Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
completely unacceptable to the men and women interviewed. Men cited
the weakness of women as a reason, although Quirimban women regularly
carried 30-litre water barrels from one end of the island to the other, felled
mangroves, carried the wood long distances and did most of the heavy
agriculture work. Men also cited women's inability to swim. There was a
traditional reluctance to teach girls to swim even though they were likely to
spend a lot of time on boats, and I was told by a number of dif erent people
that women often drowned in boat accidents. The women interviewed
did not have any aspirations to i sh in the trap or net i shery but when
pressed did suggest that economic factors made it impossible to consider
trap i shing. In Tanzania a clear distinction was made between women's
territory and men's for marine resource collection (Mtwara - M. Guard
pers. comm.; Bagamoyo - Semesi et al., 1998). Women i shed in water up
to waist deep. In deeper water, where a boat would be needed, men took
over. In some Tanzanian coastal communities these designated areas led to
conl icts of interest in the community and to members of the same family
working against each other over these rights. In Kwale District, Kenya,
there was a similarly inl exible division of labour with men i shing and
felling mangroves and women collecting invertebrates, growing food and
collecting i rewood. Men there maintained that this was because women
weren't strong enough to do the 'men's' work, whereas women maintained
that the reason they didn't do this work was i nancial (Juma, 1998).
There were a few options for catching i n i sh open to women. They
could do the
capulana
i shing (mentioned previously), they could catch i sh
that had been trapped in intertidal pools as part of intertidal gleaning and
they could empty their family's
luwando
or fence trap. Women collected
three main groups of invertebrates in the intertidal seagrass beds of the
Montepuez Bay:
Mbari
(
Pinctada nigra
).
Mbari
were collected at low spring tides
from the stalks of the large seagrass species
Enhalus acoroides
.
They were sold for fresh consumption and also dried for sale on the
mainland.
Macaza
●
(
Pinna muricata
).
Macaza
were also collected at low spring
tides from intertidal areas of sand and the seagrass
Thalassia hemp-
richii
. The majority of the animal was discarded and only the small
adductor muscle was retained to eat.
Ombe
●
(
Barbatia fusca
). Ark shells were collected on the intertidal
l ats and in
Thalassia hemprichii
at low tide, the women skilfully
detecting their presence beneath the surface of the sand using their
toes. Ark shells were also either consumed fresh locally or dried and
sold in Pemba.
●
