thumb|Outside look of traditional house of Zaramos tribe.
The Zaramo people, also referred to as Dzalamo or Saramo (Wazaramo, in Swahili), are a Bantu ethnic group native to the central eastern coast of Tanzania, particularly the Dar es Salaam Region and Pwani Region. Estimated to be about 0.7 million people, over 98% of them are Muslims, Their culture and history have been shaped by their lifes in both urban and rural landscapes.
Language
The original Zaramo language, sometimes called Kizaramo, is Bantu and belongs to the Niger-Congo family of languages. However, in contemporary Tanzania, only a few people still speak it, and most speak Swahili language as their first language, as it is the trading language of the East African coast and the national language of Tanzania.
History
Origins
By oral tradition, the Zaramo are said to be descendants of the Shomvi people under the lead of the warrior-hero, Pazi in the early 19th century. The Shomvi, a mercantile clan living in what is present-day Dar Es Salaam were attacked by an offshoot group of Kamba people from Kenya. The Shomvi sought help from the warrior, Pazi, who lived in the hinterlands. When Pazi defeated the Kamba, he asked for salt, cloth, and other luxuries in return. When the Shomvi could not meet his demands, they offered for him and his family to live with them on the coast, where they would receive an annual tribute instead. The war and its results were said to be the founding of the Zaramo.
Islamization
Undoubtedly after the Maji Maji rebellion, it was a period of significant Islamic expansion. Before 1914, the Ngindo, Zaramo, and Zigua peoples in the coastal hinterland had been heavily influenced by Islam. Since then, the region has primarily become Islamic, with the exception of Maasai, some of Bonde (whom had a long history of missions), and to a lesser extent, Matumbi. The last barrier to the Islamization of the Digo in the north was eliminated by the destruction of Lutheran artifacts. When missionary work began in the south after many Mwera and Makua stopped practicing Christianity, polygynous marriages and other barriers made it difficult for many converts to return, which led to Islam becoming the coastal area's major religion.
By 1913, Muslims were up half of the Zaramo population. Both from the coast and up north from the Rufiji, where Zaramo tracked the boys' jando initiation ceremony that contributed significantly to the spread of Islam, proselytizing had taken place. Zaramo started performing Islamic circumcision.
Islam in the coastal region and its hinterland typically made it difficult for missions to be effective. The Benedictines relocated their operations inland as a result of Zaramo's disregard. Resources for resistance were offered by indigenous religious organizations like the Kubandwa Cult and the Uwuxala Society. Long-established populations were not always opposed to Christianity, though.
Only eleven of the 150–200 waalimu in Uzaramo were reported to be able to interpret the Koran rather than merely recite it in 1912, when it was claimed that students at Koran schools learned the Koran in Arabic without grasping its meaning. Magic and literacy frequently intertwined. It was customary to read the entire Koran aloud to honor ancestors or to purify a community. A passage from the Koran served as a standard amulet, and ink diluted in water served as a standard medication.
A Zaramo Muslim immigrant worker named Abdulrahman Saidi Mboga is credited with introducing superior rice varieties and irrigation methods to South Pare.
It is simpler to map out Islam's political stance by the 1950s. Not only was it growing almost as quickly as Christianity, but Muslims also appeared to be adhering to their religion more rigidly than before. However, a lot of cultural resistance endured. Few Zaramo Muslims frequented mosques, and their female rituals remained largely non-Islamic. Urban Islam was occasionally quite superficial, notably in Dar es Salaam. Even the ostensibly Muslim Ngindo rarely performed Islamic marriage.
Colonial period
During the British period, the founding members of the African Association included representatives from the three most influential African communities in Dar es Salaam in the 1920s: the Manyema, and Zaramo. Effendi Plantan, the former head of the ex-askari community, had raised its secretary, Kleist Sykes. Mzee Sudi, the Manyema leader for the Belgian Congo branch and the son of slave parents, was one of the committee members. He also had a significant home. Two notable leaders were from the Zaramo: Ramadhani Ali, the first vice-president and a trader, and Ali Saidi, a building inspector who served as the association's treasurer during the 1930s.
Both later served as leaders of the Wazaramo Union, with Ramadhani Ali serving as King of the Marini and one of the most prominent Africans in Dar es Salaam. These men had completely different interests and unifying principles than Watts or Matola did. The organisation was split throughout the 1930s between proponents of a territorial alliance of educated men and supporters of harmony between the various social classes in the city.
Population increase altered Dar es Salaam's entire character. Many Zaramo settlements, particularly Buguruni, were subsumed by the shanty cities the immigrants established. Magomeni had a population density that was more than double that of Nyamwezi, although many Zaramo lived in Buguruni in the far west, which blended into the surrounding landscape.
