EATING BATS ON PEMBA ISLAND:

A LOCAL INNOVATION OR CULTURAL BORROWING?

Martin T. Walsh

Natural Resources Institute, Chatham, and

School of African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex, U.K.

corrected version of a paper originally published in

Mvita: Newsletter of the Regional Centre for the Study of Archaeology in

Eastern and Southern Africa, 6: 15-18

October 1995

{NB: the page numbers in this version do

not follow those of the published text}

current address:
kisutu@hotmail.com
MVITA No.6, October 1995
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EATING BATS ON PEMBA ISLAND:
A Local Innovation or Cultural Borrowing?
Introduction
The Swahili are virtually unique
among the peoples of East
Africa in their possession of a
maritime culture. Their early
adaptation to the exploitation of
marine resources, coupled with
a growing involvement in the
trade networks of the western
Indian Ocean, both enabled and
prompted them to establish
settlements along more than a
thousand miles of coastline and
offshore islands. The only other
peoples to share in this
spectacular maritime expansion
were the Mwani and Comor-
ians, speakers of closely related
Sabaki Bantu languages. At the
same time the Swahili and their
close relatives did not live off
the sea alone. They also carried
with them an Eastern Bantu
inheritance of mixed farming,
cultivating grain and root crops
and keeping cattle and other
livestock.
Though it is sometimes easy to
forget, hunting and gathering
were also a component in this
inheritance and therefore the
eclectic economy and varied diet
of the Swahili. Not surprisingly,
hunting and gathering plays
much the same role in rural
Swahili communities as it does
among other Eastern Bantu, and
the main differences (including
differences among the Swahili
themselves) are ones of degree.
Swahili methods of hunting and
trapping are little different from
those of their mainland
neighbours, and the range of
permissible animal foods is very
similar, except for the Islamic
prohibition upon pig-meat
(which does not stop pigs being
hunted as vermin and fed to
dogs). Birds, rodents and
herbivores are generally fair
game: carnivores, primates,
reptiles and amphibians are not.
The Swahili, like most East
African Bantu, have fewer
dietary restrictions than Cushitic
pastoralists and mixed farmers
and the speakers of Nilotic lang-
uages who have been influenced
by them (and who, like some
northern Swahili clans of
Eastern Cushitic origin, do not
eat fish). However, they are
nowhere near as omnivorous as
formerly “pure” hunter-
gatherers like the Hadza.
Bats are usually considered
inedible by Bantu-speakers, a
prohibition which is often
rationalised with reference to
their nocturnal habits and
associations with witchcraft
and/or death. The Swahili
inhabitants of Pemba island,
which lies off the northern coast
of Tanzania, provide a striking
exception to this rule. Pembans
appear to be unique among the
Swahili and other people of the
East African coast in that they
hunt and eat bats, and do so with
great relish. Their anomalous
behaviour in this respect
demands an explanation. It
seems extremely unlikely that
this is an inherited practice
which has survived on Pemba
but has been discarded by other
Swahili-speakers. Two main
possibilities remain: either that
Pembans have (for reasons
which also need to be clarified)
innovated the practice, or that
they have, at some point in their
past, borrowed it from a people
who did hunt and eat bats. As
we shall see, it is not easy to
decide between these two
competing hypotheses or
different variants of the
borrowing hypothesis. Before
discussing these at greater
length, however, I will first
describe the Pemba practice in
more detail.
Hunting Bats for Food on
Pemba
At least 11 species of bat (Order
Chiroptera), probably more, are
found on Pemba island. The
Swahili-speaking inhabitants of
Pemba refer to them collectively
as p’opo. Like most other East
African Bantu, Pembans usually
classify bats as birds (ndege),
though close familiarity with
these flying mammals leads
some people to question this.
Not all bats are hunted for food.
The largest, tastiest, and most
sought-after species is the
endemic Pemba Flying Fox,
Pteropus voeltzkowi. The
second-largest species on the
island, the Straw-coloured Fruit
Bat, Eidolon helvum (subspecies
helvum), which is commonly
thought to be an immature
flying fox, is also widely hunted,
though said not to be quite so
tasty. Other edible bats include
Decken’s Horseshoe Bat,
Rhinolophus deckenii. The imp-
ortance of bats in Pemban
culture is reflected in the fact
that there are more than 20
different names for particular
kinds in use on the island. The
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MVITA No.6, October 1995
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majority of these are alternative
names for the principal edible
species, underlining their role in
the local diet.
Many of the smaller species,
however, are not hunted for
food. In some places on the
island colonies of bats, visible or
invisible, are regarded as spirits
