MY GRANDMOTHER AT TIME OF THE GERMANS

My great grandfather Ibrahim was a mYao from Malawi. He was in Tosamaganga as a foreman in the Catholic Church building projects, there is a story that he was also later involved in the building of the Mshindo Catholic church in Iringa town.

While he working in Tosamaganga he met a mGogo woman who was working for the nuns at Tosamaganga and married her. The marriage produced  four children two survived to old age. His daughter  Costanzia  my grandmother, who was  better known by her traditional name Mbeve, and  her younger brother Koloneli, who was better known  as Chumachamoto

This family must have been living in Iringa, at the time the town was very small. Iringa  town began as a German army post in 1896, Mbeve was born just seven years later on  26 September 1903.

Soldiers of the German army

Mbeve did have some memories of the Germans, even though they left in defeat after the 1st World War in 1914 when she was still a child. One of the chilling stories in my grandmother’s memories were the hanging days.

There would be announcements days before, calling people to attend the hanging of people the Germans felt were not fit to live in the society. Strange to say, she told us on such days the mood would be more of fanfare than a day of misery. People would wear their best clothes, and put on any ornament that would make them look outstanding. Mbeve had pierced ears with quite big holes, in the tradition of her mother’s tribe. On the hanging days she would pretty herself with aluminum foils coiled and inserted in the holes of her ears. This could be so because in the at the time, there were very few Wahehes in  Iringa town. Most Africans were soldiers of the German army, the Nubians, Nyamwezi, Zaramos, and Shangaans from Mozambique. And those who were being hanged were the Wahehe.
There were two kinds of hangings, one was the rope, the condemned man would be made to stand on a a small platform or a wooden box with a rope around his neck, and a soldier would suddenly  kick out the platform  and the condemned man would hang until dead.  The other very cruel method which they used, I have never seen the method mentioned  in any history book, but all history books were written by them, so no surprise there, was hanging by an iron hook. A big iron hook, like the ones used by butchers hanging meat, would be hung up on a tree,  and a condemned man would stand on a box with the sharp end of the hook directed under the chin, then the platform would be kicked out and the hook would stick horribly into the man’s head. My grandmother  Mbeve told me some of  those who were hanged this way  would take hours to die with intense pain. The area where the hangings took place is still to date called Kitanzini, literary where they hang people.