Tobacco People
Malawi Sarah Hazlegrove
Tobacco People is a trademark of Sarah Hazlegrove Inc. Photographs Copyright Sarah Hazlegrove Inc. 2013 Text Copyright Sarah Hazlegrove Inc.
No portion of this book can be reproduced without the written permission of Sarah Hazlegrove.
Book design by Sarah Hazlegrove
Tob ac c o Pe opl e
S a r a h Ha z l e g rov e
Affricae Tabula Nova by Sebastian Munster 1588. Malawi is undefined on this map. However, The large inland lake to the west of Mozambique is most likely Lake Nyasa/Malawi. Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps www.raremaps.com
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Malawi
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Malawi is called The Warm Heart of Africa. It is a small landlocked country in southeastern Africa surrounded by Tanzania to the North, Zambia to the west and Mozambique to the east. Its inhabitants number over 17 million. The population is comprised of over 5 major African tribes including the Chewa, Lomwe, Yao, Ngoni, Tumbuku and Nyanja. Of the country’s residents, 85% live in rural areas where they carve out a basic living as farmers. Families grow corn, groundnuts, tomatoes and other vegetables to sustain themselves. They also grow tobacco. One in five families relies substantially upon income from tobacco production or employment in the tobacco industry. Malawi has been shaped by conflict and commerce and has been transformed by tobacco. From the colonial period when Malawi was called Nyasaland, and was a protectorate of the British Crown, to the present, tobacco has played an important role in Malawi’s development. Today, close to 2 million “Queen Nzinga seated among her maidservants watches a drummer” by Father Antonio Cavazzi 1670’s. Image reference Bassani-10. www.slaveryimages.org
people hold tobacco related jobs. Money from the exportation of tobacco accounts for over half of the country’s total economic revenue.
Tobacco was initially introduced to East Africa by the Portuguese even though other narcotic and hallucinogenic plants had found their way to Africa centuries before. Since before the first century, merchants from China, India and the South Seas traded with the Sultans of East Africa. Sailors from the East brought with them cannabis and betel nut and a wide variety of pipes and paraphernalia used for smoking weed or making a betel quid. Smoking traditions in Africa were well established by the time tobacco arrived. As it traveled from village to village, tobacco was given different names. It was said to have medicinal as well as magical properties. As was true with the tribes of the Americas, Africans incorporated tobcco into religious rites as well as keeping it as part of their daily routine. 4
Map of East Africa. Circa 1602
Pipes were significant possessions of tribal chiefs and often buried with them upon their death. Some of the largest pipes recorded for smoking tobacco were discovered in Africa. At times they were no more elaborate than deep holes dug in the ground that were then filled with smoldering leaves. Tribal members would stand around the edge of the pit and use long hollowed-out sticks of wood to draw in the smoke. 5
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.� - Wendell Berry
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Tobacco farmer. Kasungu. March 2011
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“There is beauty in the rhythm of the growing and harvesting seasons. Seed to seedbed, harvest to curing. Growing tobacco is much the same no matter where you go; a familiar rhythm played out over the centuries and across many different lands. It is against this backdrop of sameness that the people and cultures, like colorful clouds against a blue sky, stand out brilliant and unique�. - Sarah Hazlegrove
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A smallholder farmer carries tobacco laden sticks to his curing barns. March 2011
A field worker at a large commercial farm carries empty clips back to the fields.
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Tobacco cures in the eaves of a house. Namitete. March 2011
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The market on the way to Salima. March 2011
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NYAU and GULE WAMKULU The word Nyau has multiple meanings. It means mask or initiation, but it also refers to a secret society of initiated male members of the Chewa and Nyanja tribes. The Chewa believe that their ancestors and the unborn exist alongside the living. Perhaps the most important Nyau belief is that they are able to communicate with the ancestral world. They call this act The Great Prayer, and as part of their intiation rite they must live in the village graveyard for several weeks. When a Nyau performs ritual dances, he wears a mask that conceals his identity as he represents a specific animal or human spirit from beyond the grave. Because the spirits may wish to seek revenge on the living, villagers treat the Nyau dancers with great respect, avoiding them if they come near. One is expected to drop coins on the ground for the dancer to appease the spirits. It is not advisable to hand the coins directly; the spirit world is unpredictable, and the Nyau may drag that person back to the grave. Nyau traditionally perform their masked dances at funerals, memorial services and intitations. The best known and longest dance performed by the Nyau is the Gule Wamkulu, or “great prayer to our ancestors,� which may date to the great Chewa Empire of the 17th century. The purpose of the dance is said to be a way of communicating messages of the ancestors to the villagers and making possible continued harvests and continued life. A Nyau member dances in the road near a tobacco field. Mchinji
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The daughter of a tobacco farmer adorns her hair with vibrant green hitchhiker seeds. Lilongwe. March 2011
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Workers carry leaves from the curing barns to a warehouse where they will be baled.