The objective of the Zaaramo Union according to its secretary, was to construct the "UNITY, BESTIR LIFT UP", of the Wazaramo and their country in the essential matters. To this end, it purchased and operated two lorries to transport people and agricultural produce between towns and rural areas, established nine branches in the tribal area, and campaigned against "the old out-of-date Wakilis" recognized by the government, urging instead a paramount chief to guide the Zaramo toward progress. Urban ethnicity was not just a means of survival, but also a productive effort to forge groups that could work well together in colonial society.
Society
The term, "Zaramo," in scholarly studies also reflects a macro-ethnic group. The larger Zaramo group consists of Zaramo proper, but includes a number of related peoples such as the Kaguru, Kwere, Kutu, Kami, Sagara, Luguru, Ngulu and Vidunda peoples.
The majority of the peoples of Tanganyika were patrilineal, but there are signs that many of them were once matrilineal. Some of these matrilineal peoples, like the Zaramo, Luguru, Mwera, and Makonde, were able to survive in the south-east where tsetse may have prevented men from acquiring cattle to pass on to their sons. To resist this persecution, they developed stockade-fortified villages.
thumb|left|upright=0.75|Zaramo people distribution (approx)
The Zaramo society's history has long been influenced by the coastal encounter between the Arab-Persian and African populations typical of East Africa, since the 8th century. During the colonial era, the influence came from the encounter between the African people, Arab-Swahili trader intermediaries and the European powers, but it broadly coopted the older slave-driven, social stratification model.
According to Elke Stockreiter – a professor of History specializing on Africa, the slaves seized from Zaramo people and other ethnic groups such as Yao, Makonde and Nyamwezi peoples from the mainland and brought to the coastal Tanzania region and Zanzibar sought social inclusion and attempted to reduce their treatment as inferiors by their slave owners by adopting and adapting to Islam in the 19th century. Conversion to Islam among the coastal Zaramo people began in the 19th century. These historic events, states Stockreiter, have influenced the politics and inter-ethnic relations in 20th-century Tanzania.
Initiation
Initiation rituals are required for the youth of the Zaramo people to become full-fledged members of adult society. Theses rituals generally happen around puberty and the female's first menses.
Males
The male ceremony is termed as nhulu or "growth." The initiation process takes place during the dry season and about once every three years. Each novice, mwali, have a designated instructor, mhunga, who guides the youth through the circumcision process, teaches Zaramo sex lore and practice. Once the mwali are circumcised, they are brought to an initiation hut, kumbi, where they are taught, and then are not permitted to bathe for two weeks. Once the mwali are allowed to bathe again, their mothers in the village hold a village dance, mbiga. After eight more days the mwali return to the village and their instructors burn the kumbi and anything else related to the initiation. The mwali are now men of society and celebrate with mlao, a dance of emergence. The rituals associated with female initiation are performed to protect and enrich a girl's female power and her fertility. A girl has a reproductive cycle within society-one that starts with her first menses, continues to her initiation, marriage, birth of her children, and finally ends with the puberty of her grandchildren, at which point her reproductive cycle is over. The girl novice, also called mwali, is secluded in her mother's house for anywhere between two weeks and one year. Earlier documentation states that this process in the past could have taken up to five years.
Appearance
Mwana hiti are usually made of wood, however some Zaramo traditions say they should be made of gourds as gourds are symbols of fertility. Sizes of the mwana hiti vary, the average being around 10 centimeters. They can be projections of a child, a woman with a child, or an mwali. Mwana hiti are cylindrical figures with depictions of a head and torso of relatively equal size and usually no arms, legs or genitalia. Breasts and a navel are often present as well as hair. Facial features are simple and abstract, occasionally not being present. These figures may be decorated with metal (if hair is present) or white beads as jewelry.
Mwali must treat the mwana hiti as her child, bathing it, oiling it, dressing the hair (of which the mwali wears the same style,) and feeding it. If she fails to complete these motherly tasks she may be denied fertility in the future. Fertility is prized in Zaramo culture as children are seen as economic and cultural goals for prosperity and legacy. The traditional practice of Mganga or medicine man, who similar to Muslim clerics offers services as a divine healer, remains popular among the impoverished Zaramo communities.
The Zaramo people are settled farmers who also keep livestock. Many have become migrant workers in Dar es Salaam and tourist sites, considering business, or biashara, their job. They live in pangone or shanty clusters of villages. They produce staple foods such as rice, millet, maize, sorghum, and cassava, as well as cash crops such as coconuts, legumes, cashews, pineapples, oranges, and bananas.
Kome staffs
Traditional kome staffs are tall staffs made from blackwood (mpingo) and are carved to possess animal and human (women) decoration. Mwana hiti were common top decorations before Tanzanian independence. Kome staffs are typically associated with chief power, and so their decreased presence is directly correlated to that of chiefs in Tanzania.