or their guardians: the Egyptian
or Long-haired Rousette,
Rousettus aegyptiacus (sub-
species leachii), has been
definitely identified as one
subject of such beliefs. An
extraordinary plague of mal-
evolent spirits which swept
throughout Pemba during and
after Ramadhan in 1995, and
subsequently migrated south to
Unguja island, also had a
nominal association with bats.
These spirits were identified as
manifestations of a single evil
entity, called p’opo bawa, “the
bat’s wing”. This designation is
said to be purely metaphorical
and based upon descriptions of
the frightening shadow cast by
the nocturnal attacker and his
spiritual legions. This is not the
first time, however, that p’opo
bawa or a plague of the same
name has appeared on Pemba,
and it may well be that a more
substantive association with bats
was once known.
A variety of methods are
employed to hunt and trap bats,
either during the daytime when
they are roosting or at night
when they are feeding. Until
recently shotguns were widely
used by hunters, though the
rising cost of ammunition and
the increasing difficulty of
obtaining guns and licenses for
them (especially since the
introduction of multi-party
politics) has much curbed this
practice. The most common
bat-hunting method now is to
shoot them with a catapult, a
favourite occupation of groups
of boys and youths. Throwing-
sticks are sometimes used, but
recognised as much less
accurate and effective. A more
widespread practice is to trap
bats by baiting a tangle of thorn
branches (from misoo trees)
with ripe fruit and lodging this
trap high in a tree on which they
are feeding. On the eastern
coast of Pemba small groups of
men sometimes chop down
Borassus Palms containing
roosting colonies of the Straw-
coloured Fruit-bat, enabling
them to kill up to 100 bats in one
go. The destructiveness of this
practice gives some idea of the
lengths to which Pembans will
go to obtain bats, which form an
occasional substitute for fish in
the local diet. After the bats
have been skinned and their
heads and wings removed large
catches are usually shared out
among the hunters who then
take them home for the family
pot (they are boiled like
chickens). Surplus bats are
given to relatives and friends
and only occasionally sold.
Until the 19th century the
greater part of Pemba was
covered by forests: hence its
Arabic epithet, “The Green
Island”. Settlement appears to
have been concentrated along
the coast, where shifting
cultivation was practised on the
coral rag, and rice and other
crops were grown on a more
permanent basis in the well-
watered valleys which penetrate
inland. Given the abundance of
natural habitat, bat-hunting was
presumably once a sustainable
activity. Unfortunately this is no
longer the case. The large-scale
clearing of the forests for clove
plantations and the continuing
expansion of population and
agriculture have destroyed much
of the habitat of tree-roosting
species. Uncontrolled hunting
with shotguns in the 20th
century has taken a further
heavy toll upon bat populations,
especially that of the endemic
Pemba Flying Fox, which is
now listed as an endangered
species. It remains to be seen
whether current efforts by
conservationists and the
Zanzibar government to ensure
its survival will meet with any
success. Persuading Pembans
not to hunt bats is no easy task.
A Pemban Innovation?
Relatively little archaeological
work has been undertaken on
Pemba. Although we know that
Pemba has been settled by
Swahili-speakers since at least
the second half of the first
millennium, we have no
evidence to tell us how long bats
have been a component in the
Pemban diet. However, we can
speculate on the origins of this
apparently anomalous practice.
One possibility is that the
hunting of bats for food is a
Pemban innovation. We then
have to ask what prompted the
inhabitants of Pemba to modify
their dietary practice to include a
creature which other Swahili-
speakers, not to mention other
East African Bantu, classify as
inedible. The abundance of
large bats on Pemba relative to
other natural sources of meat
could provide an explanation.
Pemba supports a limited
mammalian fauna, apparently as
a consequence of its distance
and long period of geological
separation from the mainland
(though human impacts upon a
more extensive original fauna
cannot be entirely ruled out as a
contributory factor). There is,
for example, only one medium-
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sized herbivore, the Pemba Blue
Duiker (Cephalophus mont-
icola, subspecies pembae).
Bats, however, comprise a much
larger proportion of the
mammalian fauna than they do
on the mainland: roughly half of
the total number of species of
land mammal found on Pemba
are bats. This is presumably
because of the relative ease with
which they have been able to
colonise the island and thrive in
the absence of significant
predators. The Pemba Flying
Fox is one such colonist, the
westernmost representative of a
genus with Austronesian
affinities and endemic forms on
a number of other Indian Ocean
islands.
The Swahili settlers of Pemba
encountered an abundance of
