African Books Collective is now offering Dr. Ian Dicks’ 2012 publication, “An African Worldview: The Muslim Amacinga Yawo of Southern Malawi”, as a print-on-demand edition for 34.95GBP. Follow this link for more information.
Also available from Amazon.com.
We have added for download (1.6MB) a PDF document from Dr. Ian Dicks entitled “It Takes an Initiation to Make a Yawo Chief”. Published in “Religion in Malawi” No. 16, pages 3-11. [download here]
After the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika a few days ago by heart attack, Zomba-born Joyce Banda became Malawi’s 4th President and the first female head of state in southern Africa. She comes from a Christian Yawo (aka Yao, Ajawa) tribal and religious background making her an especially interesting figure to this website and those who frequent it. 
We pray for peace to reign in Malawi over the next days, weeks and months to follow and we mourn with the rest of the nation over the next 10 days.
In Mozambique’s Niassa Province there sits a relatively sleepy community bordering Malawi. The town is called Mandimba and serves as a crossroads to bigger destinations: Lichinga 2-4 hours to the north, Cuamba (and eventually Nampula and Mozambique Island a full day’s drive later) to the east.
HIV/AIDS is a very real thing in the community and is spread easily through the popular local customs in which young women are paid to sleep with professional drivers accustomed to driving their loads from east to west and back again. Also, due to lack of other things to do to keep young people busy, sex is an enjoyable activity to ease the boredom.
A homegrown group of youth known as INJOSSE, headed by Mozambican-born but Malawian-educated Legion Benjamin, is doing what it can to educate the young people of the area about the dangers that come from excessive alcoholic drinking and participating in unprotected sex. They operate from the sede of Mandimba up north by 30 or so kilometers to the community of Luelele. INJOSSE offers skills training (in computers, audio and video production, etc.), teaches in schools and educates through community drama.
In 2009 a group of 4 American university students assisted a locally-based American with the filming of one such drama performed in the Luelele area. Due to technical matters the footage was lost for some years but was recently obtained and now “Kusagula Umi” (To Choose Life) can finally be enjoyed by speakers of Ciyawo wherever they may be found.
The story follows a group of young men who are fond of sleeping with prostitutes and drinking alcohol. One friend in the group gets sick and is taken to a traditional healer who tries to cure him only to fail and this friend dies. It is the first in a series of ongoing stories to be filmed. (The length runs for 1 hour).
The play’s writer and INJOSSE founder, Legion Benjamin, shares from a filmed interview about the drama:
In this play we are having people who are youth. They are destructive; they are fond of drinking beer, taking alcohol; they are womanizing. They are not protecting themselves; they are not using a condom. We are trying to sensitize the community of the negative behaviour and the results of [that] negative behavior.
Before the starting of this organization it was me who saw a young girl who was very drunk in the company of elder men and it was felt that there was need to do something (bearing in mind that when a person is drunk he cannot protect himself; he cannot hold himself from having unprotected sex).
I thought it good to come up with this organization to sensitize the community. Young people here, we are fond of taking beer. When having sex we don’t protect ourselves.
I should say there is misconception about condom use. They [are] saying that these white people are the ones trying to promote the use of condoms whereby there is a sickness behind [the condoms]. They are trying to reduce the number of the black people. More or less political to the understanding of the people. They say the whites, when they are making these condoms, there is a virus that is spreading HIV to the community, but with a purpose.
For more information about this DVD, email legionbenjamin (at) gmail (dot) com. Or phone/SMS the following numbers: in Mozambique +258.829.949.887, 820.772.239; in Malawi +265.993.666.600, 995.924.572.
Released in March 2012 by Malawian-based Kachere Series, An African Worldview: the Muslim Amacinga Yawo of Southern Malawi is a 510-page work focusing on the life and culture of the Amacinga Yawo people. (Copies can be purchased at bookstores throughout Malawi where Kachere materials are sold, as well as ordered online at Amazon and other retailers OR through contacting this website. E-book editions to follow.)
About the Book
In this book Ian Dicks informs the reader about the ways in which the Yawo of Malawi view the world. The Yawo are predominantly Muslim, yet many maintain strong links with their traditional religion. They are a largely oral society, teaching and reinforcing their beliefs and practices using oral literature, which includes myths, proverb, proverbial stories, songs of advice and prayers at various stages of the life cycle, particularly during initiation events.
Ian Dicks describes in detail the Yawo’s material world, customs, beliefs and rituals, and juxtaposes these with Yawo oral literature. He then examines them under six worldview categories, the result being a rich description of the way in which the Yawo see the world. This book is not an armchair study but has the feel of being written by an eyewitness, by someone who has had first-hand experience of the subject and who seeks to describe this in a manner which is sensitive to the Yawo and their culture.
