What shanga means

By Leah H. Mwainyekule

SHANGA.  When you say this word in the Tanzanian community, heads turn, eyebrows are lifted, giggles are heard, and even laughter erupts.  Yes; beads, known in Kiswahili as shanga are a very important ingredient when it comes to sexual relationships.  They can make a relationship healthy, or break it to pieces.  They can cause trouble, or be a source of reconciliation.  They can bring up competition, or even make peace.  But to one charismatic lady, they are much more than that…to her, shanga means money.

Amina Dilolo Salehe is a simple lady.  She is fifty five years old, divorced, takes care of her grandson, and makes a living through designing and selling beads.  The beads that she makes are specifically the ones worn at the waist by women, and are believed to help spice up the relationship between the two sexes.  She is well known for her talent and has a lot of customers, but she doesn’t forget where she came from.

“Just two years ago my life was completely different.  I lived a kind of life where I wasn’t sure how my tomorrow would be.  I depended on working in other people’s farms where I could gain only 2,000 shillings per month.  It was terrible because my husband and I split twelve years ago, so I really had to work hard in order to be able to survive,” she narrates.  That was when the Worth program was introduced in Mkambarani, Morogoro region in Eastern Tanzania.

“I used to make beads, but nobody knew about me back then because it was something that I did just for fun.  When I joined the Worth group called Mshikamano, I started saving money and then took a 20,000 shilling loan,” explains Amina.

With that loan, Amina was able to purchase more beads so that she could design them fit for the ladies’ waists.  But she had to think of something that would really make the ladies crave for her beads only, and not go for the other nearest dealer.

“And that’s when I decided to come up with designs that are completely different, with sexy names.”  Names of her designs include segere, mwanamke nyonga, mugongo mugongo, utalijua jiji, msumari and ua waridi.

According to Amina, segere is a design that complements the famous dance played by the Zaramo tribe, and mwanamke nyonga is a kind of design that symbolizes the beauty of women using their waists to bring happiness.  Ua waridi is a kind of design with the shape of rose petals, and utalijua jiji is a design with beads depicted as traffic lights.  Another design, mugongo mugongo depicts the spinal cord as well as a famous dance beat where one uses their back to dance to the tunes of music, while the design called msumari has beads piercing out like tiny nails, and she shows them off while singing the famous taarab song “msumari huo unachoma; wapi moyoni, machoni? Kotekote! ” Yes, a really charismatic lady.

“Life difficulties force you to learn something different,” says Amina when explaining about how she came up with those names and designs.  “This has made me get a lot of customers lately, and right now my business has expanded to Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, where people place orders and comepick them,” she says.  Nowadays she could make up to 15,000 shillings a day by just selling her designer beads.

But she doesn’t hesitate to pour praise to the Worth program: “I don’t know where I would have been right now, or what I would have looked like.  All I know is that right know my troubles are over. I don’t have to worry about eating anymore or working in other people’s farms.  I’m done with that now, thanks to the Worth group that taught me how to save money, and get a loan that has made me who I am today.”

And her desire is not only to make money, but also to make others happy.  “Girls here compete with each other on how many strings of beads one is wearing.  I once counted the strings on a certain girl’s waist, and they were actually fifty!” she says laughing.  But the good thing is that they make relationships stronger, and her pocket fatter.  And Worth has a lot to do with that success.

Amina is now happy, thanks to the famous designer beads that have made her a household name in the Mkambarani ward.  She is also happy that other people are happy with her designs.  The Worth group, she says, is her savior and the reason for heads turning, eyebrows lifting and laughter erupting.  Shanga is the word she loves to hear.

  

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