Fipa
Fipa Traditional Healers
A news story from Sumbawanga, Tanzania, on August 12 announced that the government of the Rukwa Region was urging traditional healers to register their healing medicines. The article does not mention the society the healers identify with, but most of them would probably be Fipa. The healers, members of the Tanzanian Society for Traditional Healers […]
Abortions among the Fipa
A news story in the Daily News from Tanzania on January 24 analyzed the sexual health and reproductive rights of women and girls in Tanzania with a special focus on the Fipa people. While the Fipa are not identified as such, the opening example narrates the traumas of a girl who recently had an abortion […]
Worries of Fipa Women
Superstitious beliefs are deterring some pregnant women in the Rukwa Region of Tanzania from going to health facilities when the time comes to deliver their babies. According to a news story dated December 27, women are ignoring the advice of medical personnel and drinking concoctions of herbal teas to reduce labor pains, sometimes with serious […]
Developing Gender Equality among the Fipa
Several NGOs in the Rukwa Region of Tanzania have been campaigning recently for their society to promote more gender equality. They are particularly focused on women having better guarantees to the lands they help farm. Several of the villages mentioned last week in a news report about the situation are located in the traditional Fipa […]
Overgrazing in the Fipa Territory
A corruption scandal in the traditional Fipa territory recently resulted in disciplinary action being taken against numerous officials. Dr. Hamisi Kigwangalla, Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism of Tanzania, suspended 27 game rangers and officers after hearing complaints at a village meeting. According to a report on July 9 in a Tanzanian news service, Kigwangalla […]
Some Fipa Abuse Girls
Charges have been filed against a man and his wife from a Fipa village in the Nkasi District of Tanzania that they sold off their teenage daughters to a 75-year old man. According to a report in the Daily News on March 19, the Rukwa Region police are hunting for Matembezi Mugo and his wife, […]
A Cholera Epidemic in Tanzania
News reports from southwestern Tanzania in late November expressed hope that health authorities were slowing the spread of cholera, but the news last week indicated that the situation is getting worse. The epidemic is occurring in the traditional territory of the Fipa society, which occupies much of the land between the southeastern shore of Lake […]
Promoting Health along Lake Tanganyika
A project among the Fipa villages along the shores of Lake Tanganyika has improved the health of residents of the region, according to a news report last Wednesday. Although the reporter did not identify the people as being Fipa, most of the villagers along that portion of the lake are, in fact, members of that […]
Gender Violence in Peaceful Societies: The Fipa
In line with some news stories in May about Fipa women physically punishing a man, last week a report indicated that some of them have been beating their husbands. Gender violence in reverse. Although the news report does not say that the couples involved were all ethnic Ufipa, they are from the city of Sumbawanga […]
Environmental Degradation and a Plan for Restoration
The territory where the Fipa live in southwestern Tanzania has been designated by the national government as an environmentally sensitive area due to human abuses of the land. Two newspapers, the Tanzania Daily News and The Citizen, both from Dar es Salaam, published reports last week on plans to begin rectifying the situation. The so-called […]
