Fipa
The Catholic Church and the Politicians
About 130 years ago, Roman Catholic priests from Germany moved into southwestern Tanzania and started converting the Fipa to Christianity, a process that began to change their culture, though they still retained their peacefulness when Willis did his field work in the 1960s. When Smythe was doing her field work in Ufipa between 1994 and […]
Dissident Catholic Cult Simmers in Fipa Territory
A faith healer who has gained a significant following in East Africa over the past 20 years won an important court victory last week in Sumbawanga, the major city of the Rukwa Region of Tanzania. Roman Catholic evangelization in the Rukwa Region and the surrounding areas of southwestern Tanzania have had a major impact on […]
Fipa Witchcraft
A mob in a village near Sumbawanga, in southwestern Tanzania, attacked and killed a suspected witch last week. Numerous earlier reports of sorcery and traditional healing have surfaced in recent years in Fipa territory, but the murders of suspected witches have not been as common. Maria Jorah, also known as Salamba, was a 63 year […]
Traditional Tanzanian Healer and his Victims
A seemingly bizarre news story about a predatory traditional healer emerged from rural Tanzania last week. According to the Sunday Citizen, an attack by the healer sent the manager of a guesthouse where he was staying and four of his other guests to a local hospital. The healer was staying at the Annudo Guesthouse and […]
Prime Minister of Tanzania Condemns Witchcraft
Superstition and witchcraft among the Fipa people of Southwest Tanzania have attracted the attention, and condemnation, of the Prime Minister of the nation, Mizengo Pinda. Speaking in the Sumbawanga District, he expressed surprise that, in this day and age, people still accepted superstitious beliefs. Apparently a common superstition is that some individuals can use witchcraft […]
Farmer/Rancher Violence in Ufipa
A serious confrontation between farmers and pastoralists in the Rukwa District of Tanzania has left one man seriously wounded from a gunshot wound in his stomach. According to a news report this past weekend in the Daily News of Tanzania, six sons in the family of Kilomela Shigela pastured about 2,000 cows on the lands […]
Fipa Fisherman Tries to Sell His Wife
Last week a Fipa fisherman tried to sell his albino wife for 3.6 million shillings (about US $3,000) to traders from the DR Congo in the Kalungu, Tanzania, marketplace. An informer tipped off the police that the sale was about to take place, so they set up a trap for the men. The authorities failed […]
The Education of Fipa Girls 100 Years Ago [journal article review]
Fipa girls between the years 1894 and 1920 gained good educations, as well as a Catholic upbringing, at the Karema Mission Station in what was then called Tanganyika. While the Karema Mission Station was located along the shore of Lake Tanganyika just to the north of traditional Fipa territory, many of its students were drawn […]
Christian Churches React to Fipa Traditions
Recent publications have described both the strength of Roman Catholicism among the Fipa of southwestern Tanzania and the ways the church has adapted to their traditional practices. Kathleen R. Smythe, an historian at Xavier University in Cincinnati, considered these issues in a 2006 book that reviewed both the history of their conversion to Catholicism beginning […]
Witchcraft among the Fipa
Nyasio Alfonsi, a 40 year old Fipa medicine man, caused a stir last Saturday when he threw himself into the Ifuma River, promising to return after three days of visiting the “gates of hell.” Accompanied by the drumming, chants, and dancing of dozens of people from the village of Masigo (also called Masingo in another […]
