In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

174 7 Disease and Reproductive Health in Ujiji,Tanganyika Colonial and Missionary Discourses Regarding Islam and a “Dying Population” sheryl a. mccurdy During 1948,a Roman Catholic nun working in a dispensary in Ujiji,Tanganyika, published an international call for alarm in her missionary’s journal over the declining population of the largely Muslim town. Sr. Christophe Marie reported that during the interwar period, the population of Ujiji had declined from 17,000 to 8,000 residents. She claimed the main causes of the population decrease were syphilis and Islam.1 In Ujiji, European observers alleged that venereal diseases, immorality , and Islam threatened the health of residents. Contemporary European demographers construe population decline largely as a phenomenon related to women’s fertility, but myriad factors operating in specific contexts are linked to and help explain population decline.This chapter examines how experiences and practices that emerged in response to the ivory and slave trade of Central and East Africa continued to affect a community’s fertility during the German and British colonial periods. Migration,2 social relations of production, food production, distribution and consumption,3 gendered and generational religious practices, and status differences all contributed to the state of a community’s health. Political and economic factors contributed to a couple’s, family’s, or mother’s access to food and a healthy diet, as well as maternal health and child survival.4 The ways in which women and men restructured their 175 Disease and Reproductive Health in Ujiji,Tanganyika communities, when that was possible, in response to slavers’ initial attacks and the continuing movement of the slave trade caravans through their midst had implications for the experience of sexually transmitted infections in the community.5 Although fundamental changes in people’s relationships began to take place again as the ivory and slave trade era drew to an end and German colonialism began, the reproductive experiences of Swahili and Manyema women of urban Kigoma/Ujiji did not drastically change. Epidemics declined during the German colonial period, but diseases affecting women’s reproductive health did not. Furthermore, the specter of the ivory and slave trade lingered, and emancipation was not declared until 1922, which undoubtedly made it even more difficult to perceive the transitions in how women and men negotiated their relationships and the types of reproductive outcomes they sought. From the perspective of health and disease, the difference between the ivory and slave trade era and the colonial period is barely noticeable. Even though medical solutions became more available as the German, Belgian, and then British colonial administrations settled in, few drugs were realistically available to the vast majority of Africans before the end of World War II.6 The ivory and slave traders who decimated communities west of LakeTanganyika during the 1860s and 1870s also altered the structure of settlements along the caravan routes. As men, women, and children—some emaciated, some diseased, and some healthy—moved along the caravan routes, they came into contact with new peoples, ideas, and practices and adopted some elements of these notions, rituals, and ways of being.7 Not surprisingly, confrontation and disease exchange commonly occurred in towns along the caravan route. Islam and ethnic associations provided inspiration and community for both the disenfranchised and the privileged as they moved east along the caravan routes and into new urban communities . As the Swahili interacted with locals in urban centers in the interior, Europeans warily noted the growing presence of mosques and Swahili costume and culture. During the 1880s, antislavery efforts in Central and East Africa intensified, and the capacity of the Zanzibar ivory and slave traders to underwrite their expeditions dwindled.8 By the 1890s, many of the major players in the ivory and slave trade had lost their fortunes; as their economic influence waned, so did their power and authority.The epidemics of the 1890s further reduced the ivory and slave trade network’s ability to move goods and services as they had in the past. The shift from the ivory and slave trade to the mercantile economy of the German colonial period included a delayed manumission declared in 1905. As the Maji Maji war of about the same time revealed, the transition to formal German rule was established by the imposition of military authority.9 But actual shifts in identity ,status,and mobility would be contested for a long time.10 Abolition would not be declared until 1922 by the British when they established the protectorate.11 Ujiji, situated on Lake...

Share