The Great Big List of Vitongoji

A word of warning on this blog – it is definitely aimed at hard core Tanzanian researchers who love getting into the minutiae of data about the country.

Over the last few months we have been building up a list of villages which were surveyed in the 1990s and early 2000s in Tanzania, in order that we might re-visit them. This has required trawling through papers, and along networks, and contacting diverse researchers. There has generally been an encouraging response to our enquiries: this is something with which people want to engage.

One of the results of this work is a list of villages which people have visited in the last 25 years. There are over 50 in all. However it is not always clear where these villages are, and what districts and regions they are now found, given changes to administrative boundaries. We have had to work out precisely their locations.

This required locating lists and maps of villages in Tanzania. There are three sources. We found shape files for regions, districts and villages for 2002 at the openmicrodata site here. We found shape files for regions, districts and wards for 2012 from the National Bureau of Statistics here. Finally the website of the Prime Minister’s Office where the recently proclaimed Government Notice 221 provides an accurate list of administrative units - Regions, Districts, Wards, Villages and Sub-Villages (vitongoji) - valid for 2015.

Reconciling these sources is not straight forward, however it has been possible in the vast majority of cases. We now have a map of the location of the different sites we intend to visit which is visible here. Moreover in the process we can see where our effort is likely to be concentrated (Morogoro and Iringa). We also found that two of the surveys we will be revisiting have in fact visited the same village. The same two surveys

also visited the same ward. They did this several years apart and this improves the historical insights we can glean from our re-visits.

There was also one unexpected bonus from all of this. The list of vitongoji names allows you to see what sorts of things their names commemorate. For there is a great deal of overlap. There are over 62 thousand vitongoji and only just over 37 thousand names for them – considerably less if we consider that modifications such as chini, juu, mashiriki to a root name makes it appear as a different name. And in the names one can detect

something of the history of Tanzania’s rural settlements.

Many names celebrate new developments. The most popular name, applied to 537 vitongoji, is simply ‘Majengo’, and over 1000 vitongoji refer to schools, hospitals, missions, clinics, bridges etc. There is a scattering of vitongoji called Tazara which follow the path of the railway. Another popular category refers to the traditions of compulsory labour and directed development that formed them. Over 300 are called ‘Mtakuja’, over 200 are called ‘Songambele’, over 120 are called ‘Azimio’, 100 are just called ‘Maendeleo’, 29 ‘Jitegemee’ and 22 ‘Nguvukazi’. Also popular are the aspirations people had for their places. There are 154 ‘Amani’s, 89 ‘Mjimwema’s and 27 ‘Upendo’s.

Important people, places and events also crop up. There are 70 ‘Dodoma’s and 83 ‘Mwenges’. Marehemu Mwalimu is commemorated in 97 vitongoji which are named Nyerere, the late Nelson Mandela in 38 and 33 vitongoji are called ‘Soweto’. And then there are the names which, if they have Swahili roots, make you wonder what was happening that required commemorating thus. There are five vitongoji in Mbeya region,

for example, which are all called ‘Kamficheni’, and two in Kagera called ‘Rushwa’.

You see, I did warn you at the start, this was a blog aimed at people who were really into minutiae. The list of vitongoji is in the public domain if you are interested here.