Table of Contents
2 : Worldview
Worldview: The development of the concept
Worldview: The eighteenth century until the twenty-first century
Towards a definition of worldview and its function in life
The function of worldview
What shapes a worldview?
What changes worldview?
Understanding worldview in order to bring about change
Worldview categories
3 : The material world, customs and rituals of the Muslim Amacinga Yawo
Material culture and customs
Social system
Yawo religious structure and practice
Amacinga Yawo traditional religion
Rituals and ceremonies
Yawo leadership
Boy’s rite of passage: Jando
Birth rites: Litiwo
Girl’s rite of passage: Msondo
Funeral: Malilo
4 : Yawo Islam and Islamized Yawo: the little and the great tradition
The Establishment of Islam amongst the Yawo
Types of Religious Systems
The Stages of Yawo Islamization
Differences between the Qadiriyya and the Sukuti
5 : Toward a hermeneutic of Yawo oral literature
Introduction
Toward an understanding of the Yawo proverb
Interpreting the Yawo proverb
Toward an understanding of Yawo narrative
Interpreting Yawo narrative
Toward an understanding of Yawo initiation songs
Interpreting the Yawo initiation songs
Toward an understanding of Yawo traditional prayers
6 : Toward an understanding of a Yawo worldview
Self
Allegiance
Causality
Time
Space
Classification
Appendices : Introduction
Appendix 1 : Corpus of Yitagu ni Adisi
Appendix 2 : Corpus of Adisi
Appendix 3 : Corpus of Ngani Sya Kalakala
Appendix 4 : Corpus of Misyungu ja Jando
Appendix 5 : Corpus of Misyungu ja Msondo
Appendix 6 : Corpus of Misyungu ja Litiwo
Appendix 7 : Corpus of Misyungu Ja Ucimwene
Appendix 8 : Corpus of Mapopelo
Appendix 9 : Types of Religious Groups in T.A. Jalasi
Appendix 9a : Survey of Islamic groups in T.A. Jalasi 2007
Appendix 9b : Survey of Islamic groups in T.A. Jalasi 2008
Much has been written about AIDS in Africa. The whole situation seems frankly pretty hopeless and the idea that Malawian met and women can get is that it is inevitable that one will contract AIDS and die an early death. HIV-positive status is even becoming a bragging right among many men, as evidenced by ongoing research (evidenced in the first article I refer to).
What does this have to do with Chiyao.org? The Malawian town of Mangochi, a majority Yawo area, is a popular spot for vendors who want to purchase fish from Lake Malawi. It is also a reputed “red light” area for traveling Malawians. (As a foreigner, I wasn’t aware of that perspective on Mangochi though I do know my current home in Mandimba, Mozambique on the border with Malaw, is also known as a red-light area due to the international transport route between the two countries).
To learn more about the situation of AIDS in Malawi and specifically how Malawians popularly talk about AIDS, I recommend reading the 2003 article “My Girlfriends Could Fill A Yanu-Yanu Bus: Rural Malawian Men’s Claims About Their Own Serostatus” by Amy Kaler. A more recent article published in 2009, “Condom Semiotics: Meaning and Condom Use in Rural Malawi“, by Iddo Tavory and Ann Swidler of University of California, is also worth a read if you are interested in following this present-day health crisis. (The second article specifically mentions that many of the interviews done for the research were conducted in Chiyao.)
A word of warning: there is frank talk about sex in these articles.
I have added the following resources to this site (kept intact without editing from the original source) available for immediate download geared toward Yawo-speaking Christians:
Translations from “Youth Aflame: Manual for Discipleship” by Winkie Pratney
Translations from “Shepherd’s Staff”, edited by Ralph Mahoney
Just finished reading through this journal produced by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Chancellor College, University of Malawi. In this issue I found of special note the following articles:
Also of note I see reference to Richard Gracious Gadama’s work from Mzuzu University (2009) “The Role of Yao Muslim Women in HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care: Experiences of Muslim Women in Zomba-Malosa Area.”
Finally, this article could be of interest for those looking at matters of Yawo and Islam and the Christian/Muslim dialogue in Malawi: “Peaceful Co-existence and Religious Tolerance among Christians and Muslims in Malawi: an Evaluation of the Interfaith Project in Mangochi District” by Thomas Bizeck of the Catholic University of Malawi.
Courtesy of Rebecca J. Vander Meulen based in Lichinga, Mozambique. Photography site at http://rvmphotography.com/. Original content here. Used with permission.