bats relative to other mammals,
and one bat in particular which
was larger and had more meat
than any other which they had
encountered before. Under
these circumstances the incl-
usion of bats in the Pemban diet
could be conceived as a simple
response to locally available
opportunities, initially either as a
result of pressure during periods
of food shortage or perhaps
purely as a means of varying the
diet. The inherited classification
of bats as birds may have
assisted in this transition,
enabling Pembans to overcome
any scruples they may have
originally had as to their
edibility. A similar explanation
can be posited for another
Pemban dietary innovation: the
consumption of freshwater
terrapins, kobe (specifically the
Eastern Hinged Terrapin,
Pelusios castanoides). In this
case the obvious similarity of
these reptiles to edible sea turtles
(an early addition to the Swahili
diet) may have eased their
acceptance as an item of food
(other Swahili-speakers and
their mainland relatives regard
the thought of eating kobe, a
term which includes land
tortoises, with disgust).
There are a number of
problems, however, with this
argument. The lack of meat
protein sources on Pemba has
not seen them switch to eating
other mammals normally
avoided by the Swahili. Vervet
monkeys (Cercopithecus aeth-
iops, subspecies nesiotes), for
example, are abundant on the
island and readily eaten by
Makonde immigrants but not by
their Swahili hosts (with the
exception of isolated and much-
criticised individuals prepared to
break this dietary taboo).
Meanwhile, other island-
dwelling Swahili with similar
opportunities for eating fruit-bats
have not taken up the Pemba
practice. The Straw-coloured
Fruit-bats of Unguja island are
generally only eaten by people
of Pemban origin. Likewise,
although Mafia island and the
adjoining islets support a species
of flying fox related to that
found on Pemba, the local
inhabitants declare that they are
only eaten by visitors from
Pemba. While these examples
do not rule out the possibility
that Pembans innovated in this
regard, they do make it rather
more difficult to explain.
A Borrowed Practice?
The alternative hypothesis is that
the Swahili-speakers of Pemba
adopted bat-eating from a
people who already hunted and
ate them. If this were the case,
then the fact that they were able
to overcome their inherited
scruples suggests that this was
the result of prolonged
interaction, and possibly the
incorporation of a group of bat-
eaters into the Swahili
population. Who might these
people have been? There are at
least three main candidates, and
the case for each is discussed
below.
In one of the published
references to bat-eating on
Pemba it is remarked that one
species was considered a
delicacy by the Arabs on the
island. This raises the possibility
that Pembans have turned to
hunting bats under the influence
of recent (especially 19th
century) Arab immigrants,
whose descendants are still to be
found scattered throughout the
clove plantation areas of Pemba.
However, there are obvious
objections to this argument. As
far as I am aware, the
consumption of bats is not
common practice in Oman or
other parts of the south Arabian
peninsula from where Pemba’s
Arabs originally came. More-
over, Arab immigrants else-
where on the Swahili coast have
not introduced this practice, nor
are they reported to eat bats at
all. Under these circumstances
it is difficult to explain how they
might have fostered a habit
which appears to be deeply
ingrained in Pemban culture, as
widespread in the traditional
fishing villages as it is in the
mixed settlements of the plant-
ation areas. It seems more likely
that the opposite process has
taken place, and that Arab
settlers have adopted existing
Pemban practice.
The second possibility is that
Pembans adopted bat-hunting
under the influence of an earlier
population of hunter-gatherers.
The problem with this argument
is that at present we have no
evidence for the existence of
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MVITA No.6, October 1995
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such a population on Pemba,
though it is a tantalising thought.
We do, however, know that
Pembans, in common with other
Swahili-speakers, had close
contact with hunter-gatherers on
the northern coast before they
migrated and sailed to the south.
A number of Swahili words,
including some zoological
terms, appeared to have been
borrowed from the ancestors of
the Southern Cushitic-speaking
Dahalo, a group of (former)
hunter-gatherers in the north of
the Tana River delta. Other
words, including the generic
name for bats (proto-Sabaki
*mpopo), derive from the
Eastern Cushitic-speaking
Aweera (or Boni), a group of
hunter-gatherers who live
further to the north, on both
sides of the Kenya-Somalia
border. If bat-eating had
likewise derived from one or
other of these groups, then we
would expect it to be more
widely distributed than it is or to
find evidence that it was so in
the past. Unfortunately this
evidence is lacking, as is
information on whether or not
the Dahalo and/or Aweera
actually eat bats, or have ever
