Family Resemblances, Practical Interrelations and Material Extensions: Understanding Sexual Prohibitions, Production and Consumption in Kilimanjaro

Before leaving tthe site of my fieldwork in Rombo District, Kilimanjaro Region in September 2001, I wanted to organize a beer party to show my gratitude to the people I had lived with and learned rom for nearly two years. In this part of north-eastern Tanzania, no single homestead can provide the bananas required to brew beer for several hundred people. I therefore visited the neighbours, friends and family of my adoptive homestead to request bananas, as Chagga-speaking people do when organizing a large party.|A month later, when it was time to start preparing the beer, a neighbour, Alfred, helped my friend and assistant, Herman, and me to collect the pledged bananas. First, we heaped the bunches behind the cooking hut of MaSway, the elderly woman in whose homstread, I lived, and the following morning we cut them into hands of half a dozen bananas and spread these on the groung. The tip of each banana was pierced with a machete to drain excess sap before they mere stored for ripening in the cooking hut's attic', or kali. Constantine, a middle-aged man and distant relative who worked for MaSway, wanted to help us. However, as he reached for the bananas, MaSway lunged at his had with her machete and told him to leave them be. I asked MaSway why the man she paid to work for her was not allowed to participate. Herman and Alfred snickered knowingly, while MaSway stuck her thumb between her index and middle fingers to indicate sexual intercourse, and replied: 'He will only go home and do this, and then the bananas will not ripen. They will just lie in the attic untill they rot!' It was clear that the elderly MaSway preferred doing the heavy