Stephen B. Backman and Drs. David P. Crandall, Anthropology, and Gary Burgess, History

Kizimkazi Dimbani is a village of just over 1500 people on the southern end of the island of Zanzibar, which is about 50 miles off of the coast of Tanzania. In the fall of 1998 I went to Zanzibar with a group of seven BYU students under the International Study Programs Office in the Kennedy Center. The group performed a variety of research projects including topics focusing on health, conservation biology, village economics, education, and anthropology. My project was based on a study of the relationship between the kinship and political systems of the village. Through our research we were able to develop rather close relationships with a great variety of individuals from the village. During our four months in the village we gained significant respect for the lives of certain individuals from the village. As a result I had a great desire to document some of their life histories.

With the assistance of this grant I was able to pursue my desire this past fall and summer. I returned to Zanzibar with two new groups from BYU International Study Programs, acting as the group facilitator on both occasions. These groups were both focused on performing research projects similar to those done in 1998. I spent my time conducting interviews and collecting information on five individuals from the village of Kizimkazi Dimbani. Each individual was someone with whom I had already developed a close relationship through my previous experiences in the village. I tried to select a variety of individuals who represented different generations and aspects of village life. My final selections were an old man who had worked for the government but now makes a living fishing, an older woman who was highly respected among the women of the village, a middle-aged man acting as the village secretary, a middleaged woman who ran the village dispensary, and a young man struggling to take care of his widowed mother and younger siblings.

The task of collecting these individuals= life histories was much more complicated than I had expected. Although I had already established close relationship with each of the individuals, I still had a difficult time getting them to express the information that I had wanted. Another challenge that I was faced with was language. The people of the village spoke only Swahili, with the exception of one of my informants. I could speak conversational Swahili, but when it came to conducting interviews my Swahili was often inadequate. I used a translator when possible, but I often had to perform the interviews myself. I recorded each of the interviews on cassette so that the information would not be lost through my lack of Swahili, but I=m afraid that I was not able to direct the interviews in the same manner that I would have been able to if they had been conducted in English.

One final deterrence that I was faced with was working with the Zanzibar government. As university students performing research we were required to obtain the proper visa and permits to conduct our studies. The responsibility of arranging for all of this lay upon my head as the group facilitator. Working with any government is not an easy process, but it is especially difficult working with third world governments. Because of the amount of bureaucracy involved, coupled with the lack of efficient communication, the process dragged on for months. As a result, I lost nearly eight weeks either going from one government office to another or waiting for permission to come through. This caused me to get a very late start on my research, and I ended up not having as much time as I had hoped and needed to collect sufficient information.

Fortunately I was able to return to Zanzibar for a third time this past summer with the second group of students. Although the majority of my time was spent on other studies, I was able to do some follow up on my life histories research. Since the majority of my interviews were recorded on cassette tapes in Swahili I had to spend a number of hours transcribing and translating them into English. I am still in the process of transcribing and translating the last of my interviews, so the final product is still pending.

Although I was faced with a number of challenges, I feel that my research was a success. I was able to gather enough information to help depict the lives of different individuals from Kizimkazi Dimbani. These life histories will stand as a tribute to the individuals and their families. They may be used as an anthropological tool for anyone trying to gain an understanding of the Swahili culture. Personally I able to gain experience in anthropological field work which would have been difficult to otherwise obtain, and I gained a greater understanding of the lives of the people of Zanzibar that would have been impossible to have learned through books and lectures.