The Women Turning a Private Ritual Into a Public Business

Years later, ukungwi has steadily evolved, with each iteration shifting further from its genesis under the influence of globalization, technology and socio-economic change. Today, ukungwi refers more to love and relationship guidance for brides than to the coming-of-age rituals it once represented. Puberty instruction is now less common, with mothers and grandmothers opting to instruct their girls themselves about bodies and hygiene. Significantly, women remain the core practitioners of this Swahili custom, allowing them to remain central in reimagining what it means to be a kungwi in modern era.

The most notable evolution of ukungwi is that it is now considered a form of labour that women practitioners can earn money, rather than a role they were expected to assume when the occasion arose. This is particularly the case in urban Swahili communities, where people may no longer organize their lives around these cycles but still value the education they provide. Today, members of these communities compensate a kungwi for the labour of instructing young brides preparing for marriage.

Similar to other women-dominated labour such as domestic work and childcare, ukungwi is not formally acknowledged as work despite its role in social reproduction. As a result, current wakungwi must remain innovative to keep their work economically viable. Hawa Abdul, a kungwi based in Kinondoni district, Dar es Salaam, has been making a living out of ukungwi for the past three years. She tells me that despite the sentiment that these life-cycle practices are outdated, many parents still seek her out when their daughters are preparing for marriage. Abdul’s practice draws inspiration from Makonde rituals, where she herself received instruction as a bride. Together with other older women, she guides the bride-to-be over a period of at least three days, offering counselling on homemaking, sex and marriage. The instruction also includes long-standing practices like msondo, an indigenous Makonde dance characterized by hip gyrations. ‘I don’t want to stray too far from our culture. Ukungwi is who are, if I change it too much then it will no longer be ours,’ Abdul explains. She largely relies on her network to reach more people. ‘It is not always brides. Sometimes young women come to me because they feel they missed out on this education. Times have changed, many women live with men before marriage but still want to feel like they are good partners.’

Although many wakungwi, like Abdul, take a traditional approach, just as many have branded themselves more broadly as love and relationship experts grounded in the traditional expertise of ukungwi. This slight distinction has allowed them to appeal to people from backgrounds without a history of practising ukungwi.Salma Marshed (@mama_love_kungwi on Instagram), for instance, a kungwi based in Ilala district, Dar es Salaam, frequentlyuploads videos discussing sex and relationship issues to her 207,000 Instagram followers, almost like an agony aunt. Scaling her services onto social media has not only given her public recognition—she is often invited to radio and TV shows for her insight—but has also opened her up to more clients. Marshed notes that her online work has introduced her to clients she might never have met: ‘It is no longer only Swahili and Muslim women; I have women from all backgrounds sending me direct messages for more insight on sex, marriage or just womanhood.’ Her approach to ukungwi takes the form of private, in-person or virtual conversations with women.

When the question of preserving cultural heritage arises, Abdul is steadfast that ukungwi must remain private if it is to remain authentic. For her, the skills and knowledge that define an expert are manifested by a woman’s success in the private space of her household, particularly her ability to keep her partner satisfied. In fact, it is still common for women who perform their wifely duties inadequately to be sent away from her husband’s home, back to her parents. So, when I probed for more information on her practice, Abdul often retorted that I would need to pay for a session to know more. At some point, she teased: ‘What I do is not a service to the masses. No woman would reveal that much for free, what happens when you use that information to steal her husband?’ Even through the humour, it was clear that she believed in gatekeeping her expertise, sharing with those willing to compensate her.

Marshed does too, in a way, she charges fees, after all. But she also views her work as a kind of public service: ‘I think actual sex and intimacy is certainly a private matter, but the knowledge around it should be given freely where possible.’ When I ask if she worries this might dilute the tradition, she reminds me that the teachings of ukungwi have not been a secret for decades. A 1984 historical account, ‘The Life History of Mishi wa Abdala, A Swahili “Kungwi” from Mombasa, Kenya’, corroborates this: ‘When the interviews were first done wished to preserve the secrecy of the rituals…by 1983 Ma Mishi said that none of this was secret anymore…’ In fact, she and others preferred the songs to be published in research so they could be preserved.