done so in the past.
Alternatively we could assume
that the early Pembans had
separate contact with these or
other bat-eating hunter-gatherers
on the mainland before they
migrated to Pemba. Again, we
have no other evidence for this.
Most of the Pemba Swahili
names for different kinds of
bats, including the Pemba
Flying Fox, are composite and
descriptive terms (like p’opo-
maembe, “the mango bat”)
whose transparent etymologies
do not provide any useful clues
in this respect.
A third possibility is that the
Pembans derived their bat-
eating habit from early settlers
from Borneo, in other words the
same people who settled the
island of Madagascar. Sugg-
estions that these people might
have had any direct impact upon
the East African coast are
usually treated with considerable
scepticism. There are, however,
an increasing number of
indications that this might not be
as far-fetched a thesis as
previously thought. Swahili has
at least a sprinkling of words
which appear to have originated
on the other side of the Indian
Ocean: these include the generic
term for fish-poison (utupa) and
the plants bearing it (mtupa),
and the name for a kind of raft
(sap’a in Pemba and other
dialects). There is also some
botanical and zoological
evidence for this connection.
The presence of the Wild
Banana, Musa acuminata, on
Pemba (and nowhere else in the
western Indian Ocean) is
perhaps the best known
example. The problem with
most of this evidence, however,
is that given our current state of
knowledge it is extremely diff-
icult to distinguish between
direct introductions and later,
secondary, introductions from
Madagascar, where the Swahili
also founded coastal settlements.
Even so it is interesting to note
that the Ma’anyan, the Bornean
people whose language is most
closely related to those of
Madagascar, hunt and eat fruit-
bats, as do many of the peoples
of Borneo and elsewhere in the
Indonesian archipelago. Not
surprisingly, therefore, bats are
widely eaten in Madagascar,
while Malagasy-speakers are
thought to have taken this
practice with them to the
Comoro islands, where the
largest species, Livingstone’s
Giant Fruit-bat (Pteropus living-
stonii) is threatened with
extinction. Whether or not close
relatives of the Ma’anyan and/or
Malagasy ever settled on Pemba
(bringing with them a propensity
for eating bats) remains to be
determined: it seems, however,
to be a possibility which is
worth investigating further.
Conclusion
The origin of the Pemban
practice of hunting bats for food
is a puzzle which has yet to be
solved, though the answer
probably lies in one or other of
the solutions proposed above.
Further comparative ethno-
graphic and linguistic work may
provide additional clues, but the
most telling evidence probably
lies buried in the ground,
awaiting careful excavation and
analysis by archaeologists
(though the current practice of
discarding the heads and wings
of bats before the torso is taken
home to be cooked suggests that
it may be difficult to identify
bats themselves in an arch-
aeological context).
Inconsequential though it may
seem, the Pemba case raises a
whole series of unresolved
issues about the historical
emergence of the Swahili and
their distinctive economy. As
we have seen, the role of hunter-
gatherers as well as possible
Bornean or early Malagasy
contacts in Swahili history is
poorly understood. The chron-
ology of early Swahili
settlement on Pemba and other
Indian Ocean islands, not to
mention the coast itself, is still
very much the subject of
guesswork, though recent
archaeological and linguistic
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MVITA No.6, October 1995
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research has given us a number
of pointers. The precise relation
between the Swahili and their
fellow long-distance migrants,
the Mwani and the Comorians,
is also something of a mystery,
and in this case recent linguistic
work appears only to have made
it a more complicated one. The
Pemba case provides an analogy
for what is perhaps the key
problem in understanding the
emergence and development of
these related peoples: how did
they learn to exploit the marine
resources of the coast? To what
extent did they simply innovate
and adapt their existing practices
and technologies? To what
extent did they adopt or absorb
the practices and technologies of
others? And who were these
others?
Acknowledgements
In addition to the many
Pembans who have shared their
knowledge of bats and bat-
hunting with me (and which I
hope to describe in greater detail
in future papers), I would like to
give special thanks to Tony
Archer, Tuula Kurikka, Abigail
Entwistle and Nadia Corp for
the information and many ideas
on this subject which they too
have provided.
Martin Walsh is a Visiting
Research Fellow in the School
of African and Asian Studies,
University of Sussex. He is
currently working for the
Natural Resources Institute
(U.K.) as a social
anthropologist on the
ODA-funded Zanzibar Cash
Crops Farming Systems
Project in the Ministry of
Agriculture, Livestock and
Natural Resources, Zanzibar,
Tanzania.