Chagga
The Chagga (also Dschagga, Tschagga, Waschagga ) are a people living around the Kilimanjaro massif in Tanzania .
They have been using a sophisticated irrigation system for generations. This system - integrated into a tree garden culture with several hundred different edible plant species (fruits etc.) on several levels of vegetation (trees, bushes and grasses of different heights) - has enabled them to practice intensive agriculture on the slopes of Kilimanjaro for centuries. However, most of the canals have now been replaced by pipelines. This system is endangered by the clearing of large parts of the original rainforest below the border of the national park ( 1950 m ) and the resulting desertification and desolation of the soil in connection with increasing drought.
The Chagga comprise around 800,000 people and are a Bantu-speaking , farming people. They traditionally cultivate banana from which they included a Mbege called pombe ( Kiswahili produced for "beer"), and keep especially cattle . In pre-colonial times they had a chief system, the individual clans often waged war against each other. After the establishment of the German East Africa colony , the cultivation of coffee began , for which the locations on Kilimanjaro offered the best conditions.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Chagga made good profits from selling coffee. Many were therefore able to send their children to secondary schools and universities. An educational class arose, which also included many teachers, who were spread all over Tanzania. Many of these families have been affected by HIV / AIDS since the 1990s and especially in the new millennium. Dying parents send their children back home to their grandparents and relatives on Kilimanjaro. Because of this, there is a demographic imbalance in this region. There are many children and many old people.
Under German colonial rule the Chagga often served as auxiliary troops , sometimes also in the Schutztruppe itself. In 1891/92 there was an uprising after Carl Peters , Reich Commissioner for the Kilimanjaro area from 1891 , his concubine Jagodia and a servant with whom she had a relationship , hang up and destroy their home villages. It took months for the Germans to fight the rebellious Chagga down.
The historical center of the Chagga is Kidia in Old- Moshi , where the German Evangelical Lutheran missionary Bruno Gutmann had a church built, a mission station and a hospital established and the plantation economy promoted. For decades he intensively researched the language and culture of the people.
Today the Chagga are exposed to strong social change due to a lack of real estate . Many are now active in agriculture in neighboring regions or in tourism, especially in the region around Moshi.
literature
- August Widenmann: The Kilimanjaro People. Anthropological and ethnographic from Jaggalande. Supplementary booklet No. 129 to Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen. Perthes, Gotha 1899.
- Bruno Gutmann : Dschagganeger poetry and thinking. Contributions to East African folklore. Verlag der Evang.-Luth. Mission, Leipzig 1909.
- Bruno Gutmann: People's Book of the Wajagga. Legends, fairy tales, fables and sagas retold to the jaggans. Verl. D. Evangelical Luth. Mission, Leipzig 1914.
- Bruno Gutmann: Letters from Africa. Verlag der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Mission, 3rd edition, Leipzig 1925.
- Bruno Gutmann: The law of the jagga. Beck publishing house, Munich 1926.
- Bruno Gutmann: The tribal teachings of the Jagga. 3 volumes. Beck, Munich. Volume 1 1932, Volume 2 1935, Volume 3 1938.
- Bruno Gutmann: Africans - Europeans in closest relation to each other. Collected essays by Bruno Gutmann. On the occasion of the 90th birthday of Bruno Gutmann ed. by Ernst Jaeschke. Bibliography by Bruno Gutmann and bibliography, pp. 215–231. Evangelical publishing work 1966.
- Tillmann Prüfer : Saint Bruno: The incredible story of my great-grandfather on Kilimanjaro . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3499630576
- Astrid Lindgren and Anna Riwkin-Brick : Sia lives on Kilimanjaro . Oetinger, 1958 (children's / photo book).
Web links
- Tillmann Prüfer: Genealogy. I had an ancestor in Africa (ZEITmagazin No. 24/2015 - June 11, 2015.)
- Leipziger Missionswerk: Bruno Gutmann
- Primary literature and secondary literature by Bruno Gutmann in the joint union catalog GVK Enter "Bruno Gutmann" in the search.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz: GUTMANN, Bruno. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 405-408.