Yet even without secrecy, these rituals retain an apocryphal quality. People love to wonder exactly what young women are taught, often delighting in speculation about ‘what really happens’, especially around sexual instruction. Abdul’s use of msondo dance as a form of sexual instruction, for instance, is symbolic of the private space such lessons occupy. Their movement into the public sphere is emblematic of a kind of counter-invention for women.

The expansion of ukungwi practices has not only been financially lucrative for wakungwi, but it has also expanded the heteronormative boundaries of who is deemed suitable to receive sexual and relationship health education to include unmarried, sexually active women. Perhaps more importantly, it has expanded the discourse on sex to openly include pleasure.

Owing to a culture of taboo around sex in Tanzania, there has never been a mandated sexual education programme. Instead, the government has largely relied on NGO-led sexual health and reproductive initiatives that were introduced en masse at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. These programmes focused on curbing the potential dangers of sex to prevent further infection and employed the ABC approach (Abstinence, Being Faithful and Using Condoms).In this framework, sex is conflated almost exclusively with reproduction and avoidance of bodily harm, while the focus on abstinence reinforces the idea that sex and marriage are inextricably linked.

In her 2023 paper, ‘Sexual Pleasure as Feminist Choice’, feminist thinker and writerPatricia McFadden reminds us that ‘a fundamental premise of patriarchal power and impunity is the denial and suppression of women’s naming and controlling their bodies for their own joy and nurturing.’ The lack of avenues for sex-positive discourse that centred sexual expression and pleasure, particularly women’s, further encouraged this suppression. By the early 2000s, some conversations began to appear in tabloid newspapers, films, and, more recently, in certain music genres like Singeli, which often feature lyrics about sexual expression. Still, such discussions remain scarce, which makes the efforts of today’s wakungwi to include them in their teachings especially significant.

Nonetheless, the expectation remains that women use their sex education to maintain the satisfaction and pleasure of their male partners, with women’s own pleasure often as secondary. While young men historically have their own coming-of-age rituals, they do not centre sexual adherence to their partners needs in the way women’s rituals do. Abdul agrees: ‘In wedding rituals for men, we mostly focus on cleansing practices and reminding them to be understanding of women going through changes like pregnancy.’ She adds that patience is particularly emphasized when the bride is significantly younger than the groom.

For women, however, there is a strong emphasis on sexual performance as duty to the marriage. Marshed recalls: ‘One of the first things that happened in my lessons as a bride was my aunt pointing at my vagina and saying, “You see that? That’s your husband’s food from now on. If you don’t offer it, then there might as well be no marriage.”’In the 1962 book,Swahili Poetry, Lyndon Harries references the 1858 Swahili poem by Mwana Kupona on these rituals that pay special attention to ‘personal attention bestowed by a Swahili wife upon her husband.’ These attentions ranged from beauty regimens including the use of fragrant incense and essential oils, suggesting that the performance expected of women extended beyond the bedroom, yet it remained a performance nonetheless.When I asked where duty ends and autonomy begins, Abdul simply replied: ‘When you’re married, your husband owns you.’ This sentiment is not only common in Swahili communities but in Tanzania at large.

‘Naturally, the most successful wakungwi are those who have a natural love for what’s graceful and sensual, you know? You have to love love, not just sex, but love of God, love of humanity and love of beauty,’ Marshed explains. Abdul corroborates this, ‘It is not so popular with modern women, but Swahili women should take pride in being sensual women. It is good to know how to live with one another in harmony.’ Both wakungwi remind me that the knowledge of sex and relationships is also crucial for strengthening intimacy between a woman and her partner. I also see how it strengthens intimacy within society by reproducing the existing code of conduct around what it means to be a woman and a wife.

Wakungwi today are steadily expanding their approach to ukungwi—with globalization, technology and socio-economic shifts also playing a role—so that they can both preserve a culture sacred to them and maintain it as a sustainable source of income. Straddling the two is tricky, and in some cases has created a platform that embraces women’s pleasure beyond marriage in ways that problematize the initial heteronormative boundaries on which the rituals were founded, but it also encourages a performative sexual expression that puts women’s pleasure secondary to men’s. While the evolution of ukungwi has certainly benefited the women who are able to make a living from the work, and perhaps contributed towards a culture of sexual positivity, it is difficult to say that the enduring practice is progressive for all women⎈