By Shelby Mohrs
Shelby Mohrs on site. Photo credit: Adria LaViolette.
One of the most significant steps toward ethical fieldwork for an archaeologist is learning the local language of the community you are working. After all, how can you prove you are committed to an equal research partnership if you make no effort to learn their language? For me, that means learning Kiswahili!
My dissertation research concerns reconstructing Swahili cuisine in Zanzibar through archaeological plant remains. I typically spend a lot of time dumping soil into buckets of water to retrieve ancient seeds and staring at them through a microscope. However, I spent two months in Stonetown (Zanzibar) this summer, breaking out of the lab and into archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork. From digging at the Old Fort in Stonetown to running around the island in search of clay pits to surveying Darajani Market for bags of sorghum and millet, I accomplished a lot of preliminary research for my dissertation project (along with enjoying some great food!).
Thanks to Mwalimu Mwangi and Mwalimu Janet Ochieng and a year’s worth of Kiswahili classes here at Northwestern, I could conduct a significant portion of my fieldwork in Kiswahili. My Kiswahili skills allowed me to convey a level of commitment and respect to my interlocutors that would not have been possible if I had only spoken English. It also allowed me to form more meaningful connections: daily Mambo’s, Habari’s, and Shikamoo’s led to lasting friendships and tearful goodbyes as I stopped to see friends and neighbors on my way to the airport going home.
I am incredibly grateful to my interlocutors and friends in Zanzibar for indulging my elementary Kiswahili. Still, perhaps most of all, I am thankful to Mwalimu Mwangi and Mwalimu Janet for having given me the skills to form these meaningful relationships in the first place.
Shelby Mohrs is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Anthropology Department at Northwestern University.