live in the same valley. So, local cultural institutions came about as a result of people adapting to their own ecological and geographical niches and cultures coming together on a small scale.
This could have caused people to remember different things about where they came from and where they went. If and when the problems of chronology and interdisciplinary synchronisms are solved, it is almost certain that many of the “contradictions” listed above will be shown to be successive layers of historical events.
Before he became a journalist, Nnamdi Azikiwe did well in school. He moved from Nigeria to the Gold Coast (Ghana) and was editor of the African Morning Post for three years. Renascent Africa is a book that was made from a collection of his articles for the Post. Around this time, he wrote that he wanted to shock Africa out of its “arrested mental development” and state of stagnation caused by British colonialism. He was charged with publishing a seditious article but was found not guilty because of a technicality. In 1937, he moved to Nigeria and started Zik’s Press, Ltd.
In November of that year, he put out the West African Pilot for the first time. The Pilot called itself “a sentinel of liberty and a guardian of civilization.” It used a sensational and aggressive style to praise Africans’ achievements and criticize the colonial government. Nnamdi Azikiwe also joined the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM), which was the country’s biggest nationalist group and won all three Lagos Legislative Council seats in 1938. But “Zik,” as he was now known, quickly decided that the NYM leaders, who were mostly older than him, were too moderate.
Zik got along well with Governor Sir Bernard Bourdillon before the war broke out in 1939. He helped Zik get land from the government for his printing presses and put him on a number of official committees. But the high inflation during the war against Nazi imperialism made Zik much more critical of the British government. Nigeria had a lot of trouble between 1944 and 1948, and Nnamdi Azikiwe was at the center of it. Sir Arthur Richards, who was stricter than Bourdillon, took over as governor, and he was determined to fight the growing nationalist movement led by Azikiwe.
Between the two men, something like a personal grudge grew. The National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons was started by Nnamdi Azikiwe and the veteran nationalist Herbert Macaulay in 1944. (NCNC). Nnamdi Azikiwe wanted self-government in 15 years, but the new Richards Constitution, which was about to be put into place, was meant to keep British control, even though it gave the Legislative Council an unofficial majority. Zik backed a “general strike” of 30,000 workers in June 1945, and the government banned two of his papers in July. A week later, Zik said that he had found out that the government was planning to kill him.
The Colonial Office didn’t think much of these claims. But Zik might have taken the story seriously. There is no doubt that he used his skills as a journalist to get the word out about his cause. He was tall, handsome, and charismatic, and he was a great speaker. The Igbo had liked him for a long time, but now many people saw him as a hero. Richards thought Zik was “an irresponsible lunatic,” so he sued Zik’s newspaper, the Daily Comet, for libel. The editor of the Daily Comet was sent to prison, but Zik was left alone.
But the governor was glad that when he left office in 1947, his constitution was still working pretty well. Even Nnamdi Azikiwe, who won a seat for Lagos, didn’t stay away from the Legislative Council for very long. But Richards’ happiness didn’t last long. In August 1948, the British said that the constitution would be changed (and within a few years, the appointment of Nigerian ministers signaled internal self-government for Nigeria and the beginnings of speedy decolonization). Some historians say that Zik forced the British to speed up the reform process.
The British were worried about the rise of the radical “Zikists,” who were originally a group of young men who promised to protect their hero during the assassination scare. However, they didn’t understand “Zikism,” which lacked rigor. But no one forced anyone to decide to get rid of the Richards Constitution. The riots in Accra in February 1948 led to the creation of a commission that called for a lot of changes to the Gold Coast’s constitution. The Colonial Office decided that Nigeria had to follow suit.
Azikiwe was pushed into the background almost right away. Non-Igbos were upset by the fact that he was able to become Nigeria’s most famous nationalist and get a lot of attention for himself. Zik always said that he spoke for all of Nigeria, but the emirs of northern Nigeria disowned him early on, and in 1941 he got into trouble with the NYM. After the war, constitutional reform opened up politics in a way that made the NCNC’s rivals, such as the Action Group in the west and the Northern People’s Congress, possible.
Because the northern region was so big, it had more power in the Nigerian federation, and Zik had to be happy with being the premier of Eastern Nigeria from 1957 to 1959. Regional self-government was put off for a year because the Foster-Sutton Commission looked into his decision to put £2 million of public money into the African Continental Bank. As a result, he was given a mild reprimand. When Nigeria became independent in 1960, he was president of the Nigerian senate and, soon after, governor general, but these were mostly ceremonial roles.
The real power was in the regions and with the prime minister of the whole country. Zik helped start the University of Nigeria at Nsukka after the country became independent. After the coup of 1966, he was a consultant to the military government of the eastern region. Until he died in 1996, he was a respected elder statesman.
When England ruled Nigeria, it is thought that more than 5,000 old artifacts were stolen from the country. As part of its efforts to deal with its “dark colonial past,” Germany returns twenty antique bronze sculptures to Nigeria on Tuesday, 12/20/2022.
Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, gave the valuable cultural items back to Nigerian officials at a ceremony in the capital, Abuja. The sculptures, called “Benin bronzes,” were taken from African when it was ruled by the British as a colony.
“It was wrong to steal these bronzes. It was wrong to keep these bronzes and it is long overdue to return these bronzes to their home,” she said at the event.
The sculptures were made of brass and bronze and had ancient designs. They were used in ceremonies to honor the ancestors and rulers of the Benin people.
Germany returns Stolen Benin Bronzes
Nigerian authorities say that when England ruled the country, it is likely that more than 5,000 ancient artifacts were stolen from the country.
Most of the treasures were taken from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, which is now in southern Nigeria. Some of the treasures ended up in the hands of other countries, such as Germany.
In the past few years, Nigerian authorities have worked harder to get the stolen artifacts back. Germany promised earlier this year to send more than 1,000 of them home over the next few years.
Germany’s second-biggest trade partner in Africa is Nigeria, and by sending back the items, Germany hopes to start a new chapter in its relationship with Nigeria.
“We see this as a first step. Many bronzes have been looted and stolen, so many will come back,” said Baerbock.
“This step is also important for us because we are dealing with our dark colonial past,” she said.
Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria’s minister of foreign affairs, said that the country was “deeply grateful” to Germany for returning the artifacts. He said that the sculptures are important to the Nigerian people in ways other than how they look. He asked England and other countries with other artifacts to give them back because it was the right thing to do.
Germany returns Stolen Benin Bronzes
Activists say that there needs to be more accountability than just giving the items back. For example, African countries should be paid for the losses they’ve had to deal with over years of looting.
“We are only focusing on the physical objects. What about the digital properties of these works? Who owns those properties? And what is coming with these works?” said Victor Ehikhamenor, a Nigerian artist and advocate for reparation efforts.
“What other restitution and payments do they have to make for holding these works for a long time and making money from it?” he said.