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The auction floor. Lilongwe. March 2011
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AN IMPORTANT CROP It is not possible to have a real understanding of why tobacco is so important to farming communities until you take a deeper look into the lives of the people who depend on it to sustain them. As Nkosi Perembe of the Ngoni tribe of Kabwafu says, “tobacco pays the bills.� The profits from one hectare of tobacco are higher than multiple hectares of either maize or groundnuts which are two of the most important food crops grown in Malawi. With a population that exceeds 10 million and only about 40% of the dryland of Malawi suitable for farming, it is easier to understand why each hectare and how it is managed is critical to the well being of the family, the village and the communities at large. One in five Malawian households derives a substantial share of its cash income directly from tobacco. The money helps farmers buy seeds for food crops, pay for school fees for their children, make improvements on their homes and farms and also provides the extra income to get them started in other businesses. If it were not for tobacco, Malawi would slip into a subsistence economy. To the right, a woman grinds maize using traditional methods. She will then pay to have her maize ground to a finer consistency to make the Nsima that she and her family eat at every meal. Maize accounts for approximately 55% of the total daily caloric intake of the average Malawian.
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KAMBALAME Salateyere Kambalame sits with his wife Lezine Julias Kambalame on the front porch of their home several kilometers north of Lilongwe. Attached to the house is their curing barn. Recently harvested tobacco lies on the ground ready to hang in the rafters. Salateyere began growing tobacco in 1996, and after two decades of hard work and good returns on his tobacco he is by local standards, a very successful man. He has 4 goats, 3 cows, an ox cart, and a tea room near the road. He is rightfully proud that he has provided for his 8 children and their children these past 20 years. Salateyere and Lezine make a good team. She is a hard worker and cooks meals for the laborers who help Salateyere in the fields and she runs the tearoom as well. The success of the smallholder farmer is dependent on several factors but none is more important than the strength of his labor force. It is rare to find that kind of dedication outside the family. Salateyere and Lezine lost their two oldest sons to AIDS in 2010. They were 26 and 30 years old. The loss to the family has been devastating. The eldest daughters are now helping their father in the fields, but they are also responsible for tending to the needs of their brothers’ children who now live with them along with their own children. 106
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Zikomo Thank you
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It has been about 18 years since we stopped growing tobacco at Forkland, our family’s farm in Cumberland County, Virginia. The weathered old barns are still standing. The tobacco sticks piled in the corners of the tobacco barns are gathering cobwebs and make perfect fortresses for field mice. The fire pits which once cradled logs that would burn for days are now covered with tarps. Empty seed bags, fertilizer and odd parts to old tractors litter the charred and pock marked floors; the sunken graves of our tobacco past. Tobacco was an integral part of the lives of my ancestors. The relationship between man and this plant which was shared by nearly everyone in colonial Virginia has made a lasting mark on my own family for centuries. My fascination with this powerful plant could be called an addiction. I miss the spicy smell of dark fired tobacco curing in the barns. I love the smell of cigar and pipe tobacco, and yet, I was never a real smoker. What draws me into tobacco is its history, its resliency against all odds. It is just a plant, but one that has shaped economically and historically almost every country on the planet for hundreds of years. As a photographer I feel strongly that documenting the changes in tobacco cultivation is of historical significance. I realized perhaps too late the importance of photographing the changes that were taking place at our own famly farm. A big part of our family’s history disappeared before I was able to create an archive of images or preserve the stories. It was this realization that led me to begin a personal journey in to the lives of other tobacco growing families around the world. Tobacco People started in Virginia, the Connecticut River Valley, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and The Dominican Republic. The project has expanded to include Brazil, Indonesia, Malawi and Cuba. Over the next five years, India, China, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Louisianna and the tobacco producing countries of the EU will be included.
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